Citizen Sociolinguistics 2019

The article below was published in the knoledge@wharton site, and I thought I might be of interest to you 😎  Your data is shared and sold... what's being done about it?

As I read both readings this week I was especially struck with the hot-button issue Dr. Rymes mentions in her chapter regarding the arrests around gender pronouns. Specifically I was thinking about how they are policed inside and outside of school and the arrests that occur in both places. As most of you know, I am a second- grade teacher so the issue of whether to talk about gender or not talk about gender is a very hot-button issue for us teachers. I teach my little ones all subjects, all the day long. I am confronted and conflicted at the thought about introducing gender neutrality to them. Granted, they have probably all seen something that caused wonderment about the subject, or made a citizen sociolinguistic arrest when they heard someone use a pronoun used that was different from the “typical” or “assumed” his and hers . However, I am grappling with the notion of if it is my job to do so ? In one of my picture book classes at Penn, there was a story called ...

In Acts of Citizenship, professor Isen discusses how 'citizenship' has been studied in terms of 'status', where ideas of legality, boundaries, rights and obligations are the focus of study, and 'habitus' which are the "ways of thought and conduct that are internalized over a relatively long period of time" (p. 15). Instead of these two ways of studying 'citizenship,' he proposes a new perspective that focuses on "acts," meaning "the moments when subjects constitute themselves as citizens" (p.18).  These acts seem to be characterized by breaking with habitus and creating ruptures like the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Marion Wallace Dunlop's hunger strike did. Additionally, acts of citizenship seem to be oriented towards justice and involve acting and reacting with others (p. 39).    In Acts of Citizen Sociolinguistics, professor Rhymes explains that citizens sociolinguistics acts are ruptures that ma...

Link to podcast:  https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/10/20/20921354/ai-algorithms-essay-writing

Rushkoff (2019) talks about the sense of inauthenticity that we encounter in the real world, when we see poorly simulated objects or roles. And when we take on a persona that is not authentic to who we are, we get the sense of alienation from ourselves. I often experience this alienating sensation whenever I see people’s Instagram stories that are very well-curated to consecutively capture all moments of an event that are exciting and appealing, with a perfect caption and visual effects for each of them. A typical example would be stories from a surprise birthday party, where they post a video after another from getting together, decorating the room, and setting up the cake, to finally bringing the birthday girl/boy into the room who then makes a happy scream when everyone in the room shouts out “Happy Birthday!”. The climax is when everyone captured in the frame is staring at their own smartphone screen to record while the birthday person blows the candles on the cake. ...