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Ep. 36: The Social Science of Dialects with Dr. Christine Mallinson: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

Ep. 36: The Social Science of Dialects with Dr. Christine Mallinson

Amy Barnes34min

Dr. Ian Anson

00:04

Hello and welcome to Retrieving the Social Sciences, a production of the Center for Social Science Scholarship. I'm your host, Ian Anson, Associate Professor of Political Science here at UMBC. On today's show, as always, we'll be hearing from UMBC faculty, students, visiting speakers, and community partners about the social science research they've been performing in recent times. Qualitative, quantitative, applied, empirical, normative. On Retrieving the Social Sciences, we bring the best of UMBC's social science community to you.

Dr. Ian Anson

00:39

When I first moved to North Carolina as an impressionable, 11 year old, I swiftly realized that there would be a period of cultural transition. Not only were the kids in my neighborhood far more interested in things like college basketball and warm weather hobbies like surfing and swimming than I was, but I sometimes found that the other kids could instantly identify me as someone apart whenever I opened my mouth. I mean, they asked questions that I couldn't always answer like, who do you pull for? A question that normally had only three possible answers that I didn't know about: UNC, Duke, or NC State. But even when they asked me more conventional questions like hey, what's your favorite Pokemon? I would often get sideways glances when I would respond to the tune of "oh, Pikachu don't you know." And by the time I turned 12, those long Minnesotan vows had been remodeled into something more appropriate for the suddenly muddled dialect of Raleigh, where kids from the midwest and the northeast are moving at a record pace.

Dr. Ian Anson

01:36

You know, my dialect story is a fairly innocuous one, but it signals something vital that I remember it so clearly. Dialects are vital outward aspects of our social selves. But where did they come from? And how can social science, most notably sociology, help us understand their consequences? To unpack these questions, I'm delighted to bring you my recent conversation with Dr. Christine Mallinson, Professor of Language, Literacy, and Culture at UMBC, affiliate professor of Gender and Women's Studies, and Special Assistant for Research and Creative Achievement in the Office for the Vice President of Research. And you know, not only is Dr. Mallinson an accomplished researcher who has published several important books on dialects and language, she's also the director of our very own Center for Social Science Scholarship, the sponsor of this podcast. So it's long overdue for Dr. Mallinson to appear on this show, and that's why I'd like to bring you our recent interview right now.

Dr. Ian Anson

02:42

Today, I am really delighted to welcome Dr. Christine Mallinson, who is not only our featured guest for today's episode, but also the director of the Center for Social Science Scholarship. Dr. Mallinson, first of all, thank you for all of your great support of the podcast, we're super grateful that we're able to do this under the aegis of CS3. But also thank you so much for being here as well.

Dr. Christine Mallinson

03:04

Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Ian Anson

03:06

Yeah, in a way, it's kind of a long time coming, right. So it's, I'm really grateful that we have you today. And, of course, to talk about some of the fascinating work that you're doing on dialects, on accents, on language features, how those things differ, where they come from. There's so much that I want to jump into with this because I think it's a topic that you know, everyone can relate to, right? We all have this notion, we hear different dialects, different accents in film and television. It's a it's a fascinating topic. And you know, I want to start out just asking you a little bit of the broadest kind of possible set of questions about this, which is to ask you where accents even come from, right> How is it that we have these differences in our languages? And why do they tend to evolve that way? And why do we end up having these differences where we can pinpoint, you know, who sounds like what and be able to associate them with various areas or various, even other social descriptors?

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