Identity Performance among Black/Biracial Men through Intonation: Examining Pitch Accents and Peak Delay

The acoustic properties that listeners may rely on in both the production and perception of ethnolinguistic variation are an important yet poorly understood topic in modern sociolinguistics. Though several studies (Purnell, Idsardi and Baugh 1999, Tarone 1973, Walton and Orlikoff 1994) have found that individuals generally make accurate and reliable judgments of speaker ethnicity, scholars have had difficulty identifying the specific features that listeners react to in making judgments (Thomas 2015). There is also little research about the production side of these types of ethnic identification tasks and these studies have also often overlooked the potential role of intra-speaker variation in use of suprasegmental features. This study addresses this gap in the literature by focusing on two aspects of production that have been observed to differ between Mainstream U.S. English (MUSE) and African American Language (AAL): the use of the H* versus L+H* contours and length of peak delay interval. This analysis is based on a sample of eight male speakers with one black parent and one white parent and it specifically explores how these intonational features may be useful in the construction and performance of complex racial identities. Results of regression models indicate that these speakers do not employ pitch accent type in intraspeaker variation, but that they do differ in their use of peak delay, employing longer delay intervals in conversations with black interlocutors than in conversations with white interlocutors. Understanding how speakers employ these and other intonational variables in both intra- and interspeaker variation is an important step in further describing ethnolinguistic varieties as well as addressing the phonetic features that may contribute to linguistic racial profiling

“He Didn’(t) Give Up When Things Got Har(d)”: Examining Barack and Michelle Obama’s Rates of Coronal Stop Deletion

Coronal Stop Deletion (CSD) is well-documented in the sociolinguistic literature as both a dialect feature and as a variable prone to style-shifting (Guy 1980, Guy 1991a, Guy 1991b, Guy and Cutler 2011, Hazen 2011). This study compares deletion rates between Michelle and Barack Obama’s 2012 Democratic National Convention (DNC) speeches and their respective deletion rates in a 2012 joint interview on the television program, The View. As Barack and Michelle Obama are some of the most famous individuals in the world, examining differences in their linguistic behavior between an extremely formal setting (DNC Speeches) and a somewhat less formal setting (The View) sheds light on the style-shifting patterns of these public figures. In the most formal contexts, Barack and Michelle use rates of CSD that are higher than those attested for white speakers of Standard American English (SAE) in sociolinguistic interview situations and Barack and Michelle seem to be almost equally sensitive to speech situation as a conditioning factor for CSD. Deletion rates are also both affected by following phonological context for both Barack and Michelle, and their deletion by phonological context follows the patterns found in previous works (Guy 1980, Guy 1991a, Guy and Cutler 2011). Morphological category is also a significant factor conditioning deletion for Barack Obama but not for Michelle Obama, and her results by morphological category may indicate that she is employing a style more similar to African American English (AAE). The results also indicate that Barack and Michelle’s CSD patterns may also be partially attributable to style-shifting behaviors and/or dialect mixing between SAE and AAE

Which medicine? Whose standard? Critical reflections on medical integration in China

There is a prevailing conviction that if traditional medicine (TRM) or complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) are integrated into healthcare systems, modern scientific medicine (MSM) should retain its principal status. This paper contends that this position is misguided in medical contexts where TRM is established and remains vibrant. By reflecting on the Chinese policy on three entrenched forms of TRM (Tibetan, Mongolian and Uighur medicines) in western regions of China, the paper challenges the ideology of science that lies behind the demand that all traditional forms of medicine be evaluated and reformed according to MSM standards. Tibetan medicine is used as a case study to indicate the falsity of a major premise of the scientific ideology. The conclusion is that the proper integrative system for TRM and MSM is a dual standard based system in which both TRM and MSM are free to operate according to their own medical standards.published_or_final_versio

Assessing the Viability of Complex Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) with a Spatially Distributed Sensor Array for Imaging of River Bed Morphology: a Proof of Concept (Study)

This report was produced as part of a NERC funded ‘Connect A’ project to establish a new collaborative partnership between the University of Worcester (UW) and Q-par Angus Ltd. The project aim was to assess the potential of using complex Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) to image river bed morphology. An assessment of the viability of sensors inserted vertically into the channel margins to provide real-time or near real-time monitoring of bed morphology is reported. Funding has enabled UW to carry out a literature review of the use of EIT and existing methods used for river bed surveys, and outline the requirements of potential end-users. Q-par Angus has led technical developments and assessed the viability of EIT for this purpose. EIT is one of a suite of tomographic imaging techniques and has already been used as an imaging tool for medical analysis, industrial processing and geophysical site survey work. The method uses electrodes placed on the margins or boundary of the entity being imaged, and a current is applied to some and measured on the remaining ones. Tomographic reconstruction uses algorithms to estimate the distribution of conductivity within the object and produce an image of this distribution from impedance measurements. The advantages of the use of EIT lie with the inherent simplicity, low cost and portability of the hardware, the high speed of data acquisition for real-time or near real-time monitoring, robust sensors, and the object being monitored is done so in a non-invasive manner. The need for sophisticated image reconstruction algorithms, and providing images with adequate spatial resolution are key challenges. A literature review of the use of EIT suggests that to date, despite its many other applications, to the best of our knowledge only one study has utilised EIT for river survey work (Sambuelli et al 2002). The Sambuelli (2002) study supported the notion that EIT may provide an innovative way of describing river bed morphology in a cost effective way. However this study used an invasive sensor array, and therefore the potential for using EIT in a non-invasive way in a river environment is still to be tested. A review of existing methods to monitor river bed morphology indicates that a plethora of techniques have been applied by a range of disciplines including fluvial geomorphology, ecology and engineering. However, none provide non-invasive, low costs assessments in real-time or near real-time. Therefore, EIT has the potential to meet the requirements of end users that no existing technique can accomplish. Work led by Q-par Angus Ltd. has assessed the technical requirements of the proposed approach, including probe design and deployment, sensor array parameters, data acquisition, image reconstruction and test procedure. Consequently, the success of this collaboration, literature review, identification of the proposed approach and potential applications of this technique have encouraged the authors to seek further funding to test, develop and market this approach through the development of a new environmental sensor

Space-Time Clustering and Correlations of Major Earthquakes

Earthquake occurrence in nature is thought to result from correlated elastic stresses, leading to clustering in space and time. We show that occurrence of major earthquakes in California correlates with time intervals when fluctuations in small earthquakes are suppressed relative to the long term average. We estimate a probability of less than 1% that this coincidence is due to random clustering.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to PR

How Black Does Obama Sound Now?: Testing Listener Judgments of Intonation in Incrementally Manipulated Speech

Recent research in perceptual sociolinguistics has investigated a host of variables—primarily segmental—to assess the extent to which social meanings are constructed in perception similarly to the way they are constructed in ongoing production. Despite production research in sociolinguistics that has demonstrated how speakers use intonational variation to index various ethnic identities and social stances (Burdin 2015, Holliday 2016, Reed 2016), there has been a general lack of perceptual research on the social meanings of intonational variables. At the same time, research in perceptual sociolinguistics has not confronted the issue of whether social meanings are incremental—that is, does a more phonetically extreme token of a socially marked variable correspond to a stronger social meaning? We address these gaps in research by testing listener judgments of manipulations of Barack Obama\u27s utterances in one interview. In this perceptual task, critical stimuli were declarative Intonational Phrases with H* and/or L+H* pitch accents (Beckman et al. 2007) that were manipulated to four manipulation steps, with successively more extreme F0 maxima and minima with each step. Ninety-three American English listeners rated 80 critical stimuli and 40 filler stimuli (excerpted from the same interview of Obama) on the question, How Black does Obama sound here? , using a slider bar. A mixed-effects regression model was conducted for listener ratings of blackness by assessing the interaction of Phrase Type (H* only vs. L+H*) and Manipulation Step. Listeners perceived stimuli with at least one L+H* token as sounding more black than those without, but only for phrases with more phonetically extreme realizations of the L+H* contour. These results demonstrate that listeners are sensitive to stepwise manipulations of the F0 contour, indicating that incrementality affects social meanings of intonational variables and providing a promising new direction for studies on listener judgments of ethnicity

Earthquake forecasting and its verification

No proven method is currently available for the reliable short time prediction of earthquakes (minutes to months). However, it is possible to make probabilistic hazard assessments for earthquake risk. These are primarily based on the association of small earthquakes with future large earthquakes. In this paper we discuss a new approach to earthquake forecasting. This approach is based on a pattern informatics (PI) method which quantifies temporal variations in seismicity. The output is a map of areas in a seismogenic region (``hotspots'') where earthquakes are forecast to occur in a future 10-year time span. This approach has been successfully applied to California, to Japan, and on a worldwide basis. These forecasts are binary--an earthquake is forecast either to occur or to not occur. The standard approach to the evaluation of a binary forecast is the use of the relative operating characteristic (ROC) diagram, which is a more restrictive test and less subject to bias than maximum likelihood tests. To test our PI method, we made two types of retrospective forecasts for California. The first is the PI method and the second is a relative intensity (RI) forecast based on the hypothesis that future earthquakes will occur where earthquakes have occurred in the recent past. While both retrospective forecasts are for the ten year period 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2009, we performed an interim analysis 5 years into the forecast. The PI method out performs the RI method under most circumstances.Comment: 10(+1) pages, 5 figures, 2 tables. Submitted to Nonlinearl Processes in Geophysics on 5 August 200