discourse/language

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog.

Jacob and Isabella were the most popular baby names last year.  Some observers, even some sociologists, see this as the influence of the Twilight series.  (See here for example.)

But Jacob, Isabella, and even Bella were on the rise well before Stephanie Meyer sent her similarly-named characters out to capture the hearts, minds, and naming preferences of romantic adolescents:

The forecasters predict a bumper crop soon in Rue, Cato, and perhaps other names that are from the Hunger series.  Still, since the YA (Young Adult) audience for these books and movies are more Y than A, I’m hoping for lag time of at least a few years before they start naming babies.  As I blogger earlier, Splash, the film with Darryl Hannah as Madison the mermaid, came out in 1984, but it was not until nine years later that Madison surfaced in the top 100 names. And if there’s a Hogwarts effect, we’re still waiting to see it.  The trend in Harry and Harold is downward on both sides of the Atlantic, and Hermione has yet to break into the top 1000.

Don’t look for any Katnisses to be showing up in your classes for quite a while.

@Thom82 tweeted a photograph of a parking space at Ikea.  By “family friendly,” I assume they mean people with kids.  By coupling the phrase with the image, however, it defines the family as a heterosexual, nuclear one with 2.0 children.  People without kids? Not a family. Single people with kids? Not a family. Best friends who support each other? Not a family.  Sorry 80% of people in the U.S. who aren’t married with kids, you’re not a family.

But seriously. It’s not a big deal, all things considered. But, when you add it to all the other little reminders, it leaves little doubt as to whose families really count.

Apropo of tax time, see also Turbo Tax Maps Out My Conventional Future, and these humorous take down of the idea of “traditional” marriage.

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.

This 48-second ad is a fantastic example of framing, as well as a super-ridiculous blast-from-the-past.  Paid for by the movie theater industry, the ad attacks the idea of cable.  Cable, of course, was going to deliver more content to television sets and potentially compete for the business movie theaters enjoyed. So they frame cable as “pay tv” and counterpose it to “free tv.”  They don’t, you might notice, frame cable as “pay tv” and the movie theaters as “pay movies” because that comparison is not as useful for them.  Instead, without drawing attention to the fact that they charge for entertainment, they try to delegitimate the idea of paying for on-screen entertainment at home.

They also try to argue that cable tv will bring scary monsters into your living room.  So cute.  In an era where millions of instances of pornifed violence are just a click away, it is almost incomprehensible to imagine wanting to make sure that scary movies stayed at the theater.

Via BoingBoing.

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.

For the past few years I’ve been following a wonderful little blog, Hanzi Smatter. The author invites people to submit images of tattoos written in (what they think is) Japanese or Chinese, to find out what they actually mean. As it turns out, tattoos often do not mean what their bearers think they mean. The results can be hilarious, like Thought to mean: Loyalty. Actual meaning: Noodles.

It is quite trendy in the U.S. to get a word that means something to you in English (“love,” “strength” etc.) tattooed in Japanese or Chinese characters. Visit any tattoo parlor or online tattoo image gallery and you’ll see many Chinese and Japanese character options. So why is this so popular? Some argue that the beauty and simplicity of the symbols make Asian characters desirable for tattoos: “But what, besides the beauty of the art, would make these tattoos so popular? The main reason is that Chinese symbolism can be used to express so much, while still remaining simple and clean.” But couldn’t any written language be considered beautiful (cursive English, for instance)? And isn’t any language capable of expressing a lot in just a few simple characters (words have multiple meanings even in English)?

I don’t think this is just about beauty and simplicity. Using Japanese or Chinese characters makes a tattoo more exotic than getting the same word tattooed in English. And there is an added element of mystery—having a tattoo that not everyone in an English-speaking country can read is cool (even if the person with the tattoo can’t read it, either).

Cultural appropriation describes the adoption of specific aspects of a culture that is not your own. A Kanji tattoo when the wearer is not Japanese and has no specific connection to Japanese culture is an example of cultural appropriation. While we could debate whether or not cultural appropriation is ever positive (e.g. the popularity of yoga, or the interest in Italian food and culture when HBO’s The Sopranos was running), there are negative consequences to cultural appropriation. When language and symbolism are taken out of their original context, the meaning is over simplified or completely lost. Tattoos that attempt to translate English into Japanese or Chinese characters are a perfect example of lost meaning:

Intended meaning: None. Characters chosen for their appeal. Actual meaning: “Buy/trade”, “road, path”, and “card” which is like a type of prepaid card that allows its owner to access public transportation.

Thought to mean: Warrior. Actual meaning: Waterfall or rapids.

 Many tattoos are victims of what Hanzi Smatter calls “gibberish font.” There is no correlation between English letters and Japanese or Chinese characters, but some tattoo shops use this gibberish font for tattoos—using the font to spell out words letter by letter, when Chinese and Japanese don’t work that way.

Thought to mean: Initials of loved ones. Actual meaning: Nothing

Thought to mean: Beautiful. Actual meaning: “Calamity, disaster, catastrophe.”

 Thought to mean: As long as I breathe, I hope. Actual meaning: The five characters mean “living”, “air”, & “love” separately, but just the characters together do not create the intended sentence.

 Thought to mean: Outlaw. Actual meaning: “[In] hiding” and “criminal”, or the equivalent of “snitch” or “rat”.

 Thought to mean: Live for today. Actual meaning: None.

Hanzi Smatter discusses that last one:

As is, this gibberish means nothing in Japanese or at least nothing like “live for today” and I don’t think it means anything in Chinese either. The only meaning I can guess is that if it were written 生きて現れる, this would mean “to show up alive” or “turn up alive” as if someone thought dead had appeared alive. Anyway, it sounds pretty spooky, like seeing a zombie!

I think the person who made this up just looked in a dictionary for the word for “to live” 生 and a word that means something like “now” 現and thought you could stick them together to make “live for today.”

The fact that these tattoos, and countless more like them, don’t mean what people think they mean, illustrates the consequences of fetishizing aspects of a culture. Symbols and language don’t translate easily from one culture to another. Adopting aspects of a culture that might seem “exotic” without understanding what they mean in their specific contexts ends up creating cultural gibberish; tattoos that make no sense to anyone at all.

In 1970, the U.S. Census added a “country of origin” question to its demographics section, which asks respondents if they are “of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin.” But a new Pew Hispanic Center report indicates that, while these might be the official terms for those from Spanish-speaking countries and/or Latin America, they aren’t the preferred or most popular labels among those they’re supposed to identify. Only about 1 in 4 use the terms Hispanic or Latino most frequently to describe themselves:

Not surprisingly, identification with different labels differs among recent immigrants and those born in the U.S. Among the first generation, country of origin is the overwhelming preference, but by the third generation, just over 1 in 4 choose that as their most common self-identifier:

Most respondents had no preference between the terms Hispanic or Latino, but for those who did, Hispanic was more popular:

White was the most commonly-chosen racial identification:

Most respondents also said that while they think it’s important that Hispanics be able to speak Spanish in the U.S., that learning English is very important for success. By the second generation, almost all rate themselves as knowing English “pretty” or “very” well:

Conversely, among third-generation Hispanics, under half say they speak or read Spanish equally well:

Check out the full report for tons of additional information on identification, language use, etc.

Cross-posted from cyborgology.

On February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black high school student, was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a White Hispanic neighborhood watch captain. The case has become a symbolic battleground. Artist Israel McCloud was inspired to paint a mural in his honor in Houston.

As Jessie Daniels points out at Racism Review, battles over racism have shifted into the realm of social media, where digital and physical race relations persist in an augmented relationship. We see this in both anti-racist discourses and the racial smear campaigns surrounding the Martin/Zimmerman case.

Although it is important to expose the overtly racist tactics utilized by some of Zimmerman’s defenders, I want to talk about a more subtle, and so perhaps more problematic, form of racial discourse. A prominent strategy of protest arising from the left may inadvertently perpetuate, rather than challenge, racial hierarchies in their most dehumanizing form.

This tactic has made the rounds on my own Facebook Newsfeed, and is one in which I, prior to more critical thought, actively participated:  the creation of images and texts that couple Black bodies with prestigious social positions and ask viewers to problematize racialized assumptions that often lead to faulty first impressions—which in turn lead to physical danger for the racialized subject. This tactic comes in two forms: political memes and case examples.

The memes, such as the one pictured below, are direct and general. They argue that Black bodies are assumed dangerous unless proven otherwise. This meme warns us that we might treat a doctor as a criminal purely based on skin color:

 I (regretfully) posted this meme to my own Facebook wall. Rather than delete the meme, I added this post to the comment thread as a public declaration of my error.

The case examples are more in depth, but accomplish a similar task. They picture a clean-cut, Black male body. They list his credentials, and then tell of his physical abuse at the hands of scared, racist White authority figures:

Copied from my Facebook Newsfeed.

 Activists strategically link these memes and cases to Trayvon Martin’s story, highlighting his clean record and child-like face. This protest tactic honors Martin (and other Black boys and men who have been hurt because of a racist culture) and spotlights the problematic racialized lens within which Americans largely operate.

Both forms of this protest tactic tell an empirically accurate story. Simultaneously, however, they are gross oversimplifications that perpetuate oppressive hierarchies that lie at the intersection of race and class. They work to differentiate the “good” from the “bad” kind of racial minority—and imply that the life of the former is more valuable.

We are warned that our racial assumptions may lead to the wrongful and tragic harm of a “good” racial minority—reinforcing the devaluation of poor, under-educated, over-policed and under-protected people of color. Indeed, as the left fights accusations that Trayvon Martin sold drugs, we forget to ask: “SO WHAT IF HE DID?!” Would he somehow be less human? Would his murder be less atrocious? As the left justifiably decries the accusative investigations into Trayvon’s life, some protest tactics effectively present the opposite side of the same coin.

The empirical reality of Blackness in America is that it often intersects with poverty, which in turn, intersects with crime. A poor Black man with a criminal record is an artifact of a deeply embedded racial system. The memes and case examples discussed above perpetuate the devaluation of the Poor Black subject, marginalizing him against those who are upwardly mobile. In utilizing this protest tactic we fail to address the grittier realities of race in America that led George Zimmerman to perceive an anonymous, unarmed Black boy as a threat. We not only ignore these realities, but become naively complicit in their reproduction.

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Jenny Davis is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M University. She studies self, identity, and human-technology interaction. She blogs for cyborgology.org. Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jup83

Last week Andrew, Michael S., Will S., Katrin, and Tom Megginson all brought our attention to some of the racist tweets that appeared after the premiere of The Hunger Games. Apparently some viewers were shocked to find that some of their favorite characters from the books were played by African American actors (and some critics seem to have felt that Jennifer Lawrence didn’t look starved enough for her role). Buzzfeed and Jezebel posted some examples of the response to the African American characters:

In fact, Suzanne Collins did include descriptions that would seem to clue a reader in that they’re not supposed to assume that every character in the book is Caucasian (cropped from Buzzfeed):

But of course, the apparent lack of reading comprehension of many fans of the book is rather beside the point by now. What these reactions indicate is the invisibility of non-White people in pop culture, and the sense of distress, disappointment, and even outrage some can feel when they are expected to accept non-Whites in what they see as “neutral” roles. And, more disturbingly, it illustrates the degree to which the humanity of non-Whites can be erased, and highlights racialized associations. “Some black girl” is, by definition, not an “innocent girl.” It’s funny to say that the death of a character that touched you in the book is less moving if you imagine the character as African American. We’ve seen this type of reaction before, such as when Idris Elba was cast in Thor. Or the equally negative response to the suggestion that Donald Glover, an African American actor, should audition for the starring role in the newest Spider-Man remake, as Lindy West points out at Jezebel: “…it’s a proprietary thing-if Spider-Man is black, then he isn’t ours anymore. He’s theirs.”

I think the best discussion of the implications of the Hunger Games tweets comes from Anna Holmes, whose take was posted by The New Yorker. I’ll leave you with a quote and strongly suggest you go check out the full article:

Hunger Games Tweets—there are now more than two hundred up on the blog—illuminated long-standing racial biases and anxieties. The a-hundred-and-forty-character-long outbursts were microcosms of the ways in which the humanity of minorities is often denied and thwarted, and they underscored how infuriatingly conditional empathy can be…If the stories we tell ourselves about the future, however disturbing, don’t include black people; if readers of “The Hunger Games” are so blind as to skip over the author’s specific details and themes of appearance, race, and class, then what does it say about the stories we tell ourselves regarding the present?

Symbolic interactionism, one of the most common theoretical perspectives adopted by sociologists, explains human behavior through the meanings we place on objects or symbols in our environment. These symbols can be material objects, but they can also be words, gestures, actions, events, as well as people and groups. The symbols’ meanings are not innate. They are created and applied through human relations and interactions. In other words, they are socially constructed. Consequently, our behaviors and relationships change as meanings are altered. Some social conflict is the result of different groups defining objects differently.

This extends to human cognition, as a previous post on cultural differences in susceptibility to optical illusions demonstrated.  Another example involves how we hear animal sounds, illustrated in this clip from the television show “Family Guy.” In this segment, we see Stewie playing with a European see and say, a toy designed to teach animal noises. He is frustrated because the animals are said to make sounds that do not ring true to his ear.

For a list of the various sounds animals make in different parts of the world, see this compilation by Derek Abbott at The University of Adelaide.

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Deeb Kitchen is an assistant visiting professor at Drake University specializing social movements, the sociology of knowledge and poplar culture. He has done research on higher education, graduate labor unions, and the culture industry.