Linguistics | Penn Today

A person leaning against a tree outside, wearing a blue-and-white button down shirt, arms crossed.

A partnership to preserve Kashaya

Since the 1980s, linguist Eugene Buckley has studied this Native American language, now spoken by just a dozen or so people in northern California. In collaboration with members and descendants of the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians, he’s built a database of Kashaya words, sounds, and stories.

Graphic illustration depicting language.

In These Times: Fear and loathing and science

Season three of the School of Arts & Sciences podcast explores scientific ideas that get big reactions.

fanned out color sample sheets depicting a rainbow of shades

Mapping words to color

Researchers led by postdoc Colin Twomey and professor Joshua Plotkin developed an algorithm that can infer the communicative needs different linguistic communities place on colors.

In linguistics, “whoever’s cool leads the change,” which explains why trends come and go via TikTok, says linguistics professor Nicole Holliday.

Q&A

TikTok talk

Largely characterized as a Gen Z phenomenon, TikTok is a video-sharing app with more than 100 million active users in the U.S. alone—and it’s changing the way that we speak, says sociolinguist Nicole Holliday.

Slate.com

TikTok language rabbit hole

Nicole Holliday of the School of Arts & Sciences co-hosted a podcast episode about linguistics and TikTok.

A black-and-white drawing of a head with lines signifying the person is speaking.

The intonation Black/biracial men use to speak about race

In a study of college-educated biracial men, ages 18 to 32, sociolinguist Nicole Holliday found that, when asked about race, this group frequently brought up law enforcement unprompted and discussed the subject using vocal tone more generally associated with white speakers.

Science

No shared language? No problem! People across cultures understand clues from ‘vocal charades’

Gareth Roberts of the School of Arts & Sciences weighed in on a linguistic study that found that people can use vocal sounds to mimic parts of the idea they’re trying to convey, such using chewing noises to evoke the word “food.”

NBC Philadelphia

Zoom, social distance, ‘blursday’: The coronavirus has changed how we speak

Nicole Holliday of the School of Arts & Sciences spoke about how language has evolved amid the pandemic. “Social changes can bring sort of a boom of new words that are used more commonly or old words that sort of get resurrected,” she said. “As the whole world has changed as a result of the pandemic, that has opened up some opportunities for new words to spread.”

NPR

When Republicans attack ‘cancel culture,’ what does it mean?

Nicole Holliday of the School of Arts & Sciences spoke about the origins and evolution of the phrase “cancel culture.” “It is used to refer to a cultural boycott,” she said. “We’ve had the term ‘boycott’ forever and ever. It just means, ‘I’m not going to put my attention or money or support behind this person or organization because they’ve done something that I don’t agree with.’ That is not new; that’s very old.”

A person in an American flag outfit and bandana carrying an American flag in front of a large group of people at the U.S. Capitol building. Many hold flags that read "Trump 2020."

The influence and importance of language

Labels for what happened Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol were very different from those used to describe the Black Lives Matter movement or the 2020 election results. How much weight do individual words actually have? It depends on the context.

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