Covering Baltimore: Protest or riot?

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Nic Subtirelu — 3 Comments

The death of Freddie Gray, a young Black man, while in police custody on April 19 sent residents of Baltimore, Maryland into the streets. Many have been actively calling for justice to be carried out, for the police officers responsible to be held accountable, and for wider reforms in the criminal justice system. On Monday, some turned to violence and property destruction, clashing with police, setting fires, and looting.

What are those of us who aren’t in Baltimore seeing and hearing from these events? Read more ›

Tagged with: baltimore uprising, cnn, fox news, media bias, protest, riot, the nation
Posted in Language and race, Media discourse and media bias

“The most used words in men’s vs. women’s basketball coverage” up at Mental Floss

Posted on March 20, 2015 by Nic Subtirelu — 2 Comments

March Madness has begun. If you’re like me, and you want to think about the language behind it all, and what it says about society, Mental Floss has got you covered. They’ve been kind enough to publish a piece by me on the topic. Read more ›

Posted in Language and gender

Expats and immigrants: How we talk about human migration

Posted on March 15, 2015 by Nic Subtirelu — 12 Comments

On Friday, the Guardian published an article by Mawuna Remarque Koutonin arguing that the word expat (short for “expatriate”) is a label “reserved exclusively for western white people going to work abroad”. According to Koutonin, the word immigrant is set aside for everyone else — those considered to be part of ‘inferior races’. Read more ›

Tagged with: expats, immigration, language, Mawuna Remarque Koutonin, migration, race, social class
Posted in Language and race, Language and social class

Racism and the n-word are not the same thing.

Posted on March 11, 2015 by Nic Subtirelu — 1 Comment

The video above features Joe Scarborough and others making the claim that hip hop artists bear some responsibility for a bunch of University of Oklahoma fraternity members’ racist chant (surprisingly this show aired on MSNBC, the US’s allegedly left-leaning network). My immediate reaction to this was “I cannot even follow this argument. It bears absolutely no resemblance to the world in which I live”. If that’s your reaction, there’s nothing I will write here that you don’t already know. Feel free to navigate your browser ship to some other part of the Internet Sea. However, If your reaction is “I dunno I think Joe’s got a point”, well then hear me out. Read more ›

Tagged with: joe scarborough, morning joe, racism, sigma alpha epsilon, university of oklahoma
Posted in Language and race

Linguistic inequality: Spanish on the job market

Posted on February 28, 2015 by Nic Subtirelu — 15 Comments

I’ve taken a lot of foreign language classes in my life. At different times, I’ve studied German, French, Russian, Spanish, and Japanese. The teachers that I encountered in these classes, not to mention many of my colleagues now, frequently talk about the value of language learning and multilingualism. Among the many reasons we provide for why people should study languages is an economic advantage. Specifically, additional languages are supposed to serve as assets on the job market. Read more ›

Tagged with: bilingualism, careerbuilder, economics, income inequality, labor, linguistic inequality, linguistics, Spanish
Posted in Language and social class

Covering Baltimore: Protest or riot?

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“The most used words in men’s vs. women’s basketball coverage” up at Mental Floss

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Expats and immigrants: How we talk about human migration

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Racism and the n-word are not the same thing.

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Linguistic inequality: Spanish on the job market

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