Irritable vowel syndrome

This is the sort of thing that makes my head hurt.

This morning while looking through some old files I came across a "language arts" exam given to middle school students in Carriacou (Grenada) in 1983.  The very first question:

Put a ring around the word that has two vowels
(a)  man     (b)  pet     (c)  gram     (d)  boat

Okay, now, we all know what the expected "right" answer was, don't we?  Of course.  It was (d) boat.  Because the word boat has two vowels.  Except that it doesn't, really.  The word boat, pronounced in Grenada as [bot], has one vowel (some speakers produce something like [bʷot] with a very brief labiovelar glide- still not two vowels, though).  The oa spelling of this vowel is an artifact of the convoluted history of the English writing system, not an accurate reflection of the present underlying phonology of English.

Of course, what's going on here is the perpetuation of the ancient language = writing meme, by which any question about language is assumed to refer to the writing system, not the actual spoken language.  Indeed, here in the US of A young people spend their K–college years attending "language arts" and "composition" classes that almost universally focus on writing (spelling, punctuation, etc.), not language.

Anyway, that was 1983.  My head is hurting now because yesterday, in a guest lecture on language, I asked the 100+ students in the lecture hall how many vowels are there in English?  And after all these roughly 25 years of teaching about language, the question still works: they still fall into the language = writing trap.  Their universal answer: five, maybe 6 (a, e, i, o, u, sometimes y).  I then astounded them by pulling out my twelve vowel sounds, as in the following words:

beat                     loot
bit        bird         look
bait                     coat
bet       bud         caught
bat                      cot

A part of me enjoys tricking students in this way, semester after semester.  And it's so predictable.  But another part of me bemoans the fact that I can still do it so easily.  Students in the English-speaking world simply do not, apparently, receive substantive instruction on the nature of language, or the nature of English.

Will they ever?

Florida Governor Scott says we don't need anthropologists

Florida Governor Rick Voldemort Scott wants universities to turn their backs on the liberal arts and sciences and focus on useful things like, you know, engineering and computer science.  Op-ed cartoonist Jeff Parker at Florida Today captures the governor's worldview very nicely:

In addition, Jeff writes:

Instead of a well-rounded, competitive, educated populace, Scott seemingly prefers to develop "foot soldiers for capitalism" as Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce puts it. The Governor appears satisfied with the idea of turning our universities into VoTech centers.
Plus, all that critical thinking and problem solving, nurtured by a liberal arts education, just gets in the way of ideological agendas like Scott's.

Nicely put.  I'll save my own rant for later.

It's cults all the way down (and back up!)

Anthropologically speaking, the recent brouhaha over whether Mormonism is a "cult" is amusing, and it offers one of those teachable moments we all live for.  Robert Jeffress, a pastor at the Dallas, Texas, First Baptist Church, referred to Mormonism as a "theological cult" in an interview with reporters at the Values Voter Summit on Friday, October 7.  You can watch him defend his remark on Fox News here.

The whole thing is amusing because, in the US Folk Model, the word cult is to religion roughly what dialect is to language.  A variety of religion (or language) is tagged as non-standard, perhaps a bit weird or undesirable, the property of some minority or other that isn't quite inside the pale.


The Merriam-Webster online dictionary has these as the first three definitions of cult (my emphasis added):

1: formal religious veneration: worship
2: a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also: its body of adherents
3: a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also: its body of adherents

Note that the third definition, the one Pastor Jeffress presumably had in mind, is the negative one.  The first two reflect the history of the term, which has the same root as culture (Latin cultus) and referred to the set of beliefs and behaviors associated with the worship or veneration of a god, saint, etc.  These definitions are not what most people have in mind when they use the term cult, and I would argue that to reflect actual usage in US society Merriam-Webster have these in the wrong order.

At least some anthropologists, following Anthony F. C. Wallace, continue to use cult in this broader, neutral sense to refer to any system of beliefs and behaviors involving the supernatural in some way.  Wallace identified four basic types of cults: individualistic; shamanistic; communal; ecclesiastical. Individualistic and shamanistic cults are most characteristic of small-scale societies whose subsistence is based on foraging or horticulture.  In these cults there are no full-time religious practitioners and most of what needs to be known to manipulate the supernatural is available to all, though especially talented individuals (shamans) may be consulted.  Ecclesiastical cults, typical of large-scale, stratified, state societies, have full-time practitioners who control access to the knowledge and also the performance of rituals.  Historically, the bureaucracy associated with these cults was frequently intertwined with or even equivalent to the state bureaucracy.  Communal cults appear as a bridge, but are most obvious in some pastoral societies such as the Maasai, where for example all males in an age-set undergo the ritual that transforms them from warriors to elders.

Religious cults conceived in this way form an implicational scale, so that for example people whose lives are centered on an ecclesiastical cult nevertheless also have beliefs and behaviors that reflect communal, shamanistic, and individualistic levels of organization.


So, anthropologists might use the word cult to describe Christianity as a whole, or at any level; the same with Islam, Judaism, or any other set of beliefs and behaviors.  Haitian Vodoun is a cult, and so is Jeffress's Southern Baptist Convention.  Everything is a cult, or nothing is a cult.


We can play the same game with the term dialect.  Appalachian English is a dialect of American English, which is a dialect of English, which is a dialect of West Germanic, which is a dialect of Germanic, which is a dialect Indo-European, which is a dialect of Human Language.


It's dialects, and cults, all the way up and down.

Essay on Ebonics

Anyone interested in the current status of African American English, or "Ebonics," might enjoy checking out my essay just posted on the American Anthropological Association's online Anthropology News web site.

State-sponsored murder

According to Amnesty International, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles has refused to intervene in tomorrow's scheduled execution of Troy Davis, despite the overwhelming evidence that there is more than "reasonable doubt" that he committed the crime he was convicted of.

It's dismaying, but not that surprising.  As a core part of the Old Confederacy, Georgia is (at least) a crypto-fascist state.  State-sponsored murder, otherwise known as "execution," is a way for such states to demonstrate their absolute power over their citizens, including the power to decide whether they live or die.

I didn't write anything for 9/11

Well, I didn't.  I did spend both yesterday and today actively avoiding mention of 9/11 on the TV, so as to be reminded as little as possible of the Tuesday ten years ago when our Marine son, Tommy, stationed at The Pentagon, was out of our reach for nearly the whole day.  I watched Ivan Reitmann's silly science-fiction comedy Evolution (David Duchovny, Julianne Moore, etc.), and I watched the first two parts of Lord of the Rings (the extended version!).  I also managed some of Avatar.  I played banjo. I walked with Tinker the Terrier.  Whatever, anything to avoid what I was sure would be the grotesque "commemoration" of an obscene event (I'm pretty sure I was right).

But inevitably, in checking my usual news and information sources on the web, I did come across several essays that come as close as I could, without doing it myself (which I didn't feel like doing), to expressing the swamp of ideas and feelings I have about 9/11 and its aftermath.  And not just the aftermath, but also the run-up.

The first is an essay by Tom Engelhardt titled Let's Cancel 9/11: Bury the War State's Blank Check at Sea.  One of the salient paragraphs from this essay is this one:

Ask yourself this: ten years into the post-9/11 era, haven't we had enough of ourselves?  If we have any respect for history or humanity or decency left, isn’t it time to rip the Band-Aid off the wound, to remove 9/11 from our collective consciousness?  No more invocations of those attacks to explain otherwise inexplicable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our oh-so-global war on terror.  No more invocations of 9/11 to keep the Pentagon and the national security state flooded with money.  No more invocations of 9/11 to justify every encroachment on liberty, every new step in the surveillance of Americans, every advance in pat-downs and wand-downs and strip downs that keeps fear high and the homeland security state afloat.

A second essay titled Generation 9/11: History will be embarrassed by us, is by fellow anthropologist Greg Laden, and appeared on his blog The X Blog.  Greg's essay contains this, which spoke nicely to my own thoughts:

And now might be a good point to ask the question, “What has risen from the ashes of the 9/11 attacks?” There was much talk at the time, and since then, and again today, about how great America is, how great Americans are, and how we will move forward and become better and stronger and so on and so forth. But it is just talk. What has happened instead is something entirely different.

And what happened has been a social and political disaster, as Greg points out:

The Tea Party and things like the Tea Party. Strongly held anti-social illogical destructive beliefs with no hope of critical self evaluation, in a large and organized part of the population. It is obvious why this happened in the Republican Party and not the Democratic Party, but people on both sides of the political aisle have contributed. Literalist, libertarian, paranoid, self-centered, easily frightened, reactionary, sub-average in intelligence, deluded in self worth and unmovable in conviction and belief despite all evidence to the contrary.

Moving on.  The last is from one of my favorite online essayists, William Rivers Pitt, who posts at Truthout.org.  His essay, called The Children of Aftermath, focuses on the fact that there are children in the 5th grade now who have known no other country, no other world, than the one 9/11 gave us:

All across America, there are classrooms filled with fifth graders who only know the World Trade Center from pictures. They have achieved the final perfection of George Orwell's vision - we have always been at war with Eurasia - because they have never known a world where their country has not been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I hope you will read these essays.  Meanwhile, I'm waiting for 9/12/2011.

Guest blog: People of Wisconsin: Rethink recall. Rethink. Recall

Now that we are past the Wisconsin state senate recall elections, we need to take a cold, hard look at what needs to be done in 2012.  The people of Wisconsin are “energized,” as the pundits say, but we need to be realistic about where we focus our energy and how we allocate limited time and financial resources.

Quite apart from any possible recall elections, here is what we have to look forward to in Wisconsin in 2012 (not in chronological order, but in my rough order of importance):

• Presidential election
• Municipal and school board elections
• Election of a new US Senator
• Elections for all eight Wis. congressional districts
• Election of half the members of the state senate
• Elections for all members of the state assembly
• Probable Republican and Democratic primaries for US Senate
• Republican presidential primary
• Other possible primaries

Keep in mind that for these elections the district lines have been redrawn, and new voter ID requirements will be implemented, so there will be plenty of room for confusion.  We are a 50-50 state when it comes to statewide races.  But the new Republican-drawn districts mean that there will be fewer 50-50 districts.  With close races likely we need to pick our battles carefully. Voter turnout will be crucial.

So even though I have a “Recall Walker” sticker on my bumper, I am reluctantly advocating that we put aside that goal in favor of the following:

1)  Educate people about the new voter ID requirements and new district lines, and get out the vote.

2)  Give Scott Walker a Democratic legislature to work with.

3)  Focus on electing a worthy successor to Herb Kohl.

4)  Elect more progressive Representatives to Congress.

So I am rethinking my bumper sticker.  I will leave it on the car, but now it does not mean recall as ”remove,” but rather as  “remember.”  In every one of those four goals, people need to “recall” Walker.  Recall the damage done to middle-class, working class, and struggling citizens.  Recall the damage being done to public schools and the environment.  Recall the voter suppression policies put into effect.

And recall what Wisconsin was like before the Walker era.  Recall worker rights and responsibilities.  Recall treating people with respect.  Recall cooperation.  Recall consultation with those affected by legislation.

That is my rethinking of the recall of the Governor.  Recall Walker without recalling Walker.  We have a lot of work to do.  We need to use him and recall his record to rally and motivate voters.  2014 will be here soon enough.

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Jim Oakley lives in Ashland, Wisconsin. Jim is a fellow Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who served with me in the Eastern Caribbean in the early 1970s.  Since then Jim has been teaching Spanish in the Wisconsin public school system.  Jim is, naturally, heavily invested in what's been going on in Wisconsin, and he writes about it.