The Rosetta spacecraft is on a 10+ year mission to meet Comet 67 P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Onboard is a copy of the Rosetta disk — a beautiful object containing texts in and about more than 2500 languages.

The spacecraft recently flew by our planet, which gave us one “last chance to wave goodbye to the Rosetta disk.”

Hi folks!

In the past few days I’ve received a couple of emails about getting/giving help for publishing in English: one message was from an international journal, they’re drawing up a list of linguists who’d be willing to help non-native speakers of English in the final stages of preparation of their manuscripts before publication; another message was sent to me as a potential client: it came from a company that’s specialised in helping authors preparing their manuscripts, improving the clarity, the language and the format before submission to scientific journals.

This situation is sure to develop, as French linguists are realising (better late than never…) how important it is to publish in English. As I’m realising that I can’t possibly accept all the requests for proofreading of English articles that I get from colleagues (otherwise I’d simply have no time left for my own research… it could be a nice business but I’ve chosen other priorities!), I’ve been thinking about this issue. I’m posting this message under “ALCO activities” because I thought perhaps the ALCO “linguistic tank” could set up a list of interested people, from undergrads to graduates to doctors in linguistics? ALCO members and their friends/colleagues are among the best potential “text editors” I can think of, as they (we!) combine a good command of the language with a training in linguistics and — last but not least — an experience of the process of translation.

The idea is, that when one of us heard of an interesting paper that was having some trouble getting translated into English/phrased in clear English, we’d post a (private) message to the “text-editor-volunteers” list, and whoever had an interest in the paper would get in touch with the author.

There would of course be no obligation for the people who signed up on the list of volunteers to accept a paper unless they freely decided to. It would be an informal system, a way of getting people in touch, and then it would be for individual authors & editors to decide on which terms they’d collaborate. (Some labs may be able to offer some kind of financial compensation for the time and effort.) I’m sure it could be an interesting experience for the junior “text editor”, and a good opportunity of meeting new researchers in one’s branch of linguistics.

Personally when I arrived at the Phonetics/Phonology Lab in Paris, where I was a bizarre alien (I knew nothing about phonetics and phonology, had no computer skills to speak about, and consequently had only very vague notions about what I was doing there at all…) I found that being able to help others with their English papers was a wonderful introduction, and a rewarding experience for me as well, understanding what the process of research was all about, and feeling that I was making a useful contribution to it.

So if you folks have any ideas about this topic, please pass them on to me!

I think it would also be interesting to write English translations of major articles/books in linguistics/phonetics originally written in French–there’s really a lot to be done there. That could be an interesting topic for a Master’s Degree in translation, for someone interested in translation AND in linguistics? and it could lead to a publication in book form, which would not at all be bad for a graduate student to start a life as a researcher in linguistics. As an anecdote: the great linguist André-Georges Haudricourt did lots of translation from the Russian…

Cheers,

Alexis

“Ali: What is the vibe with drugs in Ireland? It might be stereotyping or whatever man
but I is heard that the Irish is always up for the crack.
Sue: No, no. Crack in Ireland means having a good time .
Ali: A’ight, for real but crack is a bad drug there is a high but also a low.”

(you can check out the video by clicking here)

When I decided to use an Ali G quote as an epigraph to my ‘Introduction to sociolinguistics’ (this article is a contribution to a new ENS-based website called ‘La clé des langues‘ (‘The gate to languages’), which aims at providing high school teachers with new and innovative material – ), I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into.

I’d refused to take part in the whole Borat-buzz, after a heated discussion between a genuine Kazakhstan lover and a Sacha Baron Cohen fan turned sour at a dinner party. But the whole Ali G persona was more appealing to me, mostly because the man went as far as asking Noam Chomsky to evaluate his own new language… You have to respect the endeavour…

Truth is, all I really wanted was a change from my usual Synge quotation (I worked on his representation of Irish English for my Master’s thesis), possibly something that would convince high-school students that sociolinguistics was worth enquiring into. Somehow putting Ali G right next to a Robert Burns poem sounded like an interesting choice.

But then in the course of writing the article, I was faced with two (related) problems…

1) How may I talk about social stratification without lingering on the usual Labov example for too long (as groundbreaking as his work actually is, sometimes change can be good)?

2) How can I honestly quote a Scottish poet and an English comedian without analysing their words? And where on earth did Ali G’s English come from?

It was quite straightforward – answering my second question would probably provide me with a good solution to my first problem… As healthy curiosity is always rewarded one way or another, a quick internet search led me to the right person. Mark Sebba, from the university of Lancaster, has done some amazing work with pidgins and British creoles, and recently (in 2003) published an article entitled: “Will the real impersonator please stand up? Language and identity in the Ali G websites” (In Christian Mair, ed., Interactional sociolinguistics and cultural studies. Thematic issue of Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 28(2): 279-304. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag). He provides a very interesting analysis of the comedian’s language, but delves deeper into the question of “acts of identity” as he also dissects the language of his website, aka the language of his fan-base.

Indeed, there are indeed many different levels of interpretation of what may sound like ‘mock-Ebonics’ to the untrained ear (and to mine, I have to confess…).This peculiar brand of English finds its origins in Jamaïcan Creole. When Black English identities (and second generations of immigrants realised they were perceived as West Indian and working class in Britain) were born, there emerged what is now called London Jamaïcan English, which is “a blend of non-standard Southern British English with grammatical, phonological and lexical features from Jamaïcan Creole” (Sebba, 2003). Somehow, ethnicity had blended with class distinction into one variety of English (there I had a fun alternative to Labov!). But Ali G isn’t actually impersonating a true speaker of London Jamaïcan English, and this is where things get interesting. And somewhat tricky.

Ali G manages to represent (quite cleverly, we’ll have to admit) all the young Londoners who have adopted LJE without any ethnic reason – as one post on the Ali G website says, all the kids under 15 in London speak like him. Age now beats ethnicity and class distinction. Or is it that while the latters are agents of division, the former manages to bring speakers together despite other differences? Somehow it is this new act of identity that make Ali G’s origins so blurry – his speech is not identifying with an ethnical group, or a social class, but with a whole age group.

Last but not least, Sebba’s analysis shows how most users on the Ali G website write in Ali G speech – there is no written rule that asks them to do so. They just do: “me iz frum da yookay but me iz in da states an me wonna woch sum ali g. Me gotsa problum mefinks. Bring yoo hairy batty over to dis side ov de worter” (Sebba, 2003). Thanks to our new technologies, we have gone from ethnical group, to class distinction, to age group/generation, to internet community. All this as we were listening to a Cambridge grad impersonating a black hip-hop journalist/gang leader.

Finally I had answers to my questions, and a powerful example to show high-school students what was so great about sociolinguistics. Which is, as it appears, also you-tube-friendly. Who would have thought. Now all I have to do is finish the article – booyakasha to all of you!

Many thanks again to Mark Sebba, for his interesting work, and for kindly sending me a PDF version of his fascinating article.

On the 13th March at 13h30, at the ENS-LSH in Lyon, Parvis René Descartes (Métro Debourg), Alexis Michaud will be talking about tonal languages for the second Conf’Expresso*(Expresso Talk) of the semester . He will provide us with basic notions of tonal typology and then move on to a case study – namely an analysis of Naxi language – (a Burmese-Tibetan language spoken in China).

Click here for tonal experience… (aka: the poster)

You can also check out Alexis’s personal page or the website of his research group.

A summary of the talk will follow. Stay tuned!

* This cycle of talks focuses on introducing ENS students (and others…) to different ways of studying linguistics.

The Expresso Talk generally takes place right after lunch time (around 1 30 pm, hence the need for a nice expresso), provides the eager audience with coffee (thanks to Caroline’s wonderful expresso machine) and scrumptious cakes (thansk to Aliyah’s and Caroline’s talents, mostly). It is rather quick (but more efficient than most afternoon talks) and strives to introduce young and interesting linguists to the world.

For the first one (January 13), Jean-Baptiste Michel (PhD Candidate in the department of Systems biology at Harvard University) explained how English irregular verbs become regular, and how it is possible to find a mathematical model to predict future evolutions. Indeed, the half life of an irregular verb is a simple function of its frequency… You can click here for more detail, and here to check out the poster.

NB: Soon there will be filmed versions of the talks on the ENS website – we shall keep you posted about the wonders of our technicians.