Songs and Poetry

Linguistically speaking, the differences between spoken and written language are well documented; however, my focus for this post is differences between performing lyrics as a song and performing them as poetry.  Obviously, there are differences in how the words are produced (singing versus speaking), but how do those differences affect the overall effect of the song and the potential message being delivered?

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine introduced me to a YouTube video that I can't believe I had never seen before: William Shatner performing "Rocket Man."



Shatner's take on the classic song is memorable, with his presentation coming across as both dramatic and humorous.  I love that he uses prosodic features to change the flow of the lyrics each time the chorus reoccurs and takes advantage of editing features by having two Shatners on the screen at once.  I'm not a poetry expert, but I think the reading is enhanced by that fact that Elton John's lyrics are poetic and lend themselves more freely to spoken performances.

Thirty years after that performance, another actor took on a popular song to perform as, um, a type of spoken art.  Through Twitter, I was introduced tonight to the video performance of Christopher Walken reading Lady Gaga's "Poker Face."



Walken's performance is also memorable, but I would not exactly apply the term "classic" to it.  Comparing the two made me start thinking about song lyrics and how they're written in general to achieve different goals.  One aspect of linguistic study is to ask why a speaker (or singer) put particular words/sounds together and what purpose or function the speaker (or singer) is achieving through those words/sounds.  Songs are a form of linguistic performance.  As such, I think some songs are meant only for singing (i.e., "Poker Face") while others are more readily available for other modes of performance (i.e., "Rocket Man").

What songs do you think are only meant for singing?  What songs do you think could be more readily performed as poetry?

Poll for Fall 2010 Courses

The poll featured in the sidebar is geared toward identifying student interest in more advanced topics (not toward guaranteeing the offering of said topics); the majority of the options would be run under ENG 442: Topics in Linguistics.  Since none of these courses have been run before, I'm including course descriptions of the listed options in this post.  Please note that not all options for Fall 2010 courses are included in the poll (e.g., Structures of English, History of the English Language, Introduction to Linguistics); again, the poll is dedicated to the more advanced courses to identify areas of interest.

While none of the courses would have linguistic prerequisites, prior linguistic knowledge would be beneficial (if not necessary) for the following three topics: Corpus Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, and Comparative Linguistics.

Forensic Linguistics
Linguistic study of texts and recordings to determine authorship, evasion strategies, possible coercion in writings/recordings, stylistic changes, deception, and so on.  Linguistic tools include phonetic analysis, structural analysis, and word choice.  Texts analyzed include hate mail, suicide letters, ransom notes, and confessions; recordings include interviews, interrogations, and confessions.

Advanced Grammar
Advanced investigation of the concepts of grammatical form and function, including the application of labels such as noun, adjective, verb, subject, object, phrase, clause.  Study will also include discussion of the use of grammar in written and spoken language, the teaching of grammar in classrooms, the debates about grammatical change in current language, and the notion of standard language.

Psycholinguistics
Examination of the facilities in the brain necessary for language comprehension and production, the process of first language acquisition, the mental processing of language, and the specific language disorders that result when language facilities (or the connections to them) are damaged.

Corpus Linguistics
Study of the tools available for collecting and analyzing data, and examination of current corpora available for research.  Students will learn to collect and create their own corpora, utilize existing corpora, and analyze data through corpus research.

Historical Linguistics (Diachronics)
Study of the types of regular language changes, the practice of internal and external language reconstructions, and socio-historical influences on language change.  Students will learn to identify types of language change through data from languages around the world and conduct research on socio-historical background of language change on a language other than English.

Language and Literature
Examination of linguistic tools and techniques and application of those linguistic devices to the study of literature, focusing on structural and semantic aspects.  Some examples include the representation of dialects in literature, stylistics, use of metaphor, verb selection, and genre differentiation.

Comparative Linguistics
Linguistic analysis of a set of languages or a language family, focusing on the differences and similarities in sounds and structures among the languages.  Examination of possible comparative methods and their application to data sets; analyses of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics within language change, including sociohistorical variables.  No prior knowledge of the languages in question is required.

Welcome Back! Spring 2010

Since we were on a break from school, I also took a break from the computer (including blogging).  As you well know, though, a new semester is just around the corner, metaphorically speaking.  I will celebrate the first day of classes (Wednesday, January 20) with a new post.  Today I am starting a new poll in the sidebar: Which linguistics class would you most like to see in the fall?  The poll will be open for a couple months--until it's time to begin planning out Fall 2010 course schedules.

In the meantime, I wish you all a happy ending to your winter break and look forward to seeing you this spring.

Source of Humor: Implicature

In my Structures course, we just finished a section on spoken discourse; one of the features of spoken discourse is that you can say one thing but mean another (implicature).  Today I found a link that took me to a repository of hilarious videos that were performed on the Sketch Show; one such video is titled "Can you take a picture for us?"



The humor of the video revolves around the misinterpretation of the title question: When the first guy asks the question, "Can you take a picture for us?" he is implying that he would like the second guy to take a picture of him and his (girl)friend.  However, the second guy takes the question literally and simply takes a picture of the scenery before walking on.

This humor is similar to the frustration you might get if you ask someone, "Do you know what time it is?" and they simply respond, "Yes."

Two more videos from the same group that you, too, might find funny are the following:





There are many more of those videos, but I think three in one posting is quite enough.

Fun Stress Relief

Ah, 'tis the season to be stressed--that lamentable finals season just around the corner, and you may be looking for a fun way to relieve some of that stress while still learning some cool new information at the same time.  The Goethe Institute has something you might be interested in: a trivia game called the City of Languages.  It asks trivia questions about languages and language families, has you match examples of written language to their language, and has you match spoken examples to their correct language.  It doesn't take very long to play, but it's informative and fun to test your knowledge, knowing that the score on the test will not affect your grade in any course.  Let me know what you think of the game after you check it out.

Inspiration for the Crazy Cool English Post

I just realized that in posting my spiel on language change in action, I forgot to mention the two sources of inspiration for the post.  The first is an online article titled "Twitter Abracadabras Weasley Whereabouts Clock into Reality."  I think the title speaks for itself as to why it would inspire my last post on how words can be used in different grammatical categories than expected; this was the first time I had ever seen abracadabra used as a verb, and the compound Weasley Whereabouts Clock is just icing on the cake for making that title linguistically interesting.

The second is is a short online article called "Verbification at Work" that talks about the new trend to "-ify" any noun (or even adjective) you so please: healthify, friendify, and greenify are some of the examples they share.  It goes one step further to then turn those words back into nouns: healthification, friendification...  Our language is amazing.

English: A Crazy Cool Language

English can do some pretty crazy/amazing/frustrating things with words, which is a distinguishing factor about English among the world's languages.  In History of the English Language this week, we discussed how words from one grammatical category can easily be "persuaded" into another grammatical category; for example, Pluto is a noun, yet it can be used as a verb ("to pluto" something means to demote it).  The comic strip above plays with the ability of gerund, a noun, to be used as a verb and even as an adjective: you can gerund any word; a gerunded word.

One area of our language that is taking off with this ability is computer-based language, especially the language used with social networks.  I've seen plays on Twitter in words like "twitterverse" and "twitizens."  Furthermore, twitter was originally a verb that, over time, became used as a noun, and now the trend is once again reversing.  When most people hear twitter, they think of a noun because of that social-networking website, yet we can now say someone twittered, meaning they sent a message via Twitter (so the noun has become denominalized to mean something completely different from the original verb).  Twitter is further changing the landscape of the English language through the limitation of only having 140 characters to express your thoughts, which encourages abbreviations, shortened terms, and sentences lacking verbs or nouns that would otherwise be warranted.  Take the "tweet" (another word that has been denominalized for Twitterers around the world) shown at the beginning of this paragraph for example (from one of my favorite "tweeple"): Poverty not been an entirely horrid experience.Challenging tho. No resentment of people with money but even more respect for those without.  The tweet consists of three sentences, none of which are complete; typically speaking, you'd expect something like Poverty's not been... It's been challenging... I don't have resentment...  Also, the word though now occurs in its shortened form, tho, in many of its appearances.

Another social engine that is associated with language play is Facebook:

You can facebook someone, you can friend someone, and you can even de-friend/un-friend someone (which one of those is preferred differs among speakers).

In English, we take things one step further and distinguish between different forms of the same word; for example, my students noticed that they use crept as the simple past tense of the verb creep when they are using it to mean they snuck (sneaked?) somewhere (I crept into the room), but they have to use creeped as the simple past when saying something like He really creeped me out.  Another example is that what used to be the normal plural of brother is now restricted in its use (brethren) while the new, regularized form that took over is used in all other instances (brothers).  Once you start thinking of the irregularities of our language and word usage, you can't help but find incongruities everywhere.  For native speakers, it can be liberating to know that you can easily morph existing words into new ones by simply using it in a new way; for anyone trying to learn to speak English, it can be quite a headache to figure out why you can pepper a wall with paper or paper a wall with pepper.  Okay, so maybe I reached a bit for those last two examples, but they make my point: English is a crazy cool language.  Or if you're in Boston, perhaps you think it is a wicked cool language?