Monash Linguistics Seminar Semester 2, 2010
Tuesdays, 11.00am-1.00pm
Room L4, Building 12 (Law)
Note change of venue from Semester 1
Followed by lunch & coffee in the Staff Club
(you can also bring your own food to the club).
All welcome!
20 July
Denis Jamet (University of Lyon)
Euphemisms for Death: Reinventing Reality through Words? (Corpus: Six Feet under)
(Abstract)
10 August
Rebekah Bennetts (Monash University) Confirmation seminar
The language of youth: "Modern" sectarian Pennsylvania German in Ontario?
(Abstract)
24 August
Barry Blake (La Trobe University)
How to do things to people with words
(Abstract)
7 September
Jim Breen (Monash University and the University of Melbourne)
From Amateur Lexicography to Computational Linguistics
(Abstract)
21 September
Julie Bradshaw (Monash University)
Place-identity and the right to speak
(Abstract)
12 October
Alice Gaby (Monash Univesity)
Euphemizing grammar: obfuscation and clarification in driving language change
(Abstract)
Abstracts
20 July
Denis Jamet (University of Lyon)
Euphemisms for Death: Reinventing Reality through Words? (Corpus: Six Feet under)
This presentation aims to study one of the most powerful taboos in contemporary western societies, i.e. death. It will be organized as follows: after briefly going over the history of the taboo of death and euphemism, I will analyze the death euphemisms found in my corpus, which is drawn from the American drama series Six Feet Under, the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning series produced by HBO and created by the Oscar-winning writer of American Beauty, Alan Ball. It focuses on the cathartic journey of the Fisher family: Ruth, the mother, Nate and David, the two sons who run the funeral home, and Claire, the younger daughter. Their personal trials and tribulations are played out against the solemn backdrop of an independent funeral home in LA. The theoretical assumptions on which my paper is based are essentially derived from the works of cognitive linguists such as Lakoff and Johnson, the pivotal study on euphemism and dysphemism by Allan and Burridge, as well as from a number of books and articles.
The main hypothesis I will depart from is that death euphemisms used nowadays, consciously or unconsciously, tend to reinvent the very notion of death, and as such, death euphemisms seem to act as "deflectors of reality" by building up a virtual, fictional wall between reality and the perception we have of reality.
10 August
Rebekah Bennetts (Monash University) Confirmation seminar
The language of youth: "Modern" sectarian Pennsylvania German in Ontario?
Pennsylvania German (PG) is a language which has been of considerable to linguists for some time, due to the diglossic situation in which it occurs and its survival as a minority language in a language contact situation with English for nearly 400 years. However, although the PG of American communities is well studied, the Canadian variants are less so. Existing studies also focus primarily on older speakers. Researchers have observed many changes in progress in the language, and the forms learnt and used by younger speakers could give a great indication as to the direction and extent of these changes. Therefore, in this study the grammatical structure of PG as spoken by the younger generation, specifically adolescents, in three conservative Mennonite communities will be investigated within a framework of previous descriptions of Canadian and American varieties of PG. By recording and examining the language use of these adolescents I hope to not only provide another point of comparison within this speech community for future research, but also to attempt to determine which of the posited changes have occurred, which, if any, of the competing forms may have become dominant, and to examine any new structures which may occur. It is hoped that this data will also be able to offer a more modern point of comparison between the Pennsylvania German of this Waterloo County community and the more well-studied German of other American Mennonite communities.
The language situation can not, however, be described without reference to more sociolinguistic variables. In fact, the survival itself of PG is related strongly to cultural and religious factors, with PG having been lost in all but the most conservative religious communities. Aspects such as the domains of the languages involved and the attitudes of the speakers towards their languages will also be investigated across these three separate conservative groups, in order to elucidate their role in the transmission and survival of this language.
In this talk I will briefly discuss the background to this study, the methodology to be used, and what I hope can be gained from this research.
24 August
Barry Blake (La Trobe University)
How to do things to people with words
Linguists teach that the relation between a word and its referent is arbitrary, but there is evidence from various cultures of a belief in an inherent connection between words and their referents. This claim can be supported most strongly in the case of names. In the grammar of some languages names are treated as part of the body, and in some cultures names have been used as a basis for sorcery just like body parts such as a lock of hair or nail parings. For this reason names are often kept secret. To know a name gives control of the named. Names can be used to summon helpful spirits, but by the same token the use of a name can provoke an unwelcome spirit or drive away the spirit of the prey.
Linguists also teach that speech is primary and writing derivative, but in literate cultures the written form is often held to be the real form. Just as a voodoo doll can be stabbed in the hope of causing a corresponding injury in the person represented, written names were sometimes pierced, scrambled or destroyed in the hope of injuring or killing the named.
This is part of a widespread belief that what is done to words is done to their referents. To reverse words or phrases can reverse the meaning in the sense of undoing what has been prescribed or turning good to evil. To repeat words or phrases with successive abbreviation can bring about a corresponding reduction of an injury or illness.
The same bond between word and referent can be seen in the practice of placing healing words on the body of a patient or giving these words to a patient to eat. Ingesting the physical word means absorbing whatever spirit or spiritual force is represented.
7 September
Jim Breen (Monash University and the University of Melbourne)
From Amateur Lexicography to Computational Linguistics
Jim Breen, who was an associate professor in the IT Faculty specialising in communications and networking, took early retirement in 2003 to concentrate on his hobby of compiling and editing a set of electronic and online Japanese dictionaries. One thing led to another, and now he is a graduate student at the University of Melbourne doing a PhD in computational linguistics (with a lexicographic flavour.)
In this seminar, as well as giving a brief overview of computational linguistics, Jim will describe both his ongoing work in electronic dictionary-building, and his research program in the extraction of neologisms and other non-lexicalised words and expressions from Japanese corpora. He will be covering some of the issues of dealing with a lexically rich language which uses three scripts, has no spaces between words (and indeed a rather fuzzy attitude to what a "word" is) and a wealth of online corpora, including the rapidly moving and expanding world of blogs, tweets, etc.
21 September
Julie Bradshaw (Monash University)
Place-identity and the right to speak
Local community newspapers are a forum in which development issues are canvassed and contested. An analysis of community newspapers from the townships of central Victoria explores the means used by participants in this discourse to claim entitlement to speak, and to challenge the legitimacy of their opponents' contributions.
12 October
Alice Gaby (Monash University)
Euphemizing grammar: obfuscation and clarification in driving language change
Abstract Coming Soon.