Archive: 2011

While Americans began celebrating Valentine’s Day in the early 1700s, it wasn’t until the 1840s that it became a commercial holiday complete with mass-produced Valentine’s-themed goods.

Greeting cards, candy, flowers, and jewelry are Valentine’s-Day-Approved gifts and are among the most frequently gifted items (along with stuffed animals and perfume/cologne):

Contrary to stereotypes, the majority of men say they would love to receive flowers for Valentine’s Day:

Alas, 21% of them have never been so blessed:

This may upset primarily the young:

But, of course, they have the greatest chance of one day having their dreams come true.

What I’m saying is:  “Go ahead! Buy your man some daisies!”

For more on Valentine’s Day, visit this fun graphic (via Chart Porn).

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Sarah Haskins, always entertaining, mocks the imperative that men buy women jewelry to show them they love them:

I’ve always wondered how women who share bank accounts with their partners feel about this.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Via Native Appropriations, I found a set of vintage Valentines drawing on stereotypes of American Indians at the Vintage Valentine Museum.

“I’d never squaw’k if you’d be my Valentine” (1950s or ’60s):

“I want to be the CHIEF” (1940s or ’50s):

“I’m a straightshoooter Valentine. May I be your BOW” (1930s):

“I’m hunting for you, Valentine” (1941):

“Ugh! Ugh! I’m an INDIAN GIVER. It’s time you should learn it. For I won’t give my love, unless you’ll RETURN it!” (1940s):

“Ugh! Ugh!  Give me your heart Valentine!”:

“You heap fine Valentine AND HOW!” (1950s or ’60s):

“I’m sending this ARROW CHEIFLY to say, let me be your “beau” (1930s or ’40s):

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The California Milk Processor Board, the group responsible for the Got Milk? and Happy Cows ad campaigns, produced “Medusa,” a commercial about a princess whose “ugly hair” destroys her chances for love…until, of course, a  man comes along who knows how to tame her hair, make her beautiful, and “conquer her love,” allowing her to finally get married:

I get that her hair is made up of snakes, but as a person with incredibly curly, unpredictable, shall we say boisterous hair, I can’t help but notice that the beauty ideal espoused here clearly calls for sleek, straight, controlled hair.

Sarah Haskins takes on the fairy tale trope in commercials aimed at women, including my favorite, a milk ad in which the princess’s PMS mood swings cause a tidal wave of her tears that threatens her entire realm:

Nicole S. sent in this great example of the way that differences in bodies are used to infer a wide-range of non-anatomical differences between boys and girls (or, in this case, the other way around).

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

I was walking through the University bookstore today to pick up beginning of the semester office supplies, when this book, Grammar Sucks: What to Do to Make Your Writing Much More Better, caught my eye:

Back cover text:

Do you suffer from grammar phobia because…

• You’re so used to IMing, you’ve forgotten how to write a normal sentence. :- )
• You’ve started thinking in rap lyrics.
• Last time you gave a report, your handout got you laughed out of the room.

What made this book seem blog-worthy to me is the not-so-subtle coded language used to refer to those speakers who the book cover authors (maybe not the book authors) feel are culpable for the degradation of language.  I want to consider the second point specifically: “…thinking in rap lyrics.”

Ok, of course not all rappers are black, but it is an art form that is so solidly identified with the African American community.. And, of course, they’re not really talking about “rap lyrics,” they’re talking about AAVE (African American Vernacular English). This is an offensive and transparently coded throwback to the linguistic inferiority of African Americans.

AAVE is a dialect of English just like all dialects, and has a fully articulated syntax, morphology and phonology. It is NOT a broken or mislearned form of the dominant dialect. And people certainly don’t speak AAVE because they failed to learn arbitrary writing conventions in school (e.g. “Don’t start a sentence with a conjunction”) , which appear to be the topic of this book.

But, let’s take them at their word. Maybe you have grammar phobia because you’re thinking in rap lyrics. Do you mean, like, you’re freestyling in your head all the time? Do you mean you’re kind of like this guy?

You mean, all your thoughts have flow, and rhyme, are creative, and drop properly formed Spanish imperative verbs? To the book cover authors: you fucking wish. I mean, I wish I could do that.

In the context of the book, it makes a clear point: If you are young, and black (and your hat’s real low), you’re not worthy of social respect, or economic achievement.

Needless to say, I went on to go buy my office supplies, and didn’t read the body of the book. I can’t really tell you if it gave any good advice that made any sense. This book is just another case where supposed discussion of language isn’t really about language. It actually ties in nicely with my previous post on how people discuss language in terms of morality. Here, the book cover authors are laying blame on the same groups of people that are accused of leading moral decay: youth, and racial and ethnic minorities.

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Josef Fruehwald is a graduate student in Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on theoretical models of language variation and change. He frequently blogs about the relevance of linguistic research to language attitudes (among other things) at Val Systems.

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You may have heard the good news last week that Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 9.0% in January, combined with the somewhat conflicting news that payrolls increased by only 36,000 jobs. How is unemployment dropping without a significant increase in the number of people working?

Talking Points Memo posted a graph that gives some insight, and it isn’t encouraging. The blue line shows the % of unemployed who stopped counting as unemployed because they found work. The red line, on the other hand, shows the % of unemployed workers who quit being unemployed because they have stopped looking for work, and thus are categorized as “not in the labor force” rather than unemployed. Currently, more of the drop in unemployment rates are due to people giving up on finding work rather than them finding jobs (via Rortybomb):

The Roosevelt Institute has a detailed report about trends in unemployment.

This pattern has significant long-term consequences, since a period of unemployment has serious negative effects on individuals’ income for years even after they do finally get jobs. This impacts not just individuals and their families, but entire communities, counties, and states, which suffer from the increased need for services, lowered productivity, and loss of tax revenue.

CNN reported yesterday on the House Republicans’ plan to reduce spending.  Staff Reporter Charles Riley writes that it’s a “dramatic budget proposal… that would result in sweeping cuts to federal agencies and government services.”

Oh really?  Gin and Tacos puts it in perspective:

See that little green sliver?  That’s the budget cut.  I’ll let Gin and Tacos be the sarcastic one: “Wow, over 4/10ths of one percent of the FY2011 budget!”

More, it’s not even actually $58 billion because, as Riley reports:

In practical terms, the spending decrease is actually closer to $35 billion, since Congress failed to pass a budget for fiscal year 2011, and agencies have been operating at 2010 funding levels.

This is an ongoing problem for political conservatives.  Cutting spending is a useful sound bite, but when asked what they actually want to cut — you know, a plan to actually balance the budget without raising taxes or while cutting them — they typically flounder.  So, in this case, they’re successfully cutting four-tenths of one percent of the budget.  And what must we sacrifice for this tremendous step towards a balanced budget?  Among other things, this:

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.