raves: 2 linguistics podcasts and 1 GO fic

[jesse_the_k]

The Black Language Podcast

by blacklangpod

https://blacklangpod.buzzsprout.com

Creator Anansa Benbow opens my brain to the huge varieties of black language, especially AAVE/Ebonics. The first episode declares: no grammar police and pinged my disability pride when she said, "I stutter. Imma gone make this podcast" and carried on. The second explores the pragmatic function of aight so boom in storytelling. The third episode takes direct aim at the reality that Black creativity drives US culture, including language change, and yet White people valorize White AAVE speakers while excoriating Black AAVE speakers.

She compares the experiences of Rachel Jeantel, star prosecution witness in the George Zimmerman trial whose testimony was simply not understood by white jurors, with Bhad Bhabie, a white rapper who gained fame by disrespecting her mother on Dr Phil:

Language appropriation of Black people is not simply language borrowing, unfortunately, it comes with the erasure of Black people. Again, the push to promote stan/twitter/internet language, instead of recognizing that the language used on social media comes from Black people is an example of that erasure.

Sorry to report no transcripts for this podcast.

Accentricity

by accentricitypod

https://www.accentricity-podcast.com

Sociolinguist Sadie Ryan explores linguistic ideology as applied to Scots. In her words:

This is a podcast about people and how they talk. About accents, and why we care about them. About languages, and how they refuse to be controlled. About why there is no such thing as bad grammar, no language is more important than any other language, and every voice is valid.

I learned that Scots language is scorned as uneducated by many English power brokers. A pair of episodes document kids just learning to talk and how they speak one year later.

I had to listen to the first episodes several times to get accustomed to her accent — sadly, no transcripts. Excellent bedtime listening.

Learned about both of these from the Huge List of Linguistics Podcasts hosted by Lauren Gawne aka superlinguo:

https://www.superlinguo.com/post/158448074588/linguistics-and-language-podcasts

---

Long-Term by idiopathicsmile

Completely adorkable Good Omens gen fic, POV of a very queer, very UU minister interviewing a couple she calls Bowtie and Sunglasses. Only canon you need to know is that the couple getting married are a demon and an angel who’ve been flirting for 6000 years.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/19703515

Comments

[davidgillon]

I learned that Scots language is scorned as uneducated by many English power brokers.

Not just Scots, there's a definite negative attached to all the Northern English accents as well, Geordie, Scouse, Yorkshire etc. It's an unfortunate artefact of the dominance of public (ie private, very upper-class) schools in our ruling class.

[cosmolinguist]

Not just the North of England either, Birmingham accents are among the most reviled in the country. There's been research that the same words said in a Brummie accent sound "more guilty" than any other, and this has affected judges and juries.

[davidgillon]

True, unfortunately there's something about the Birmingham accent that seems to sit wrong with people, and it's not simply a class thing in this case because I know I'm guilty of finding it grating and so are a great many others, even if we have accents that are themselves looked down on.

[davidgillon]

Somerset would be another non-Northern one that's pretty generally looked down on.

Thanks for the further education

[jesse_the_k]

Linguistic markers that reinforce class/power stratification makes sense in a country with a long history of hereditary power.

(Of course there are many strong opinions about U.S. regional accents! My parents worked hard to lose their Philadelphia accents so they'd fit in better with the "effete east coast elite" they climbed into.)

I got a pocket education from this BBC Midlands Today video from 2014 -- sadly uncaptioned.

[sovay]

About why there is no such thing as bad grammar, no language is more important than any other language, and every voice is valid.

Yaaaaaaaay.

(No transcripts is a bummer for me, but also because in this case I would love to see how these languages are represented in print.)

[jesse_the_k]

Indeed -- perhaps since both producers are newly-minted PhDs, they're hesitating to make a transcript because it involves addressing the IPA: yes or no? question.

[cosmolinguist]

I really love Accentricity. And despite looking over the Huge List of Linguistics Podcasts from time to time, I didn't know about the Black Language Podcast! I thought I didn't want any more linguistics podcasts for a while, but this is right up my alley. I cannot resist something whose first episode is called Defund the Grammar Police.

[davidgillon]

Defund the Grammar Police.

Snigger!

[jesse_the_k]

Indeed -- it's new! The Black Language Podcast was funded by a Lingcomm grant from lingthusiasm.

Is there an open-access audio database of accents? I poked at YouTube for Brummie samples, and I guess I found some, but I'd prefer to fish in waters that aren't randomly polluted.

[bibliofile]

As for transcriptions, are volunteer and/or crowdsourced transcripts a thing? at all? Because I'm not the only person with a computer and free time that I spend on random data projects.

I wish the Accentricity site listed the number of episodes, but that's a different rant. (I.e., why do I have to use my podcast app to find out full info about a podcast series.)

Both of these look great! Thanks for the pointers.

Good question!

[jesse_the_k]

They're certainly a thing for captions/subtitles at Amara.org -- which is where Google is pointing people after they shut down their community captioning tool at 23 Sept 2020.

I'm going to gently poke both of the podcast producers and it would be great to have somewhere to point them.

(I share your frustration re: web pages that assume you're using a mobile device, but we're internet olds. Accentricity's just got some new funding for admin tasks, so maybe it will improve?)

/back from a brief search rabbit hole.

Why should I be surprised that there's a blog covering the crowd* sector?

https://crowdsourcingweek.com/blog/decade-in-crowdsourcing-transcription/

[jesse_the_k]

Looks like https://scribeproject.github.io Scribe Project is the open source tool, borne of hard use in many projects. https://www.zooniverse.org/ is the place to find quite a few hundred.

If you happen to have some extra hours which need filling.

[tarasacon]

It looks like ~10 episodes so far for Accentricity, I think?

[oracne]

I should start listening to podcasts one of these days; those sound great.

[jesse_the_k]

The combination of gentle hand work (beading, cooking) and podcasts is excellent! Many are shorter than 30 minutes, so they also make good workout background (at least for me).

[runpunkrun]

Thanks for the recs!

[jesse_the_k]

<3

[jeshyr]

Greatly enjoyed the GO fix, thank you!

[jesse_the_k]

So happy to be useful! Are you already reading G.O. or was it the allure of the outsider view (my favorite trope, because it so readily comments on fanon and canon).

[jeshyr]

I do like outsider PoV too, but I had already got sucked into GO via my standard way of entering a fandom which is that people whose fanfic I like reading start writing for it, and I like the stories, and so I start consuming canon … so at this point I have watched both the Amazon version and listened to the audio book too :)

Also now I am reading the rest of the Outstanding Outsider POVs collection the story was in, because most of the fic I find comes from kind of spidering out like that

[libskrat]

Hello, fellow GO fans!

AO3 is quite remarkably good at association trails. I expect to be happily reading GO stuff for quite a long while yet...

[tarasacon]

Finally got some quiet space with wifi to catch up on some things. The podcasts look interesting- I’ve added them to my queue- and the fic made me smile. Thank you! :)