In my blog post last week, I used the debates surrounding the song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” to highlight a focal question of mine: How do we responsibly study and address difficult issues embedded in cultural artifacts, especially those that still wield sociocultural influence today? For the purpose of this post, I wish to consider Goffman’s On the Run both as a work of research and as a cultural artifact as well. One major problem I have perceived is that nobody can be fully knowledgeable in everything culture and society, but we all have to navigate complex sociocultural situations and make decisions and judgements every day. Different individuals possess different biographies, come from different perspectives, care about different artifacts and within them, different aspects, and therefore reach different interpretations and end up debating at complete cross-purposes. And thus, wherever there is fanfare, controversy, or some other point of interest, there is a very common ...
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In 1993, when the German punk band Die Ärzte published the song “Stummer Schrei nach Liebe” 1 (Silent cry for love), East and West Germany had just recently reunited politically but social and cultural fissure were deep and raw. At that time, the song was written in response to xenophobic attacks in Hoyerswerda, one of many cities in the Eastern part of the country with a growing Neo-Nazi scene. More recently, in 2015, amid growing anti-immigrant sentiments in reaction to the arrival of than 1.000.000 refugees that year, the song was resurrected: A homespun rendition by the senior choir, The Goldies , went viral on Youtube, a social media campaign, #Aktionarschloch, was founded to bring the song back into and to the top of the music charts, and flashmobs organized across German cities to sing the song in public squares. Just last week, the song was referenced once again. This time, its lyrics were recycled in a post by the Heute Show 2 , a German version of The Daily Show . T...
In engaging with this week’s theme of citizen sociolinguistic narratives, I wanted to share the YouTuber SuperAwesome ’s video “As a Taiwanese person, do you know what a ‘Taiwanese accent’ is?” (original title: 身為台灣人 你懂什麼是「台灣腔」嗎？; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFEV_sz3te0 ). Rymes points out that citizen sociolinguists possess at least two types of knowledge regarding accents: “People must know enough about language to recognize differences in ways of speaking…people must also know how their peers ascribe value to those differences in order for them to count as socially meaningful ‘accents’” (ms, Chapter 5, p. 5). SuperAwesome demonstrates both of these knowledges in his introduction: (Basic translation by me. ALL CAPS = English. Italics = speaking with a “Taiwanese Mandarin” accent – Taiwanese Mandarin as described in this transcription is a low-prestige style of Mandarin spoken in Taiwan and is distinctly different from the more prestigious Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, whi...
Thanks for posting this (Sarah?). In general, I like the attitude about the creative-writing AI: It's a tool that writers can work with--sometimes it has insights, sometimes its lame. In a way, it seems like Google translate: Useful in some ways, but often, you really already need to know both languages you are "translating" to know if it is being helpful.
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