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cosmolinguistLately I have listened to a ton of podcasts and a lot of them are really great!
One episode is called "Astronaut Dreams" and it starts out with a lovely bit from Chris Hadfield about sleeping in space, what it's like on the space station.
Then we're hearing from Nujeen Mustafa, a Syrian girl with cerebral palsy who grew up stuck in her family's apartment until they had to leave Syria; she was apparently the first person journalists saw who'd made the rubber-dinghy crossing of the Mediterranean with a wheelchair so of course they loved her. She was a teenager so they asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up and of course she said an astronaut. (At this point I'd checked my podcast player to make sure it hadn't skipped to another episode because all of this while important seemed so irrelevant when I was expecting more like Chris Hadfield talking about sleeping in space.) Nujeen said "I wanted to be free of gravity", and who could argue with that?
And then Abdul Ahad Mohmand, the only person from Afghanistan to have ever gone into space. It was 1988, in the last days of Russia's hold on Afghanistan, and he went up to Mir, Russia's space station. On the way back something went wrong with the engines and they were just stuck there for a long time, running out of oxygen, sweating in their spacesuits so much the mission control told them to take them off for fear the sweat would corrode something...and then of course they made it. Abdul doesn't really tell people he went to space; he's an accountant now, he had to leave Afghanistan because he knew that as a famous face of the Communist era he'd be in danger from the Mujahideen. Like Nujeen would many years later, he fled to Germany. "The difficulties you face to leave your country are the same difficulties you face to go into space," he says. "You face a new life there. My life of 25-30 years finished, and I had to start from zero." He's an accountant now. He doesn't tell people he's been to space unless they know enough to ask him about it.
The interviewer asked him if he'd rather go back to space or go back to Afghanistan. He said "I'd have gone back to space for my country of Afghanistan." They asked Nujeen as well and she said the same thing, she wanted to "represent her country in a good way." She's ninteen now and applying to do physics at university.
Vocal Fries is a podcast about linguistic discrimination -- its tagline is "Don't be an asshole" and it (hopefully) helps people not be assholes to each other by finding out what kinds of judgments we make based on people's speech (and other use of language). I've learned a lot about North American Englishes -- Appalachian, French in Canada, some indigenous languages, Chicano, etc. -- but in this one they're interviewing Kirby Conrod, who combines sociolinguistics and syntax, which is a really weird combination for linguists -- they say they had to get two advisors, because there was no one person who could cover both of these, I guess! -- but makes a lot more sense from the perspective of a trans person who is interested in pronouns, which is exactly what Kirby is.
One of the things Kirby talked about is how important it is that trans linguists are the ones working on trans language. "What's at stake in the research us really personal and really urgent," they said in the podcast interview. "There are concerns I don't see cis linguists respecting." They said that cis linguists are doing research that sees trans subjects as "ginuea pigs" instead of "real human people."
"The other important thing that I think distinguishes trans researchers is that frankly our research questions are more interesting," Kirby goes on. "When I see research on trans women's phonetics and sociophonetics from cisgender men, it's almost always 'how well does this trans woman pass?' And to trans people, that question is a, not very interesting and b, kind of insulting. That's the only thing people are asking, over and over, is 'what do cis people think of trans women's voices.' 'Isn't it interesting that trans women don't sound like women?' That's not something we want to see on paper over and over. We want to see trans women compared to trans women. We want to see trans women leading the research on trans women."
Kirby talked about how deadnaming and misgendering are slightly different linguistically, which is due to the fact that pronouns and names are grammatically different. So Kirby talked about a twitter study they did which found that even people threatening and hating Chelsea Manning, who misgendered her to do so, still called her Chelsea. But the best part of this discussion was how Kirby bookended it with how viscerally upsetting and damaging and threatening it is to be deadnamed or misgendered. It really emphasized that these things are not just intellectually interesting, they're personal and devastating.
As much as I'd love to think I'm respectful and aware, I'm probably not as great as I think and even if I am I'm not going to be able to approach it in the same way as a trans person.
Kirby talked about Geoff Pullum of Language Log misgendering and deadnaming a former student, apparently making the argument that he couldn't gender them properly because "they" was just not grammatical for him. Pullum makes arguments we've probably all heard (and we cis people have probably said; I'm sure I have) about how he just can't update his words so easily and these things are so ingrained it's not his fault. He might couch these opinions in more jargony linguistic terms, but he's not saying anything trans people haven't heard a billion weary times. Kirby wrote an excellent response for Language Log, by the way.
One episode is called "Astronaut Dreams" and it starts out with a lovely bit from Chris Hadfield about sleeping in space, what it's like on the space station.
Then we're hearing from Nujeen Mustafa, a Syrian girl with cerebral palsy who grew up stuck in her family's apartment until they had to leave Syria; she was apparently the first person journalists saw who'd made the rubber-dinghy crossing of the Mediterranean with a wheelchair so of course they loved her. She was a teenager so they asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up and of course she said an astronaut. (At this point I'd checked my podcast player to make sure it hadn't skipped to another episode because all of this while important seemed so irrelevant when I was expecting more like Chris Hadfield talking about sleeping in space.) Nujeen said "I wanted to be free of gravity", and who could argue with that?
And then Abdul Ahad Mohmand, the only person from Afghanistan to have ever gone into space. It was 1988, in the last days of Russia's hold on Afghanistan, and he went up to Mir, Russia's space station. On the way back something went wrong with the engines and they were just stuck there for a long time, running out of oxygen, sweating in their spacesuits so much the mission control told them to take them off for fear the sweat would corrode something...and then of course they made it. Abdul doesn't really tell people he went to space; he's an accountant now, he had to leave Afghanistan because he knew that as a famous face of the Communist era he'd be in danger from the Mujahideen. Like Nujeen would many years later, he fled to Germany. "The difficulties you face to leave your country are the same difficulties you face to go into space," he says. "You face a new life there. My life of 25-30 years finished, and I had to start from zero." He's an accountant now. He doesn't tell people he's been to space unless they know enough to ask him about it.
The interviewer asked him if he'd rather go back to space or go back to Afghanistan. He said "I'd have gone back to space for my country of Afghanistan." They asked Nujeen as well and she said the same thing, she wanted to "represent her country in a good way." She's ninteen now and applying to do physics at university.
Vocal Fries is a podcast about linguistic discrimination -- its tagline is "Don't be an asshole" and it (hopefully) helps people not be assholes to each other by finding out what kinds of judgments we make based on people's speech (and other use of language). I've learned a lot about North American Englishes -- Appalachian, French in Canada, some indigenous languages, Chicano, etc. -- but in this one they're interviewing Kirby Conrod, who combines sociolinguistics and syntax, which is a really weird combination for linguists -- they say they had to get two advisors, because there was no one person who could cover both of these, I guess! -- but makes a lot more sense from the perspective of a trans person who is interested in pronouns, which is exactly what Kirby is.
One of the things Kirby talked about is how important it is that trans linguists are the ones working on trans language. "What's at stake in the research us really personal and really urgent," they said in the podcast interview. "There are concerns I don't see cis linguists respecting." They said that cis linguists are doing research that sees trans subjects as "ginuea pigs" instead of "real human people."
"The other important thing that I think distinguishes trans researchers is that frankly our research questions are more interesting," Kirby goes on. "When I see research on trans women's phonetics and sociophonetics from cisgender men, it's almost always 'how well does this trans woman pass?' And to trans people, that question is a, not very interesting and b, kind of insulting. That's the only thing people are asking, over and over, is 'what do cis people think of trans women's voices.' 'Isn't it interesting that trans women don't sound like women?' That's not something we want to see on paper over and over. We want to see trans women compared to trans women. We want to see trans women leading the research on trans women."
Kirby talked about how deadnaming and misgendering are slightly different linguistically, which is due to the fact that pronouns and names are grammatically different. So Kirby talked about a twitter study they did which found that even people threatening and hating Chelsea Manning, who misgendered her to do so, still called her Chelsea. But the best part of this discussion was how Kirby bookended it with how viscerally upsetting and damaging and threatening it is to be deadnamed or misgendered. It really emphasized that these things are not just intellectually interesting, they're personal and devastating.
As much as I'd love to think I'm respectful and aware, I'm probably not as great as I think and even if I am I'm not going to be able to approach it in the same way as a trans person.
Kirby talked about Geoff Pullum of Language Log misgendering and deadnaming a former student, apparently making the argument that he couldn't gender them properly because "they" was just not grammatical for him. Pullum makes arguments we've probably all heard (and we cis people have probably said; I'm sure I have) about how he just can't update his words so easily and these things are so ingrained it's not his fault. He might couch these opinions in more jargony linguistic terms, but he's not saying anything trans people haven't heard a billion weary times. Kirby wrote an excellent response for Language Log, by the way.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-02-22 06:25 pm (UTC)with
Margaret Cho
David Sedaris
George Takei
and more...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R21Fd8-Apf0
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3997238/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt
(no subject)
Date: 2018-02-22 07:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-02-22 06:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-02-22 08:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-02-23 12:15 am (UTC)This one is very creepy: about synthesizing a person's voice based on just one minute of recording:
My Voice is My Passport Verify Me
And thanks--I'm digging Vocal Fries right now. I must admit that at first I thought it was about distinguishing between various linguistics.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-02-23 06:43 am (UTC)I used to listen to NPR all the time so some of the PRI podcasts like this are comfortingly familiar. :)
I really need more podcasts that aren't about language, though. I accrued several when it was a hobby, and now I'm like "well this is still interesting but I need a break from my work now!"