Speaker 1: Imagine the place where you can escape for a day,
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Speaker 1: where you can lay in luxury accommodation.
Speaker 2: And kids can fees from ninety five sets. Tickets are
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Speaker 1: Everyone and include all the attractions you've just imagined.
Speaker 2: A day out at the kia Ikia the Wonderful every Day.
Speaker 3: Oh hi, Hi, it's your weird coworker, the one who
Speaker 3: brings in lemons from their tree but also sometimes microwaves
Speaker 3: fish alley board for another episode of Ologies. Okay, so
Speaker 3: guess I'm there. Ight Now, I'm using a big glob
Speaker 3: of fat in nerves that I keep in a bone
Speaker 3: bowl behind my eyes to make noises to represent my thoughts,
Speaker 3: and then I beam those grunts to a satellite using
Speaker 3: invisible data transmission, and then your nerve fat glob is
Speaker 3: like totally yeah, I get it. So my brain to
Speaker 3: your brain.
Speaker 4: It's magic.
Speaker 3: People. So today we're gonna be speaking about speaking. I'm
Speaker 3: pumped as heck about it, but first let's grunt about you.
Speaker 3: So hello to all the new listeners who heard about
Speaker 3: Ologies through my friends on Forever thirty five and Chris
Speaker 3: Hardwick's ID tent t podcasts. Welcome to the dusty clubhouse
Speaker 3: of oligites. Come on in. Thank you to everyone who's
Speaker 3: out there in the world strutting about in wares from
Speaker 3: ologiesmerch dot com, where you can go if you want
Speaker 3: a twenty dollars science t shirt. A tip of the
Speaker 3: cap to all of the patrons who submit questions for
Speaker 3: the podcast and support the podcast for as little as
Speaker 3: twenty five cents an episode. I'm my Heart is that cheap?
Speaker 3: Twenty five cents an episode gets you into that club.
Speaker 3: And thanks to everyone who tosses some free love my
Speaker 3: way just by tweeting or gramming about the podcast and
Speaker 3: getting the word out, and for subscribing and rating on
Speaker 3: iTunes and Stitcher, which is super important and helps so much,
Speaker 3: and getting the show seen. Are you guys ready for this?
Speaker 3: So this week Ologies number six on the iTunes Science charts,
Speaker 3: like up there with like Invisibilia and Radio Lab and
Speaker 3: Hidden Brain, all like respectable podcasts, ones that don't use
Speaker 3: the F word about neuroscience or talk about duc dicks
Speaker 3: as much. So thank you so much for the reviews.
Speaker 3: I creep them all. I read every single one, and
Speaker 3: to prove it each week I read one aloud. So
Speaker 3: this week I'm going to say thanks Brooke bisone for
Speaker 3: saying Ali, thanks so much for making a podcast that
Speaker 3: makes scientists seem like rock stars. Your interviews are fun
Speaker 3: and interesting and go into the science while still managing
Speaker 3: to remain a little goofy. I think she's being generous
Speaker 3: with that. But okay, let's get into this topic. So
Speaker 3: intenational phonology, what do those sounds together even mean? So
Speaker 3: it has nothing to do with international telecommunications. So phonology
Speaker 3: is a branch of linguistics that deals with sounds. So
Speaker 3: what are emotional word grunts sound like? And intenational means
Speaker 3: that pitches we use to convey different things like ask
Speaker 3: a question or be sarcastic. So this week we are
Speaker 3: taking something that you do every day, which is talk
Speaker 3: with all the hidden cues and meanings and signifiers, and
Speaker 3: we're breaking it down a little bit. So how do
Speaker 3: things like gender identity and racial background play a role
Speaker 3: in how we signal and bond and communicate with other people?
Speaker 3: It turns out it's fascinating and so complex. So this
Speaker 3: ologist has both a bachelor's and a master's in linguistics
Speaker 3: and has studied the nuances of speech in everyone from
Speaker 3: pop stars to professors and people in both politics and prisons,
Speaker 3: which I feel like there's a Venn diagram. Those things
Speaker 3: are just getting closer and closer together. She got a
Speaker 3: PhD from NYU with a dissertation entitled Intonational Variation, Linguistic
Speaker 3: Style and the Black Biracial Experience. She's now an assistant
Speaker 3: professor of linguistics at Pomona College and we set a
Speaker 3: date for me to come out to her office on campus.
Speaker 3: It's about thirty five minutes away from where I live,
Speaker 3: and because I am very smart and also responsible, I
Speaker 3: gave myself an hour and a half to get there.
Speaker 3: I started out driving, all was well, and then my
Speaker 3: GPS just kept tacking on more minutes. It was horrifying.
Speaker 3: Suddenly it was like, you're going to be four minutes late.
Speaker 4: I was like shit.
Speaker 3: I sent her a message. I was like I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3: A few miles down the road, my GPS is like, nah,
Speaker 3: you gonna be fifteen minutes late. I was like what,
Speaker 3: And then twenty minutes late, and I just kept sending
Speaker 3: her emails from stop and go traffic, being like dude,
Speaker 3: I don't like maybe there's like a dinosaur in the
Speaker 3: road or a tanker truck exploded. Anyway, I hadn't realized
Speaker 3: that the Friday evening Los Angeles traffic on Memorial Day
Speaker 3: weekend would start before noon, so I was in the
Speaker 3: car for over two hours to go thirty miles and
Speaker 3: I was just sweating in so many places. So by
Speaker 3: the time I arrived, I was one hour late. I
Speaker 3: was the most mortified ever, and I was wishing I
Speaker 3: had been fitted with a catheter for the drive. So
Speaker 3: I started rolling tape in the car and just ran
Speaker 3: into her office. I'm proud to report I went the
Speaker 3: whole interview without having a potty accident. But this ologist
Speaker 3: was as gracious as a human being could have been,
Speaker 3: and in the forty five minutes we had to talk,
Speaker 3: she gave me one of the most frank and enthralling
Speaker 3: interviews I could just ever hope for. I had about
Speaker 3: ten hours worth of questions to ask her. But I've
Speaker 3: included more info on her work at the end of
Speaker 3: this because we had limited time, and it's also up
Speaker 3: on my website, so feel free to tenderly stalk her
Speaker 3: to continue learning about this field. Also, if there's anything
Speaker 3: language wise I can improve on. Feel free to reach
Speaker 3: out to me. I really wanted to learn more about
Speaker 3: this work because I knew nothing about it, and I
Speaker 3: wanted to kind of open up the discussion and just
Speaker 3: get people thinking about these experiences, both their own and others.
Speaker 3: So in this episode, we cover the origins of our
Speaker 3: own voices through socialization, code switching, Obama's voice, Twitter grammar,
Speaker 3: questions that linguistics hate getting, and how difficult it is
Speaker 3: to change your identity to fit in. Also what not
Speaker 3: to wear in Paris, and how I'm a shape shifting
Speaker 3: lizard member of the Illuminati. So tell your brain glob
Speaker 3: to please listen up to the significant and brilliant word
Speaker 3: machinations of international phonologist doctor Nicole Holiday. Oh god, this
Speaker 3: is the nightmare.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 3: I've arrived at the college. I'm an hour late. This
Speaker 3: is my nightmare. Oh god. So everything is a red zone,
Speaker 3: all right. I'm parking in some parking lot. It doesn't
Speaker 3: say I can't, so I'm doing it Friday afternoon and
Speaker 3: holiday weekend. I have to pee so fucking bad. Two
Speaker 3: hours in the car. I am over an hour late
Speaker 3: to this interview. This doctor is like, hmmm, it's waiting
Speaker 3: in her office for me on a holiday weekend.
Speaker 5: I think was day.
Speaker 4: Heavy breathing.
Speaker 3: S, buildings empty, doctor holiday good. I'm already rolling. I'm
Speaker 3: like ready to go.
Speaker 4: Why how are you good?
Speaker 1: How are you?
Speaker 4: I'm so sorry that you had such a traffic tram.
Speaker 4: This is so embarrassing. I'm just.
Speaker 3: I was like, I started running it in the car.
Speaker 3: I was like, I'm gonna roll in there. Hi, I'm
Speaker 3: so excited to talk.
Speaker 4: I'm glad you made it. I'm sorry the traffic.
Speaker 3: No, it's me. I should have left yesterday. I should
Speaker 3: have left in camp.
Speaker 4: We should have thought about the fact that it was Friday.
Speaker 4: We really idired it up.
Speaker 3: Didn't even think about that or the holiday weekend. And
Speaker 3: I was like, oh my gosh. So first off, so
Speaker 3: now you are a linguistics professor here, now, yes, I am.
Speaker 3: Now you've been a linguistics professor here pretty recently.
Speaker 4: Right. This is my Actually I was a post doc
Speaker 4: for one year here and then I just finished my
Speaker 4: first year as faculty, so like a baby professor. That's
Speaker 4: so exciting. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now I understand that you started studying Spanish in high school, right,
Speaker 3: Can you tell me a little bit about when you
Speaker 3: started becoming so interested in language.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So I was always a kid that was like
Speaker 4: super interested in maps and geography. And then I think
Speaker 4: when I was in fifth grade, we had like three
Speaker 4: weeks of French or something, and I was like, this
Speaker 4: is so cool. But like you know, in the US,
Speaker 4: kids don't really learn second languages. Yeah, So it wasn't
Speaker 4: until you know, I get to high school, basically eighth
Speaker 4: grade when I started taking Spanish, and I had was
Speaker 4: a kid that was good at school, but I wasn't
Speaker 4: like super good at anything in particular. Until we started
Speaker 4: doing Spanish. It was like, oh, this is the easiest
Speaker 4: thing for me, Like this must be the thing.
Speaker 3: Side note, I'm learning Spanish on dual lingo in case
Speaker 3: anyone wants to be my friend on it. I'm not
Speaker 3: very good at it, which means I cheated and made
Speaker 3: the computer say this.
Speaker 4: So when I went to college, I was like, I'm
Speaker 4: just gonna study a bunch of languages. I'm gonna study
Speaker 4: Spanish and Arabic and whatever. So I got into it,
Speaker 4: and I was studying Arabic and it was harder than Spanish,
Speaker 4: obviously for an English speaker.
Speaker 3: Quick question, how much harder is Arabic than English? I
Speaker 3: was curious from everything I just read about it. It
Speaker 3: is hella fucking hard. So, though there are twenty eight
Speaker 3: characters in the Arabic alphabet, the vowels are totally left
Speaker 3: out or represented as these wee little dots and swishes
Speaker 3: around the consonants. So, in one study, neuropsychologists found that
Speaker 3: the left hemisphere of the brain, which handles like linear
Speaker 3: reasoning like grammar, tends to analyze these intricate little letter
Speaker 3: freckles and swoops Arabic writing. So learning other languages with
Speaker 3: simpler alphabets, like English or Hebrew, the left and the
Speaker 3: right brain both help you decipher the meaning and the emphasis.
Speaker 3: But in Arabic, even native speakers, the left brain kind
Speaker 3: of rolls up its sleeves and is like, oh man,
Speaker 3: this shit is complex, I gotta analyze this. Also, Arabic
Speaker 3: has a bunch of pronunciations that are unfamiliar to English speakers.
Speaker 3: It's got some next level grammar, not to mention tons
Speaker 3: of regional dialects. So if you can read or speak Arabic,
Speaker 3: please accept my robust, cosmic high fives. That is life
Speaker 3: in the fast lane. Linguistically, so Nicole was studying that
Speaker 3: and then and.
Speaker 4: Then somebody suggested my friend's dad suggested I should take
Speaker 4: Introduction to Linguistics, thought I would like it, and I
Speaker 4: took it, and I got to day one and I
Speaker 4: was like, yeah, this is the thing. Like, it was
Speaker 4: never the languages. It was like the theory beneath the
Speaker 4: languages that I was interested in. But I didn't really
Speaker 4: have a way to talk about that, because who learns
Speaker 4: about linguistics in high school, right, Like almost no one,
Speaker 4: zero people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's never it's not something that's thought of, even
Speaker 3: though it's something that we do all day every day.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And the way that we teach this kind of
Speaker 4: anything allied, right is like we teach grammar, which everyone
Speaker 4: hates because we teach it so poorly and it's so prescriptive.
Speaker 4: There's so many rules and so many limitations, and so
Speaker 4: people are just like, oh, sentence structure. I want to
Speaker 4: run away from that. So even when people do hear
Speaker 4: about linguistics, they're like, oh, you're just diagramming sentences. It
Speaker 4: must be horrible. I'm like, no, I don't do that
Speaker 4: at all. I'm actually horrible at that.
Speaker 3: Now, tell me what about it? Did you love so much?
Speaker 3: Is it because you love communication? Is it because you
Speaker 3: love how thought is shaped by language?
Speaker 4: Yeah? So I like the structure. So some one of
Speaker 4: my students last semester describe linguistics as like language plus math.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of there's a lot of like
Speaker 4: procedure and theory and like ways that you go We
Speaker 4: do problem sets right when we're teaching students, So there's
Speaker 4: like a very orderly way about going about analyzing this
Speaker 4: thing that doesn't necessarily seem really like rule to us.
Speaker 4: Just as people who are walking around speaking you don't
Speaker 4: think about like all of the things that you have
Speaker 4: to know in your mind sort of cognitively to be
Speaker 4: able to use your first or second language, I know,
Speaker 4: but also socially. Right, So we teach It's a subfield
Speaker 4: of linguistics called pragmatics that I teach about, you know,
Speaker 4: when I teach introductory level classes, and I will just
Speaker 4: say things that strike the students as absurd. So I
Speaker 4: told that, Like one of the examples is like what
Speaker 4: happens if I walk in here and I'm like, Drake
Speaker 4: is the greatest rapper of all time. It's like the
Speaker 4: first thing I say in class today, like what? And
Speaker 4: they laugh, right, And I said, why is it funny?
Speaker 4: They're like, oh, it's like not appropriate. I'm like, but
Speaker 4: why do you know? Like why, like you know all
Speaker 4: these social things that make you know that this is
Speaker 4: not like a thing that you can do right, right,
Speaker 4: but nobody ever taught you that.
Speaker 3: Do you ask them? Why? Do you ask them their
Speaker 3: opinions on why was that not appropriate? Like what are
Speaker 3: what are some of the responses that they.
Speaker 4: Get, right, So they get well, it's not the theme
Speaker 4: of the class, right, Okay, so they know what class
Speaker 4: they're in. It's not what they would expect from me
Speaker 4: as a professor to come in and talk about hip hop.
Speaker 4: I guess right. So all of these and also like
Speaker 4: it's a formal setting, right, We're in a classroom, so
Speaker 4: it's like not the type of thing that you expect
Speaker 4: here from a professor in a classroom. So that's why
Speaker 4: it's comical, right, because all of these things are unexpected.
Speaker 4: They expect me to come in and say, today, class,
Speaker 4: we're going to do, you know, whatever they need. And
Speaker 4: also it's weird because it's the first thing, like we
Speaker 4: don't make statements apropos of nothing usually, and when we do,
Speaker 4: we apologize like, oh sorry, I was just thinking about right,
Speaker 4: we have to kind of couch.
Speaker 3: It, right, And then it does a discussion follow of
Speaker 3: who the greatest rapper of all time really is? And
Speaker 3: do you ever settle on that?
Speaker 4: No? No, they have a lot of opinions. People used
Speaker 4: to say Nas, but he's like on the Blacklist now, so.
Speaker 3: It's really okay, it's not good. Okay, so perhaps not Nas.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Okay, I had to look this up.
Speaker 3: I was like, huh. So Nas was married to Calise,
Speaker 3: a hip hop artist and a chef, two talents which
Speaker 3: blended beautifully in one of her hits that we've all
Speaker 3: sang despite our personal lactose intolerances.
Speaker 4: Shape brings all the voice.
Speaker 3: So Nas and Coe divorced in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 3: but just a few months ago she divulged that they
Speaker 3: had a terrible physically and mentally abusive relationship. So Na's
Speaker 3: not good. So who is the greatest rapper? I was like,
Speaker 3: I gotta know what is the consensus? So I did
Speaker 3: some digging and I got lost down a very deep
Speaker 3: tunnel of opinion, an abyss of thoughts, and a lot
Speaker 3: of people say Kendrick Lamar and then I found a
Speaker 3: list on MSN of the top twenty rappers of all times.
Speaker 3: I was like, I wonder what they say, just so
Speaker 3: you know how much I love you all. It was
Speaker 3: a click through article twenty slides to get to number
Speaker 3: one with ads in between, but I still clicked all
Speaker 3: the way through and it named NAS's number three, Biggie
Speaker 3: Small's runner up and at the top. Tupac now Rickim
Speaker 3: and jay Z were also in the top five, but
Speaker 3: according to MTV's Top MC's in the Game, Nicki Minaj
Speaker 3: by the way, only female rapper to ever appear on it.
Speaker 3: Kanye and Drake frequently hover in first and second place
Speaker 3: on that list, although some people, especially pusha Tea right Now,
Speaker 3: may dispute Drake's ranking. Also one more thing. If you
Speaker 3: love beautiful pastries and frosting calligraphy of hip hop lyrics,
Speaker 3: I highly suggest following the Instagram account Drake on a
Speaker 3: Cake by the Wonderful joy the Baker. I love it
Speaker 3: so much. But any who's als best rapper? Big debate
Speaker 3: not something you would expect your professor to profess straight
Speaker 3: out of the gate before laying down the syllabus is
Speaker 3: the point here when you really started to go down
Speaker 3: the line and get your PhD in this, by the way, congratulation,
Speaker 3: thank you, Like how did you choose what your dissertation
Speaker 3: subject was?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 3: Essentially steer your boat.
Speaker 4: I think I have an unusual story because I remember
Speaker 4: the moment when I figured out my dissertation topic, and
Speaker 4: it was when I was in college. I wasn't even
Speaker 4: I think I had just decided on my linguistics major,
Speaker 4: and I was. I grew up in Ohio, I was
Speaker 4: undergrad at Ohio State, and I had been in Peru
Speaker 4: studying abroad. I was initially kind of interested in the
Speaker 4: language rights of indigenous people in India and South America,
Speaker 4: and I do some research on that too, like Peru
Speaker 4: and Bolivia. So i'd come back. But I started to
Speaker 4: have all these thoughts about like language rights in the
Speaker 4: United States, right, like who gets discriminated against right, and
Speaker 4: particularly like being black, thinking about the ways in which
Speaker 4: that kind of contributes to racism. So I came back
Speaker 4: and I wanted to This was two thousand and eight,
Speaker 4: and I wanted to volunteer in the Obama campaign. So
Speaker 4: I walked into the Obama field office and they told
Speaker 4: me to like sit down, and some guy was going
Speaker 4: to come talk to me. So I'm watching this guy
Speaker 4: who reads to me is by Rachel, which he was
Speaker 4: right like me too, and he's on the phone, presumably
Speaker 4: with some you know, wealthy donor, presumably like a white guy.
Speaker 4: He's like, excuse me, sorry, like we really need you.
Speaker 4: Obama really could use your support, and the senator is
Speaker 4: counting on folks like you to contribute rate this very
Speaker 4: formal kind of register, and I guess the guy gave
Speaker 4: him money so he hung up. Five seconds later, like
Speaker 4: a young black guy teenager comes in and he's like
Speaker 4: what up, dog Like, yeah, yeah, Obama, you know, he
Speaker 4: could really use your support. We're looking for volunteers to
Speaker 4: go knock out some doors. And I was like whoa, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 4: whoa whoa. And I said, somebody has to know about this,
Speaker 4: like there has I need to read about it, like
Speaker 4: because it just was so clear to me.
Speaker 3: Right, what a moment. And also in terms of the
Speaker 3: Obama campaign, I think a lot of people observe that
Speaker 3: Obama is really deaf with that as well. Right, does
Speaker 3: that click for you as well?
Speaker 4: Yeah? And I have maybe not exactly at that point.
Speaker 4: But I have a few papers about Obama because Obama
Speaker 4: is also one of my research interests.
Speaker 3: So I'm just casually in a hotel room perusing doctor
Speaker 3: Nicole Holidays one hundred and eighty five page PhD dissertation
Speaker 3: I found online. I was super tickled to see the
Speaker 3: forty fourth president mentioned right in the opening paragraph. She
Speaker 3: notes up top that Barack Obama is a masterful code
Speaker 3: switcher between mainstream US English and African American language. Aar.
Speaker 3: So some of doctor Holiday's other papers who they're great
Speaker 3: influence of super segmental features on perceived ethnicity of American politicians.
Speaker 3: Super a sigmental features, by the way, are things like loudness, pitch,
Speaker 3: length of vowels, et cetera. So she also wrote a
Speaker 3: paper examining Barack and Michelle Obama's rates of CSD and CSD.
Speaker 3: Of course I look that up. No, I did not
Speaker 3: know what it meant at first. It stands for coronal
Speaker 3: stop deletion or leaving off the hard D or T
Speaker 3: at the end of words like didn't or hard. Now,
Speaker 3: if I were to attempt to give a rundown of
Speaker 3: phonological features of African American language, which Some scholars on
Speaker 3: the subject have also called African American Vernacular English. This
Speaker 3: episode would stretch like into next week. So Nicole's work
Speaker 3: involves changing the perceptions and fostering appreciation for a dialect
Speaker 3: of American English that has a super complex and very
Speaker 3: specific set of grammatical rules as well as a bunch
Speaker 3: of social and socio linguistic functions. There are so many
Speaker 3: nuances to it that the seminal reference book on the
Speaker 3: matter is called the Oxford Handbook of African American Language,
Speaker 3: was published in twenty fifteen. It weighs in at a
Speaker 3: hefty nine hundred and forty four pages. So the study
Speaker 3: of the dialect isn't just about coronal stop deletion or
Speaker 3: dropping a G at the end of a word. She
Speaker 3: does a lot of research on code switching, and this
Speaker 3: is a term that originated almost seventy years ago from
Speaker 3: a study of Norwegian villages, and it means to switch
Speaker 3: into different conversational tones depending on who you're speaking to
Speaker 3: or to whom you're speaking, and it applies to so
Speaker 3: many different cultures and languages. I hadn't heard of the
Speaker 3: term until recently when my bilingual Latina friend Dalen told
Speaker 3: me about it, and she was like, yeah, dude, of
Speaker 3: course this happens all the time. And while I'm in Detroit,
Speaker 3: I met up with some Ologies listeners and I told
Speaker 3: him I was working on this episode. And one listener,
Speaker 3: Paul was raised in England but came to America during
Speaker 3: grade school, and he says he switches back and forth
Speaker 3: between a British accent when he talks to his parents
Speaker 3: versus his American friends just boo Bob boop, and another ologite,
Speaker 3: Ron grew up in Detroit and said, of course switches
Speaker 3: tones if he's talking to his friends he grew up with,
Speaker 3: or people in business settings. So it happens all the time,
Speaker 3: but the pressure within ethnically diverse communities is particularly heavy.
Speaker 3: So either you've never considered this before or you're like
Speaker 3: duh dur, Yeah, this is daily life for me.
Speaker 4: I am, you know, sort of very interested in this
Speaker 4: idea of what it means to sound black, sort of
Speaker 4: from the perspective of something that you can perform as
Speaker 4: part of your identity, but also when people make that
Speaker 4: judgment like what are they hearing? And so a lot
Speaker 4: of the work that I do, sort of the quantitative
Speaker 4: work that I do looks at what people are attuned
Speaker 4: to when they're making those kind of social judgments about.
Speaker 3: Race, and what did you what conclusions did you come to?
Speaker 3: If someone asks you in a nutshell explain your work,
Speaker 3: explain your findings, where do you start?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I study intonation. So it's not exactly an ology.
Speaker 3: Sorry, international phonology.
Speaker 4: Total phonology is anology. We'll use that one. And so
Speaker 4: a lot of times when I talk to just people
Speaker 4: that don't know as much about linguistics, when I ask
Speaker 4: them like, oh, what do you think makes somebody your
Speaker 4: ability to judge somebody black? If they if you can't
Speaker 4: see them, like, why would you make that judgment? And
Speaker 4: they usually say they think about the grammar, and you know,
Speaker 4: there's a stereotype like they'll say that it's bad grammar
Speaker 4: or like bad English or something. Even black people will
Speaker 4: say that. Really, yeah, there's the racism runs deep and
Speaker 4: it's really entwined with language in complex ways. But so
Speaker 4: they'll say that, and I said, yeah, but you know
Speaker 4: what about somebody like Obama? What about somebody like even l. Sharpton, right,
Speaker 4: Like they're not they're people that are known as using
Speaker 4: actually a very standard kind of grammar, but still like
Speaker 4: unrecogniz like unmistakably black. Right, if you hear L. Sharpton's voice,
Speaker 4: you've never seen him in your life, you know, you're like,
Speaker 4: that is a black eye, So it must be something else.
Speaker 4: But when I started to look into the literature about this,
Speaker 4: we don't actually know much about the voice. What it
Speaker 4: is about the voice and the tone and the way
Speaker 4: that the pitch of the voice goes up and down,
Speaker 4: this kind of movement that causes this kind of judgment.
Speaker 4: So that is primarily what my research focus is on.
Speaker 3: Really, So is it so there? I imagine there's two
Speaker 3: different ways of looking at it. It's the actual physiology
Speaker 3: of why people's voices sound a certain way, the actual
Speaker 3: voice box, and then it's also how much it's used, right,
Speaker 3: So how do you separate that when you are studying?
Speaker 4: So the social things are kind of more what we're
Speaker 4: interested in, right, So there's always going to be individual
Speaker 4: level variation, and our minds are really good at that.
Speaker 4: Like when we hear a child and an adult say
Speaker 4: the same thing, we can process the same information even
Speaker 4: though they're vastly different sizes. Right, their vocal track is
Speaker 4: actually similar shape, But the scale is really different. So
Speaker 4: what I'm interested in is the ways in which these
Speaker 4: patterns are socialized. So one thing, for example, like if
Speaker 4: we look at pitch, just the numbers don't matter, but
Speaker 4: like the average man in the United States has a
Speaker 4: pitch that's like around between one hundred and one hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty hertz, and the average woman has one that's
Speaker 4: between like two hundred and two one hundred and fifty herds.
Speaker 4: But only half of that variation can be explained by physiology. Really,
Speaker 4: and what's really shocking is like, if you look at
Speaker 4: kids like four year olds, right, four year old boys
Speaker 4: and four year old girls, their vocal tract is physiologically
Speaker 4: the same right before puberty. They have the same sort
Speaker 4: of voice, and they're the same size too, Right, the
Speaker 4: girls have already learned been socialized into raising their voice
Speaker 4: and the boys have already been socialized into lowering it.
Speaker 4: Even though there's no physiological differences, you can tell the
Speaker 4: difference between a four year old boy and a four
Speaker 4: year old girl because they've already been socialized into it.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. So intonations are picked up socially. Of course.
Speaker 3: The very purpose of language is to communicate within a
Speaker 3: social system, and evidently younger folks and women tend to
Speaker 3: be the drivers of linguistic trends. So like uptalk started
Speaker 3: in California, but it's now spread geographically and to men,
Speaker 3: although they don't like to admit it. And the purpose
Speaker 3: it may serve conversation is to convey empathy, just to
Speaker 3: make sure you're being understood. So, as Nicole said in
Speaker 3: a previous interview, I found you said, you can go
Speaker 3: anywhere in the world and ask who speaks the quote
Speaker 3: bad version of the language, and invariably it's the people
Speaker 3: who are marginalized, who are rural poor, or belong to
Speaker 3: religious minorities. And now maybe more marginalized groups use nuanced
Speaker 3: language to bond and communicate for social survival, and then
Speaker 3: later it spreads to less marginalized parts of the population
Speaker 3: of just theorizing. Now, if you're like me, you may
Speaker 3: be thinking, wait, whoah, what is the big diff between
Speaker 3: a dialect and an accent? Well, I looked it up,
Speaker 3: as I do, and a dialect has its own unique vocabulary, words,
Speaker 3: and grammatical rules as well as pronunciations, But an accent
Speaker 3: is just the variation in pronunciation. Now, if you're also
Speaker 3: like me, you just ate a huge bag of halapeno
Speaker 3: cheese potato chips for dinner and hotel room. No, okay,
Speaker 3: that's fine too.
Speaker 1: Whatever.
Speaker 3: Now is that a little bit where creaky voice is
Speaker 3: coming from. I understand that, like the modern like kind
Speaker 3: of Kardashian like creaky voice and vocal fry is a
Speaker 3: way of getting our voices lower.
Speaker 4: You did a really good vocal fry. Yeah, So what
Speaker 4: happens when we have creaky voice or vocal fry is
Speaker 4: our vocal folds. We don't call it. They're not actually chords. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they're folds. So they kind of vibrate together, and they
Speaker 4: vibrate together periodically, sort of like a wave. Right, But
Speaker 4: when we do creaky voice, they vibrate a periodically, and
Speaker 4: so what happens is the pitch actually drops out, so
Speaker 4: we get to the bottom of our range when we
Speaker 4: do that. And lots of languages, some languages use creaky
Speaker 4: voice to do actual like grammatical encoding information, but in
Speaker 4: English it's a stylistic variable. And so recently it has
Speaker 4: been sort of associated with young women, like modern young women.
Speaker 4: But people have had creaky voice on and off, and
Speaker 4: actually men do it most of the studies show that
Speaker 4: men do it as much as women. It's just stereotyped
Speaker 4: as being associated with women, and so when women are
Speaker 4: really creaky, they get this sort of social association that
Speaker 4: it's a particular style.
Speaker 3: So we get kind of a bad rap for it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, true, and we should it anyway. It's just like
Speaker 4: a way of moving your vocal folds.
Speaker 5: Like.
Speaker 4: It doesn't mean that you're more or less intelligent, all right.
Speaker 3: Quick aside to address what might be driving the increased
Speaker 3: prevalence for vocal fry the last few decades, So it
Speaker 3: may be a way for women to lower the register
Speaker 3: of their voice, as lower voices are perceived to be
Speaker 3: more authoritative. So, given that women weren't allowed to wear
Speaker 3: pants on the Senate floor into like the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 3: we're just we're doing what we can. We're pulling out
Speaker 3: all the stops. It's like, what do we need to
Speaker 3: do for you to treat people equally?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 3: A study by Caitlin Lee at the University of Kentucky
Speaker 3: found that participants also rated male and female speakers totally differently.
Speaker 3: So I'm just gonna casually repeat Nicole's statement quote you
Speaker 3: can go anywhere in the world and ask who speaks
Speaker 3: the bad version of the language, and invariably it's the
Speaker 3: people who are marginalized, who are rural poor, or belong
Speaker 3: to religious minorities. I mean, until of course it's spreads
Speaker 3: and then it's fine. Do you think that the way
Speaker 3: people have changed as it goes through trends like that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. So there's it's very complicated. But basically
Speaker 4: we language is like social contagion, So we always talk
Speaker 4: like the people that we talk to. You might have
Speaker 4: noticed this, like people will say this to me, like, oh,
Speaker 4: I went to the South, and like, now I sound
Speaker 4: like the people in this When I'm in the South,
Speaker 4: I sound like the people in this South. Yes, yes, right,
Speaker 4: because we do. Actually, this is a thing called speech
Speaker 4: accommodation theory. We do actually accommodate to the people around us.
Speaker 4: We converge towards them if we like them. If we
Speaker 4: don't like them, we diverge away from them.
Speaker 1: No way.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, So like it's contagious, right, So as you
Speaker 4: see communities in kind with each other that maybe weren't before,
Speaker 4: like they're going to start to converge and diverge based
Speaker 4: on the way that people those communities interact with each other.
Speaker 4: So one example of this is thinking about like the
Speaker 4: California like the creaky voice thing that you're saying, people
Speaker 4: will talk about, like the Valley Girl thing as aspirational,
Speaker 4: particularly in the eighties, like God Linked totally.
Speaker 3: Ps. I just went into the wayback machine and I
Speaker 3: listened to portions of this song, which is supposed to
Speaker 3: be comedic, but it's incredibly viciously homophobic, and it made
Speaker 3: me very, very sad. And it also made me reflect
Speaker 3: on how important social progress and empathy and tolerance are
Speaker 3: and that it's a battle worth fighting to have a
Speaker 3: more loving society.
Speaker 4: Anyway, So you had these girls in the Midwest that
Speaker 4: were like trying to approximate a California identity because they
Speaker 4: like it. So they started to sound like California because
Speaker 4: they were It was a style that was now available
Speaker 4: to them, right, because they could see it, they could
Speaker 4: hear it. People were traveling more, they were interacting more,
Speaker 4: and so they started to change the style.
Speaker 3: I imagine that must be true too, for like transcontinental,
Speaker 3: like the old movie voice, like that was an aspirational
Speaker 3: kind of dialect as well, Right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: It was. I mean, it's really funny because no one
Speaker 4: ever really talked that way, right, It was nobody's like
Speaker 4: first dialect. But it is definitely like a style. It's
Speaker 4: funny when they were talking about Kevin Spacey's character on
Speaker 4: House of Cards, he has this kind of like weird,
Speaker 4: aspirational Old South thing that nobody really sounds like, but
Speaker 4: it's an idea of what somebody like that is supposed
Speaker 4: to sound like.
Speaker 6: And so when you're looking at this, because I know
Speaker 6: that you've obviously studied a lot of people doing this,
Speaker 6: do you find that there might be kind of aspirational
Speaker 6: tones depending on who they were talking to.
Speaker 3: I started telling Nicole a story I had heard the
Speaker 3: day before from Michael Yo, a comedian who's biracial. He's
Speaker 3: Korean and African American, and he was about to interview
Speaker 3: a very famous rapper on the radio, and apparently the
Speaker 3: musician right before he was like, Hey, nice to meet you, dada,
Speaker 3: and then as soon as he got on the air
Speaker 3: for a radio station, a completely different voice. Is that
Speaker 3: aspirational as well? Depending on kind of who you want
Speaker 3: to connect.
Speaker 4: With, Yeah, so we all have you know, everybody has styles, right,
Speaker 4: So you're not going to talk to your doctor and
Speaker 4: your priest and your mom and your best friend the
Speaker 4: same way, right.
Speaker 3: Right, Hey mom, Hey Dad? Sorry I say that F
Speaker 3: word on this podcast sometimes. I know it's uncomfortable for you.
Speaker 4: But for some people that have to negotiate moving in
Speaker 4: between this like mainstream and not mainstream, or like these
Speaker 4: different racialized groups, communities, whatever, the difference can be sort
Speaker 4: of more contrastive. So I'm presently working on a project
Speaker 4: with Laurence Squire's who's she teaches English at Ohio State,
Speaker 4: and we've been interviewing black students there about their experiences
Speaker 4: on campus with linguistic discrimination and linguistic insecurity there. So
Speaker 4: like maybe they don't feel comfortable speaking up in class, right,
Speaker 4: This was where we started, and the students will sort
Speaker 4: of overwhelmingly talk about like the way that they talk
Speaker 4: in class, which is this kind of way that they
Speaker 4: deem acceptable to white people, and the way that they
Speaker 4: actually talk, or the way they talk with their friends
Speaker 4: or they talk at home. So in this way, this
Speaker 4: kind of commanding of different styles is a social survival
Speaker 4: strategy for people that have to move between worlds that
Speaker 4: they see as very different and sometimes incompatible.
Speaker 3: It's interesting how many layers of adaptability you have to
Speaker 3: have in your speech every day. Like I was on
Speaker 3: the phone with someone at a bank today and my
Speaker 3: friend was in the room, and I was so self
Speaker 3: conscious because the way I was speaking to this banker
Speaker 3: was like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, fantastic, I'll go ahead and compile the profit and
Speaker 5: law statement for my s corp. And then I'll circle
Speaker 5: back and ping you with the figures for the underwriting team.
Speaker 3: Oh so, speaking in the font of mortgage lender conference
Speaker 3: call and walking on linguistic eggshells just to be in
Speaker 3: this like constant high stakes shape shifting mode is so unpleasant.
Speaker 3: I got off the phone. I was like, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: I'm a lizard person. That was weird, And I was like,
Speaker 3: who am I? But if you find in like in
Speaker 3: biracial and black communities, how it must be difficult. I
Speaker 3: imagine because it's part of your identity. There must be
Speaker 3: a huge struggle between wanting to hang on to that
Speaker 3: identity in community but also having to adapt socially. How
Speaker 3: do you propose navigating that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really hard. So one of the things that
Speaker 4: I teach a lot is about African American English and
Speaker 4: linguistic discrimination. So you know, black children are much more
Speaker 4: likely to be labeled as learning disabled in reading. And
Speaker 4: one of the reasons for that that is not that
Speaker 4: they're learning disabled, but the materials are not designed for them.
Speaker 4: They're designed for middle class white kids who speak standard
Speaker 4: some kind of approximation of a standard English. So it's
Speaker 4: not that black children can't read, it's that when they
Speaker 4: are evaluated by white teachers in a system designed for
Speaker 4: middle class white kids, of course they're not going to
Speaker 4: perform as well. It's not made for them. Yeah, So
Speaker 4: a lot of the movements from teachers sort of especially
Speaker 4: back in the day, where okay, well we need to
Speaker 4: transition them away from this, we need to teach them
Speaker 4: standard English. And it's still a controversy because everybody knows, like,
Speaker 4: if you want to get more economic success, like you
Speaker 4: do need to command standard English. But you're asking a
Speaker 4: lot of those kids, right, So the white kids get
Speaker 4: to speak the same way at home and at school,
Speaker 4: and now all the black kids have to command two varieties,
Speaker 4: one for home and one for school. And by the way,
Speaker 4: the one that they speak at home is constantly devalued
Speaker 4: every other place in their life, you know. So I
Speaker 4: have students ask me that. Sometimes they're like, well, if
Speaker 4: African American English is so stigmatized, why does the community
Speaker 4: hold on to it, Like, why hasn't the language just died?
Speaker 4: And I'm like, because it means something, right, because it
Speaker 4: establishes solidarity, because it establishes in group, because it tells
Speaker 4: a historical narrative of the history of black people in
Speaker 4: the United States. Like, it's not something that people really
Speaker 4: want to get rid of, as much as they know
Speaker 4: that it's stigmatized.
Speaker 3: Do you find historically that it has roots or it
Speaker 3: has connections from a tonal level closer to Southern American English.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so African American English started in the South, So
Speaker 4: there's actually a lot of similarities between Southern white and
Speaker 4: Southern Black varieties. It is harder for listeners. People have
Speaker 4: done studies on this. It's harder for listeners to tell
Speaker 4: the difference between real black people and real white people
Speaker 4: in the South. Really, yeah, so, and it's because they're
Speaker 4: kind of more similar, but also because people have these
Speaker 4: stereotyped expectations going in like the if you sound roy,
Speaker 4: well that's white. Yeah, right, even though there's lots of
Speaker 4: real black people.
Speaker 3: Right, you picture a farmer and overalls, who's like an old,
Speaker 3: an old white guy with a straw hat or something.
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly like the ideas that people have going in
Speaker 4: and so yeah, like all of the black people in
Speaker 4: the United States were originally brought to this out because
Speaker 4: we were enslaved, right.
Speaker 3: So side note, if you're like, I could become better
Speaker 3: educated on the history of American slavery, which I'll wager
Speaker 3: many Americans fit this category. There are so many good
Speaker 3: books and resources. There's one HBO documentary, Readings from the
Speaker 3: Slave Narratives, which features transcripts of first person accounts and
Speaker 3: they're read by actors like Samuel Jackson and Angela Bassett
Speaker 3: and Don Cheadle and Oprah Winfrey. It's on YouTube, just
Speaker 3: there for you, waiting to be watched.
Speaker 4: We only really got out of the South in big
Speaker 4: numbers in the last hundred years, right, with great migration,
Speaker 4: and even then only got out of sort of very
Speaker 4: dramatic segregated ethnic enclaves even more recently than that. And
Speaker 4: you could argue that we're not even out of them,
Speaker 4: right because like, look at what neighborhoods look like, not diverse,
Speaker 4: and so for that reason, it actually has the effect
Speaker 4: of keeping the language more insulated, right, because you talk
Speaker 4: like the people you talk to. Well, if you live
Speaker 4: in a segregated community, you're gonna sound like the people
Speaker 4: in your community, right, right, exactly. So it's it's kind
Speaker 4: of an interesting like you can look at the language
Speaker 4: evolution as like the rings of a tree.
Speaker 3: See the dendrology episode on trees.
Speaker 4: That tell the like you cut the tree open and
Speaker 4: you can see like every layer of the history. Like
Speaker 4: you can see that in the language too.
Speaker 3: Wow, I'm so curious what you think of how, especially
Speaker 3: with social media, how social media has changed, uh maybe
Speaker 3: spread or appropriated African American English, because I feel like
Speaker 3: with there's I hear that there's Black Twitter is a
Speaker 3: different thing. If you have not heard of black Twitter,
Speaker 3: by the way, it has its own Wikipedia page, and
Speaker 3: to paraphrase that, it's a cultural identity focused on issues
Speaker 3: and experience of interest to the African American community. So
Speaker 3: issues of social justice are brought to light and amplified
Speaker 3: with these powerful hashtags like hashtag if they gunned me down,
Speaker 3: black Lives Matter, Oscar's so white, you may remember, And
Speaker 3: the community also generates some really great jokes and memes,
Speaker 3: and I feel like I see white people maybe tried
Speaker 3: to borrow this style and it's and I feel like
Speaker 3: it's it's almost appropriated by comedians or for comedic casual effect.
Speaker 3: And how do you feel about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really interesting. So there is this thing that's
Speaker 4: like online imagined Black English. So there is a way
Speaker 4: that black people, like on Black Twitter, for example, communicate.
Speaker 4: There are norms of the community, like just with any community,
Speaker 4: but also there is a way in which like that
Speaker 4: is appropriated by the white gaze, right, so like what
Speaker 4: people think people think is going on. And it's really
Speaker 4: funny because whenever someone makes the argument like oh, African
Speaker 4: American English is just poor grammar, I try to explain
Speaker 4: to them that they don't understand the grammar. Those people
Speaker 4: if you ask them like okay, well what does it
Speaker 4: sound like, like make a sentence for me, they will
Speaker 4: always be wrong because they don't understand the ramadical rules.
Speaker 4: And so, like you know, people that are on black Twitter,
Speaker 4: like in the community or whatever, can tell when when
Speaker 4: it's a parody, because people will break rules that they
Speaker 4: don't know about.
Speaker 3: Oh tell me everything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So like it's even hard for me to do.
Speaker 4: But there's there's a thing in African American English. It's
Speaker 4: optional called zero copula. So if you think about like
Speaker 4: Kanye whatever like that, that ish kra, right, you don't
Speaker 4: need an is there, and that's fine, But you can't
Speaker 4: just do that with every subject. Like you can do
Speaker 4: it with a third singular like that, but you can't
Speaker 4: really do it with a first person. So you can't
Speaker 4: say like ikray. When you get white people like mocking this,
Speaker 4: they'll say things like ikra and you're like, no, no one,
Speaker 4: no speaker of African American English would ever say that.
Speaker 3: I was curious about people imitating African American language grammar,
Speaker 3: and sure enough I found a tweet posted seven hours
Speaker 3: ago about someone homesteading chickens with the words I cray. Now,
Speaker 3: the user, according to her bio, is a blonde, holistic
Speaker 3: doula from Michigan who gardens. So yeah, Nicole kind of
Speaker 3: nailed it. I'll see it appropriated and I'll cringe a bit.
Speaker 3: I guess, what are the differences between written and spoken
Speaker 3: African American English?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's hard, right, So actually white people have been
Speaker 4: appropriating African American English since forever. Right, So, like the
Speaker 4: word cool comes from African American English, like over one
Speaker 4: hundred years ago, right.
Speaker 3: So I started reading up on this topic and I
Speaker 3: came across an Oxford Dictionaries blog titled quote when is
Speaker 3: lexical Innovation Cultural Appropriation? It was a fascinating read and
Speaker 3: it was addressing the use of words like shade and
Speaker 3: yes and woke. And I scrolled down to see, like
Speaker 3: who wrote this amazing piece, and the guest blogger was
Speaker 3: doctor Nicole Holiday. Of course she is the coolest.
Speaker 4: I mean, we're cooler. So they take things from mess
Speaker 4: is fine, I mean in a certain way, right, but
Speaker 4: I mean it's also a lot of pressure to always
Speaker 4: be cool by so you know, this is a well established,
Speaker 4: like long term trend. It's interesting with the Internet because
Speaker 4: you can't see people or hear them in the same way,
Speaker 4: so you can't you don't actually know if the speaker
Speaker 4: is black. Sometimes, especially on Twitter, right, you read a
Speaker 4: tweet and you're like, who is that from? And you
Speaker 4: have to do like a deep investigation into like are
Speaker 4: they black? I don't know because is it appropriate for
Speaker 4: them to like I have this problem on Twitter? R. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So that's one way in which social media is like
Speaker 4: really throwing people for a because you can't you can't
Speaker 4: contextualize people online the way that you can in real life,
Speaker 4: or at least make educated guesses about them the way
Speaker 4: that you can when you see them in person. But
Speaker 4: I also think, like, yeah, there is some kind of
Speaker 4: cool cachet, like teenagers are cool, right, But teenagers are
Speaker 4: also in a certain way, like more free to violate
Speaker 4: like mainstream language norms because we expect it from them,
Speaker 4: because they don't have to use their language as a
Speaker 4: commodity to make money in the same way, so they
Speaker 4: have to use in school for that kind of economic advancement,
Speaker 4: but they're a little bit more free to actually sound
Speaker 4: how they sound. Adults, right, who are once in a
Speaker 4: working world, particularly black folks who have to work in
Speaker 4: majority white communities all day, right and then raise kids
Speaker 4: who they want to have like a kind of standard style,
Speaker 4: are always under this pressure to sound respectable. But teenagers
Speaker 4: don't have that, And all of this stuff on the
Speaker 4: internet is jaw is driven by young people, right, So
Speaker 4: there is this kind of freshness, this coolness that gets adapted.
Speaker 4: But I do think that you know, just like with
Speaker 4: every other kind of appropriation, people in the community get frustrated,
Speaker 4: particularly with people using things wrong. So I was talking
Speaker 4: to a reporter from NPR a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 4: I don't know she ever ended up writing this, but
Speaker 4: she was talking about thirst trap okay, and like the
Speaker 4: meaning of thirst chop okay. So originally what it meant
Speaker 4: is like a picture that you would put up to
Speaker 4: like kind of get comments like that you were sexy
Speaker 4: or seductive or whatever. Right, So that's it's a particular
Speaker 4: type of photo that you put up like for that reason.
Speaker 3: I also just see Instagram in general.
Speaker 4: You can have a whole Instagram account that's a thirst chop,
Speaker 4: I guess. But what she was saying is like somebody
Speaker 4: had written a thing about James Comy in the interview
Speaker 4: that he was giving and was like, James Comy is
Speaker 4: a thirst chap right now because he was like seeking
Speaker 4: attention for in these interviews. Ooh, it's really transformed meaning.
Speaker 4: And as a linguist, it's funny because I'm like, well,
Speaker 4: words are allowed to change meaning, like especially online, they
Speaker 4: change meaning really quickly, right, But also like that very
Speaker 4: clearly came like from African American English, like from you know,
Speaker 4: black Twitter, black communities online and now you've just ruined it.
Speaker 3: Right, I think is do you think urban dictionary ruins
Speaker 3: all of the good, like all of the good kind
Speaker 3: of like insular terminology.
Speaker 4: I mean, by the time it gets to urban dictionary,
Speaker 4: people aren't using it though, Like that's the thing. So
Speaker 4: we're thinking about this as sort of as adults, like
Speaker 4: if you have to look it up an urban dictionary,
Speaker 4: like it's already over.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah right yeah. If you're ever on urban Dictionary,
Speaker 3: which I have been, it's like, you, there's nothing more
Speaker 3: embarrassing thing like than taking your your for me, like
Speaker 3: my old white ass to urban dictionary, be like what
Speaker 3: does this mean?
Speaker 2: Bye?
Speaker 3: The bye? I looked up Urban Dictionary's history and it
Speaker 3: was created by some white guys and they don't moderate
Speaker 3: super racist and sexist stuff on there, so that's awful
Speaker 3: and fuck them very much. I feel like when you
Speaker 3: get older, you look to cues from the younger people
Speaker 3: to be like what is everyone talking about?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's like it's hard for me because like,
Speaker 4: first of all, I'm a linguistics professor, but I'm also
Speaker 4: pretty young and black, so I'm like I'm cool, like
Speaker 4: I should know, right, And the students here say stuff
Speaker 4: to me that I'm like, oh my god, I have
Speaker 4: no idea, Like, like I have to look it up
Speaker 4: in urban dictionary and like, yeah, thirty years old in
Speaker 4: the world of slang is ancient. Yeah, like I haven't
Speaker 4: been qualified to speak on it in like seven or
Speaker 4: eight years. Probably, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: And how has it changed since you started studying linguistics,
Speaker 3: because you you at thirty, which is super young to
Speaker 3: have a PhD and be a professor, but you've been
Speaker 3: studying it for a number of years. Have you seen
Speaker 3: terminology change even in how we talk about it? I
Speaker 3: feel like ebonics was a word people used for a while,
Speaker 3: and I feel like that is not an okay word
Speaker 3: these days.
Speaker 4: People will still use it, but it does seem like
Speaker 4: antiquated to me.
Speaker 3: How how is the conversation changing and how shouldn't we
Speaker 3: talk about it? Or how or what or what things
Speaker 3: are already ancient? And yeah, nursing.
Speaker 4: Ebonics actually was a word invented and like sixties seventies,
Speaker 4: and it's actually a cool word. It's ebony plus phonics,
Speaker 4: but linguists don't use it. We stopped using it like
Speaker 4: in the nineties because it had such a bad connotation.
Speaker 4: So now we say all African American English, right, which
Speaker 4: is not as much fun to say as a bonyx.
Speaker 4: It does give it sort of a more like right,
Speaker 4: we have a scientific term. I think this idea of
Speaker 4: code switching is much more wide. People know about it
Speaker 4: more than they did even you know, when I started studying,
Speaker 4: like ten years ago, maybe when I was in college,
Speaker 4: when I started studying linguistics, people that I talked to
Speaker 4: out in the world that are not linguists, we'll talk
Speaker 4: about code switching in a way that's like very informed,
Speaker 4: and I don't think that people had a kind of
Speaker 4: meta awareness of it before. So that is good, right,
Speaker 4: people having this awareness that they command different styles and
Speaker 4: that they have to do the work of it right,
Speaker 4: and also just being able to talk about kind of
Speaker 4: what I was explaining to you, like, we're asking so
Speaker 4: much of these kids to command two styles. We asked
Speaker 4: that of some kids but not others, right. I think
Speaker 4: definitely in the realm of education, teacher training, I've had
Speaker 4: met so many teachers that now have had some linguistic training,
Speaker 4: like in their master's degree or something like that, which
Speaker 4: obviously makes it more equitable for their Black students in
Speaker 4: the classroom and I mean other students too, But that's
Speaker 4: definitely a positive thing. The Internet is really interesting because
Speaker 4: you do get all of this like moral panic about
Speaker 4: like the kids are ruining English. But they were saying
Speaker 4: that in the sixteen hundreds. People have been saying the
Speaker 4: kids are ruining English since the you know, invention of English.
Speaker 4: So no, like there's no you know for linguists, like
Speaker 4: there is no ruining. Like language is alive and it
Speaker 4: moves and changes. It's like saying like you're ruining the galaxy,
Speaker 4: Like you're not. Like, it's just a thing that exists
Speaker 4: and we describe it right, and it's going to change,
Speaker 4: and that's a natural part of it. And it changes
Speaker 4: in response to social stimula, I know, like when it
Speaker 4: changes because of oppression, Like we have a problem with that,
Speaker 4: but it's not because of the language change, it's because
Speaker 4: of the oppression. So my sort of hope going forward
Speaker 4: is that people will learn to be like more linguistically
Speaker 4: tolerant in the way that they are allegedly learning to
Speaker 4: be more like tolerant of variation and race and gender.
Speaker 4: But those things are connected, right, does it?
Speaker 3: How should curriculum change?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, it's hard at the sort of you know,
Speaker 4: fifth grade level when we're talking about teaching kids to read.
Speaker 4: I'm not like qualified on that exactly. But I think
Speaker 4: when we teach grammar quote unquote as such, like in
Speaker 4: you know, middle school or whenever, fourth grade, whenever people
Speaker 4: have that, they should learn it as linguistics, like kids
Speaker 4: in other countries like that. When I studied abroad in Peru,
Speaker 4: like the Peruvian kids that I was studying with had
Speaker 4: learned some basic linguistic stuff when they were in elementary school.
Speaker 4: So one of the very first things that my students
Speaker 4: learn in day one is like, language has variation, Variation
Speaker 4: is conditioned by social factors. It is not a problem.
Speaker 4: Like variation is not a problem. Variation is a feature.
Speaker 3: Just to emphasize that again, variation is not a problem.
Speaker 3: Variation is a feature. And language, of course is elastic.
Speaker 4: But we teach kids school right now like this is
Speaker 4: proper English. Everything else is bad. And by the way,
Speaker 4: not only is everything else bad, it's a sign of
Speaker 4: like a moral failing if somebody uses ain't like heaven
Speaker 4: forbid right right, But then we're so hypocritical because then
Speaker 4: we go on Twitter and we say ain't for stylistic
Speaker 4: reasons and whatever. So I think we could be less dogmatic.
Speaker 4: But I also think we could teach kids the science
Speaker 4: of how language works, as opposed to just a set
Speaker 4: of rules that scare them into conforming linguistically.
Speaker 3: And if you had to break down the difference between
Speaker 3: grammar and linguistics in a nutshell for someone who is
Speaker 3: not not schooled in it, what is the difference?
Speaker 4: So we talk about linguistics as descriptive rather than prescriptive.
Speaker 4: So sometimes like I'll go to a party or something
Speaker 4: and I'll tell people that I'm a linguist and they're like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, I have to watch my grammar around you.
Speaker 4: I'm like, actually, I am the person that you least
Speaker 4: need to watch your grammar around, because I'm not here
Speaker 4: to judge, like I understand rage. I ain'm you know,
Speaker 4: I've been socialized here just like everybody else. But I
Speaker 4: aim to be like more understanding of the variation that
Speaker 4: I encounter, rather than jumping to the conclusion like oh,
Speaker 4: somebody said, ain't like they must not be educated, right,
Speaker 4: That's the prescriptive thing, and that's the thing that we
Speaker 4: teach people, like, you know, you must follow this set
Speaker 4: of rules. Don't end a sentence with a preposition, which
Speaker 4: is like everyone does anyway, like.
Speaker 3: No one does.
Speaker 4: We all do, and it's weird when you don't. Sometimes
Speaker 4: I know that is a thing up with which I
Speaker 4: will not put.
Speaker 3: Like, no, that is not it. We're gonna look back
Speaker 3: and be like people spell like that, like no one
Speaker 3: I think we look back on on on ancient texts
Speaker 3: or and we look at it, we're like, this is
Speaker 3: so awkward. And so I mean, yeah, a language is elastic,
Speaker 3: so it's going to change, and it changes as we
Speaker 3: use it.
Speaker 4: But like why can't that be okay? Like why do
Speaker 4: we have these crusades about like no, we have to
Speaker 4: preserve this, you know, like we're still spelling through th
Speaker 4: r o ug h. There was no reason for that.
Speaker 3: No reason for it. It's true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, don't even get me started. So linguists are really
Speaker 4: interested in speech, but like, don't even get me started
Speaker 4: on writing, because like the writings of some moving English
Speaker 4: is a nightmare.
Speaker 3: It's I imagine it makes it a harder language to
Speaker 3: master as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in terms of writing, right, so actually people think,
Speaker 4: oh English is so hard to learn. It depends on
Speaker 4: the language you're coming from. So your first language determines
Speaker 4: the difficulty of the second language, the relationship between the
Speaker 4: first and second, so sort of the farther away they are,
Speaker 4: the harder it might be for you. But also the
Speaker 4: writing system is really bad, right, So French is also
Speaker 4: very hard to learn to write in, like for the
Speaker 4: same reason Spanish is so easy to learn to write
Speaker 4: in because like there's a sound and letter correspondence, so
Speaker 4: like you don't get this thing in Spanish where like, oh,
Speaker 4: could be eight hundred vowels.
Speaker 3: That's a good point. Yeah, you see an e and
Speaker 3: an I in the same word. You don't know what's
Speaker 3: going on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, And so.
Speaker 3: Are there any I always ask this of all the ologists,
Speaker 3: are there any anything in media that addresses what you
Speaker 3: do that you really like or you really think? Missus
Speaker 3: the mark I always think about that Key and Pel sketch.
Speaker 3: One of the first Key and Pel sketches I ever saw.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 4: Is it when they're on the phone past each other. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: So for everybody listening out there, Yeah, I teach with
Speaker 4: Key and Peel a lot because I'm interested in biracial
Speaker 4: people and they're just so on the market. Right, So
Speaker 4: this is uh, this is a skit in which Key
Speaker 4: is like on one side of a street and Peels
Speaker 4: on the other, and they're like walking towards each other,
Speaker 4: about to pass each other, and each of them is
Speaker 4: on the phone and they don't know each other because
Speaker 4: you're my wife and you love the theater and it's
Speaker 4: your birthday. Great, and they're talking in a very sort
Speaker 4: of standard way like yes, okay, I'm gonna go to
Speaker 4: Whole Foods later, Like each of them is talking like this,
Speaker 4: and as they get closer, they speak more African American English.
Speaker 4: So then Key's like the orchestra is already filled up,
Speaker 4: but they do have seats that are still left in
Speaker 4: the dress circle.
Speaker 5: So if you want to me to get them theater
Speaker 5: tickets right now, we'll do it, right.
Speaker 4: Stuff dog about five minutes of work.
Speaker 1: Yeah okay, yeah cool. No, they all good singers.
Speaker 6: They all go sing the song no man, I'm about
Speaker 6: I'm telling you man, I'm about to cross the.
Speaker 4: Stand And I think Peel gets to the other side
Speaker 4: and he's like, oh my god, Kristi and I almost
Speaker 4: totally just got mugged right now. So they were so
Speaker 4: standard and then they felt this need to like form
Speaker 4: African American English when they passed each other. But then
Speaker 4: he bought into like all of these white ideologies, like
Speaker 4: at the it's crazy.
Speaker 1: Imagine the place where you can escape for a day,
Speaker 1: get immerged in a world of rooms.
Speaker 2: Inspiration, and expertise, where you can lay in luxury accommodation
Speaker 2: and kids can feast from ninety five sets. Tickets are
Speaker 2: free to everyone and include all the attractions you've just
Speaker 2: imagined a day out at the Kia Pikia the Wonderful
Speaker 2: every day?
Speaker 3: Are there any questions that you cringe when you get
Speaker 3: asked in what you do?
Speaker 4: Like how many languages do you speak? Never ask a
Speaker 4: linguist how many languages do you speak?
Speaker 3: You're like you speak a few though, to be fair.
Speaker 4: I know, but it's like not important, like I could,
Speaker 4: you know? Sometimes I joke with people like zero, like
Speaker 4: English is my first language. Yeah, and I studied Spanish
Speaker 4: for a long time and I have agree in Spanish,
Speaker 4: and I studied Bolivian Quechua for a while in Arabic
Speaker 4: for a while, but I don't speak super well right.
Speaker 3: So in asking Nicole her least favorite question, I asked
Speaker 3: Nicole her least favorite question. I am the worst.
Speaker 4: I know a lot of things about a lot of languages,
Speaker 4: but we're not That's not what linguists do. Like sometimes
Speaker 4: people think we just go around collecting languages like their
Speaker 4: stamps or something. Yeah, and like we don't, Like we
Speaker 4: care a lot about the structure of the thing. And
Speaker 4: I'm associate linguist by training, and so like I care
Speaker 4: a lot about the people, right, I care about the
Speaker 4: language and as much as I need to understand it
Speaker 4: to be able to understand what's going on with the
Speaker 4: people there. So all of this stuff about inequality that
Speaker 4: I mentioned earlier, like when I went to Peru, well,
Speaker 4: I needed to know some Quechua to be able to
Speaker 4: see the ways in which this prejudice like operates. Right,
Speaker 4: I need to know something about African American English because
Speaker 4: I need to be able to see the ways in
Speaker 4: which this operates. And of course, like these are my
Speaker 4: first this is my first language, so it's fine. But
Speaker 4: like when we talk about studying other languages, we are
Speaker 4: often using them to answer our scientific questions, not to
Speaker 4: be like especially communicative. Right, So if you're hanging out
Speaker 4: with a linguist that you know has studied French. Like,
Speaker 4: that doesn't mean that they're gonna help you in Paris.
Speaker 4: They'll tell you all about like the structure of old French,
Speaker 4: but they will not be able to help you order
Speaker 4: a coffee.
Speaker 3: You're like, don't get subway directions from them?
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, don't do it.
Speaker 3: So I note if you ever go to Paris. Two things,
Speaker 3: let old uncle Ali help you out. Don't wear athletic
Speaker 3: sneakers unless you are actively participating in a triathlon. Also,
Speaker 3: just learn how to apologize in French. It's literally the
Speaker 3: most useful linguistic tool to have in your pocket. Just
Speaker 3: groveling ashamed to be American ness, and then everyone's so
Speaker 3: nice to you. They're like, oh, you're cute. You are
Speaker 3: like a sad dog. And do you find yourself from
Speaker 3: on a personal level, do you find yourself code switching?
Speaker 3: Do you do you? Are you more aware of that
Speaker 3: in your own life and in your friend's life?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I can't even like control it. It's hard to It
Speaker 4: takes a lot of cognitive load to be able to
Speaker 4: understand what you're doing at the same time as you're
Speaker 4: doing it. So when I interview people, they're like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I code switch, and I'm like, what do you change?
Speaker 4: And they're like, I don't know. And I feel the
Speaker 4: same way, Like I know the things that people change,
Speaker 4: like because I'm a scientist. But if it's like I
Speaker 4: have my voice right that I use with my grandma,
Speaker 4: or like I'm going to historically Black sorority skiw stor
Speaker 4: and when I'm there, like I have a style right,
Speaker 4: and it's different than the style that I have like
Speaker 4: with you know, my white students, or like with my
Speaker 4: white mother or you know, things like that. But to
Speaker 4: say exactly what it is, like, yes, it's in the
Speaker 4: intonation probably, but I can't even really tell you what is.
Speaker 3: And I normally I run through listener questions, but because traffic,
Speaker 3: I'm going to run through the most popular one I got.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have ten minutes.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 3: I think the most popular question I got because we
Speaker 3: had a lot of questions, But is what happens to
Speaker 3: me when my accent comes out when I'm drunk? What
Speaker 3: is going on there?
Speaker 4: I love that as a question that the most popular question. Yeah,
Speaker 4: what happens when you're drunk? A couple things. There's some
Speaker 4: lowered inhibitions that happen with alcohol, right, So say that
Speaker 4: you are a speaker of a stigmatized variety, like you
Speaker 4: are from the South and you sound Southern, and you
Speaker 4: are in California, you probably do some work in your mind,
Speaker 4: maybe not even consciously, to sound less Southern, because you
Speaker 4: get tired of people either making fun of you or
Speaker 4: just commenting on it. Even you're like, no, I'm just
Speaker 4: gonna sound like a California and so I can like
Speaker 4: order my stupid coffee and I have to like have
Speaker 4: a conversation about where I'm from. Right, people do that,
Speaker 4: But when you drink, your cognitive abilities decline so that
Speaker 4: you actually can't necessarily manage that at the same level
Speaker 4: that you would if you were sober. Like your brain
Speaker 4: is slower, right, so you can't do it as well.
Speaker 4: The other thing is your brain is slower, but also
Speaker 4: like you might just not care anymore, right whatever, I'm
Speaker 4: from the South and I'm just gonna do it, right.
Speaker 3: I am this way with chancing and carry ok. But
Speaker 3: it's not all mental.
Speaker 4: There's another thing, sort of physiologically, right, So alcohol can
Speaker 4: cause sort of a loosening of some of the pieces
Speaker 4: of your vocal check. So that's why you get slord speech. Right,
Speaker 4: you lose some control. So if your speech is kind
Speaker 4: of slurring or something like that because you're really drunk,
Speaker 4: then you'll sound different.
Speaker 3: I tried to find a good movie clip with a
Speaker 3: drunk Southerner here, but I just started going down rabbit
Speaker 3: holes of drunk people like barfing on YouTube and it
Speaker 3: started making me sad. Anyway, I wanted to ask her
Speaker 3: so many more questions, but she had a heart out
Speaker 3: and la Memorial Day traffic is the Devil's evening board game,
Speaker 3: And I'm so sorry. What do you think? My last
Speaker 3: two questions are always the thing that you hate the
Speaker 3: most about your job? What do you hate about it?
Speaker 3: Is it commute or ours or certain prejudices you face?
Speaker 3: Like what irks you the most about what you do?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really hard to be an expert on length
Speaker 4: whige because language is a thing that everybody has, right,
Speaker 4: So if I was like a geologist, I always dream
Speaker 4: of like my alternate world in which I'm a geologist
Speaker 4: and I study rocks and people leave me alone. They
Speaker 4: don't ask me how many rocks I have from how
Speaker 4: many language like speak? But people assume that you're an expert, right,
Speaker 4: They're like, oh, you know way more about rocks than me.
Speaker 4: So like when you come across rocks in the wild,
Speaker 4: they're like, hey, geologists, tell me about this rock, and
Speaker 4: you're like, cool, I will because I'm an expert. When
Speaker 4: you're a linguist, everyone wants to tell you about the
Speaker 4: thing that you're wrong about. And I'm like, I am
Speaker 4: actually an expert in this thing. And what's maddening is
Speaker 4: every native speaker is an expert about their language. Like,
Speaker 4: people know things about language that I don't know. But
Speaker 4: I do have some scientrific training that you know, I
Speaker 4: wish people would like give me credit for. So I
Speaker 4: have had people like straight fight me when I say,
Speaker 4: like African American English is rule governed. They're like, no,
Speaker 4: it's just bad grammar. I'm like, I have a PhD,
Speaker 4: my god, and so that is the thing.
Speaker 3: And you to get that PhD, that must have required
Speaker 3: so much data called and did you have to do
Speaker 3: sentence structuring? I mean, did you did you have to
Speaker 3: come out with formulas?
Speaker 4: Yeah? So I spent five years in grad school, which
Speaker 4: is not even that many comparatively. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Side note average time to get a PhD. Looked it
Speaker 3: up eight point two years. Now the average length of
Speaker 3: an American marriage eight point two years. So someone please
Speaker 3: write a dissertation on how long a person can withstand
Speaker 3: something difficult yet illuminating.
Speaker 4: And I had to study every aspect of linguistic analysis,
Speaker 4: so like I study tone and social factors, but like
Speaker 4: I had to study the way that sounds are put together,
Speaker 4: the way the words are put together, the way that
Speaker 4: sentences are put together, like meaning in a logic theory
Speaker 4: kind of context. Like I just study so many things
Speaker 4: about the nature of language that I don't necessarily use
Speaker 4: every day now except for what I'm teaching, but also
Speaker 4: just thinking really deeply about the nature of sound, which
Speaker 4: is the thing that I do, and the nature of
Speaker 4: like how how language works to do social things, like
Speaker 4: we use it to accomplish social things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 4: So even if you know it's not necessarily that, like
Speaker 4: having the PhD is the big thing. The thing is
Speaker 4: that I've spent like years and years reading and thinking
Speaker 4: and talking and writing about these things, so I feel,
Speaker 4: you know, somewhat qualified to speak on them.
Speaker 3: It's great that you're talking about talking talking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, talking about how we do is talk about talking.
Speaker 3: And then what's your favorite thing about it what just
Speaker 3: like gives you butterflies.
Speaker 4: I really like teaching students. So you know, I teach
Speaker 4: in a liberal arts college and it's undergrads, and people
Speaker 4: are like, oh, you don't want grad students, and like,
Speaker 4: crad students are a pain. Have you ever met a
Speaker 4: grad student? I was the worst grad student. I don't
Speaker 4: want people like me. I love teaching undergrads because I
Speaker 4: will walk in to like day one of intro to
Speaker 4: linguistics and be like, I am about to blow your
Speaker 4: mind just with even some of the things that have
Speaker 4: come up here about like you know, what happens in
Speaker 4: the educational system, like the ways in which language is prejudice,
Speaker 4: the ways in which people that are trying to mock
Speaker 4: African American English get it's oh wrong right, the physiology
Speaker 4: stuff that things about like kids exaggerating gender differences, like
Speaker 4: the way that the vocal tract works. Like I am
Speaker 4: big nerd, but all of this stuff is super cool
Speaker 4: to me, and it tells us a lot about the
Speaker 4: social world that we inhabit. So my favorite thing is
Speaker 4: just like watching the eyes light up and be like, no.
Speaker 7: Way, whoa You're just seeing like light bulbs go off,
Speaker 7: like illuminating, right, so exciting because that's you've had so
Speaker 7: many light bulb moments like that coming to do what
Speaker 7: you do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh my gosh. And then is there anything you
Speaker 3: think people who are more curious about this, like anywhere
Speaker 3: to see your writing or any any resources you think
Speaker 3: people should look down, anything people should do or be
Speaker 3: more aware of, because I could sit here and ask
Speaker 3: you questions for ten hours, like I'm so pissed at
Speaker 3: traffic right now because this is so fascinating. But anything
Speaker 3: anything you can point to any deser don't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I will say if you like podcasts, which
Speaker 4: you there's one that's called Enthusiasm. It's really good. It's
Speaker 4: got a lot of sort of introductory topics on linguistics.
Speaker 4: There's there's a few language podcasts. There's also one Lexicon Valley,
Speaker 4: which is hosted by John McWorter at Columbia Universities linguistics professor.
Speaker 3: So I'll put links to those on my website aliwar
Speaker 3: dot com slash ologies, as well as links to some
Speaker 3: books Nicole recommends about linguistics and discrimination.
Speaker 4: I recommend a book called English with an Accent by
Speaker 4: Rosina Lippy Green. It talks a lot about sort of
Speaker 4: language and social social issues and social justice. I teach
Speaker 4: with it in my Linguistic discrimination class. Cool, but there's
Speaker 4: a lot of good stuff out there. So those are
Speaker 4: some beginning recommendations and.
Speaker 3: Where can people find you?
Speaker 4: I'm on Twitter, regular Twitter and black Twitter, both twitters.
Speaker 4: I'm mixed linguist on social media, and I like to
Speaker 4: respond to inquiries from you know people, so get at
Speaker 4: me on the interwebs.
Speaker 3: I guess cool and well, awesome, We'll get you out
Speaker 3: of here.
Speaker 4: Thank you, welcome, It's really fun.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. So to continue learning about and exploring
Speaker 3: intonational phonology, you can look into doctor Nicole Holiday's work.
Speaker 3: She's brilliant and I want her to give like fifty
Speaker 3: ted talks. And for links to books and documentaries that
Speaker 3: we talked about, you can go to aliward dot com
Speaker 3: slash ologies. I'll put a bunch of links there. You
Speaker 3: can also join up in the Ologies podcast Facebook group.
Speaker 3: And thank you to my dear sisters Hannah Lippo and
Speaker 3: Aaron Talbert for being admins of that. Ologies is on
Speaker 3: Twitter and Instagram as Ologies, and I'm on Instagram and
Speaker 3: average white Lady Twitter as Ali Ward with one l
Speaker 3: and thank you, as always to the patrons who support
Speaker 3: the show. You allow me to pay my wonderful editor,
Speaker 3: Stephen Ray Morris to chop this all together. Hi Stephen,
Speaker 3: and thank you. If you'd like an Ology shirt or
Speaker 3: a pin or a tote bag, Ologies meerch dot com
Speaker 3: has you so covered. Thank you Shannon Feltus and Bonnie
Speaker 3: Dutch for managing that. The Ologies theme song was written
Speaker 3: and performed by Nick Thorpe of the band Islands. And
Speaker 3: if you listen to the end of the episode, have
Speaker 3: you guys been doing that? Do you know that? You know?
Speaker 3: I tell a secret at the end, and this week
Speaker 3: the secret is that my face was like, Hey, I
Speaker 3: know you have some shoots this week. What if do
Speaker 3: you want a big blemish on your face? On your chin?
Speaker 3: And I was like, that sounds great. I read somewhere
Speaker 3: that you can use hemorrhoid cream to decrease the size
Speaker 3: of under eyebags or a blemish. And I didn't research
Speaker 3: it ahead of time. I just happened to be at
Speaker 3: the drug store and I purchased some and then I
Speaker 3: put it on my face. And now I'll research whether
Speaker 3: or not that was a bad idea. But I want
Speaker 3: you to know, as I recorded all these asides in
Speaker 3: this hotel room in Michigan, I have butt cream on
Speaker 3: my face. I'll let you know how it goes. Okay,
Speaker 3: bryebye pacadermatollegebiology, cryptozoology, lithology and arology, meteorologyology, athology. You am
Speaker 3: I gonna just aw a squirrel. It doesn't have a tail.
Speaker 3: Well that was worth the Drey.
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