Tomayto Tomahto

Talia Sherman

I say tomayto, but you say tomahto. Why? What cognitive, economic, racial, or social factors led you to say tomahto and I tomayto? How did you acquire the ability to produce and perceive coherent sentences? These are some questions that linguists attempt to answer scientifically. Led by Talia Sherman, a Brown University undergrad, this podcast explores language: what it is, how it works (both cognitively and in practice), and its relationship to politics, history, law, pedagogy, AI, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, critical theory, and more!

  1. 26 JUIL.

    Language Ideologies w/ Savithry Namboodiripad

    “And that’s what ideologies are: the air that you’re breathing, something that feels like it’s common sense.” From start to finish, this episode is about ideologies: their consequences, their makeup, and the struggle to shake their influence. Savithry Namboodiripad, an associate professor of Linguistics at UMichigan leverages her linguistics background to critique ideologies of the native speaker, monolingualism, multilingualism, and more. Her research often proceeds on two separate tracks: studying language (usually syntax or language contact), and studying the field of linguistics: where our received theoretical framings come from, and how to reach stronger conclusions based on multi-disciplinary evidence. In this episode, we discuss how to dismantle pernicious ideologies through better experimental design and theoretical framing, and then we get to questions that are far greater than just the field of linguistics. For instance, why must we always get to the “pure” natural object? How have ideas about language always transcended academic discourse? Throughout, we express a lot of frustration at the academic frameworks that neglect to unsettle eugenicist, misogynistic, or racist ideologies. But it’s important to remember that linguistics is not alone in its failure. Science needs variables, and society provides them. Frameworks make things make sense, so they stay. Linguistics is caught in limbo between formal failures and the impositions of our content: language.  Savithry Namboodiripad  The ROLE Collective  Contact, Cognition, & Change Lab  Rejecting nativeness to produce a more accurate and just Linguistics  Towards a Decolonial Syntax: Research, Teaching, Publishing | Decolonizing Linguistics  Why we need a gradient approach to word order Mother Tongues and Nations: The Invention of the Native Speaker  The Emergence of the English Native Speaker: A Chapter in Nineteenth-Century Linguistic Thought

    59 min

  2. 19 MAI

    The AI Con w/ Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna

    The AI Con may as well be the answer to the question: what happens when a linguist and a sociologist come together to write a book? Co-written by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, The AI Con isn’t just a book, it’s an instruction manual to guide readers through this era of AI hype. In short, this book does what academic scholarship does best: close read texts, historical patterns, marketing schemes, statistics, politics, and more—and find a way to connect these granular details and examples to broader trends in our society. The AI Con sits along this continuum between close reading and abstraction. It’s a book about “AI” technology, yes, but it’s also about the demands of an economy that values human labor and intelligence less and less. It’s a book about the ideals of democracy conflicting with economic pressures; the mutually determining relationship between worldviews and technology, or technology and institutional priorities; the power of technology if people have autonomy over it; and the problems with western epistemological orientations when they are imposed via technology onto populations and individuals who never consented for this technology to be imposed on them. This book is about a lot. But it’s also funny, and witty, and accessible, and written with the best intentions. Throughout this episode, Emily and Alex discuss their writing process, the pernicious economic undercurrents that paved the way for this AI hype era, contrasting epistemological orientations, how technology perpetuates societal biases, and much more.  The AI Con Alex Hanna Emily M. Bender  Sébastien Bubeck, et al, Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4 Ruha Benjamin, Race After Technology  Virginia Eubanks, Automating Inequality  The Less People Know About AI, the More They Like It Ars technica: “Most Americans think AI won’t improve their lives, survey says” Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass  Tomayto Tomahto is produced, written, and edited by Talia Sherman. Artwork by Maja Mishevska.

    1 h 7 min

  3. 1 AVR.

    Philosophy of Language w/ Justin Khoo

    Justin Khoo, an associate professor of Philosophy at MIT, begins this episode with the assertion that philosophy asks the most fundamental questions we can possibly articulate—but this assertion is not innocent. Asking the most fundamental questions we can possibly articulate may come at the cost of undermining conceptual, schematic, ideological, and often disciplinary frameworks upon which scientific findings are predicated. Through discussion of code speech, political speech, philosophy of language, aesthetic objects, hypothetical epistemic advantages, and the foundations of our current political (dis)order, this episode draws attention to stubborn frameworks and axioms, not necessarily undermining them, but questioning their validity and utility. This episode at times historicizes, allegorizes, analytically analyzes, narrativizes, and outright complains about the objects we're discussing—be it the referents of language or a film or a quote by Trump or the blind-spots of a discipline. The very fact of our discussion of the so-upheld "distinctions" between various methodologies and ideological orientations demonstrates the apparent need for a division among academic disciplines—but why? If there's a degree of meta-discourse throughout this episode, it's in reference to our frightening political climate. Parts of the world are literally on fire and yet we pontificate about Trump's contradictions and the subversive strategy of code speech. I want to acknowledge this tension, and optimistically suggest that perhaps exposing contradictions or calling out hypocrisy is a small act of resistance, even if it does project the frame of rationality on completely irrational actions. Justin's Website  3am interview  Judging for Ourselves Political and Coded Speech Willard Van Orman Quine ; Two Dogmas of Empiricism Peter Van Inwagen Michael Lynch: Trump, Truth, and the Power of Contradiction Jason Stanley: Democracy and the Demagogue ‘You Can’t Pin Him Down’: Trump’s Contradictions Are His Ultimate Cover Jennifer Lackey: Acting on Knowledge Justin's podcast: Cows in the Field  Minority Report  The Shining  Artwork: Maja Mishevska, Brown '27

    1 h 22 min

  4. 10 MARS

    Neurolinguistics, Phonetics, and Language Change w/ Chiara Repetti-Ludlow

    Throughout this episode, Chiara Repetti-Ludlow, a postdoctoral research fellow at Carnegie Mellon's Neuroscience Institute, asks us to consider the essentials of speech processing and its constraints. We hear phonetics, but we understand phonology. How and why? To answer those questions, Chiara takes a highly interdisciplinary approach. We know that linguistics is an interdisciplinary field—it has to be. We can't divorce language from its cognitive, physical, and social apparatuses, nor can language be extricated from human interaction. But academic inquiry has a way of siloing different subfields. And, frankly, it's easier to stick to a rigid set of questions and methodologies. Chiara Repetti-Ludlow's research is exactly what we often hope for in linguistics: interdisciplinary, multi-textured, and conscious of the strengths of different subfields. By bringing together methods and insights from neurolinguistics, phonetics-phonology, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics, Chiara's research attempts to answer granular questions about speech processing. Chiara is a current postdoctoral research fellow in the Carnegie Mellon University Neuroscience Institute. She earned her PhD in Linguistics at NYU. Chiara’s Website Continuous Perception and Graded Categorization: Electrophysiological Evidence for a Linear Relationship Between the Acoustic Signal and Perceptual Encoding of Speech Regularization in the face of variable input: Children's acquisition of stem-final fricative plurals in American English Variable stem-final fricative voicing in American English plurals: Different pa[ð ~ θ]s of change Sahil Lutha

    38 min

  5. 2 FÉVR.

    Education, Anthropology, and Schoolishness with Susan Blum

    In early 2023, Susan Blum came on Tomayto Tomahto to discuss linguistic anthropology. 2 years later, she's back to discuss her work on schoolishness, ungrading, and linguistic ideology. From plagiarism to authentic learning, imperialist language ideologies to biased methods and metrics of Western science, this episode looks critically at what we "know," how we know it, and where the perpetuation of knowledge might hinder new discoveries. Science promises objectivity, but does it deliver? How might anthropology promise subjectivity, deliver complexity, but ultimately nudge our cultural, psychology, and linguistic understandings toward objectivity?  We can be angry with students for cheating and we can lament the existence of AI for aiding and abetting—or we can ask: why are students cheating in the first place? Surely there’s something amiss with our education system that a substantial portion of students feel no intrinsic motivation to learn and therefore happily outsource their essays and projects, right? Combining questions of methods, results, epistemological orientations, and the political ramifications of research, this episode highlights the merits of an anthropological approach to learning, language, and inquiry.  Susan Blum's personal website; Notre Dame profile Schoolishness: Alienated Education and the Quest for Authentic, Joyful Unseen WEIRD Assumptions: The So-Called Language Gap Discourse and Ideologies of Language, Childhood, and Learning John Warner: More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI Asao Inoue: Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom, 2nd Edition Contract Cheating Émile Durkheim: Collective Effervescence ⁠Charles Briggs⁠ ⁠William Labov ⁠

    45 min

  6. 19/12/2024

    Communicating Climate Science w/ Josh Willis (NASA)

    A defining quirk of fields like English, Linguistics, Comparative Literature, etc is that the the objects of study mirror the medium through which the objects of study are explicated. Literary scholars produce literature to explain literature. We explain language through language, not always the same language,  but a linguistic medium matches a linguistic medium nonetheless. Climate change is not the same as language, not at all. So why is it that we make sense of our climate through language? Josh Willis, a Principle Research Scientist at NASA joins Tomayto Tomahto to discuss the communications war of global warming (or is it climate change?). We discuss why the explanatory language of global warming can be exclusionary or inaccessible and weigh the benefits of using plain-er language. Ultimately, it’s on hegemonic systems and power structures, not individuals, to reduce our global emissions, so why is it that individuals feel such pressure to  make consequentially sustainable consumer choices?  Josh Willis studies ocean warming and rising sea levels at NASA. He also teaches improv. His research profile can be found here Frank Luntz Jihad vs. McWorld

    41 min

  7. 14/10/2024

    A Raciolinguistic Perspective with Jonathan Rosa

    "What frame allows you to take seriously the consequence of ideological overdetermination without conceding that it has a reality or a natural position?” This is one of many questions that Jonathan Rosa poses throughout this episode. What perspective allows us to see race and language as ontologically overdetermined without essentializing that overdetermination to the point of inextricability? Taking a few steps back, this episode is largely about questions and questioning. Why have certain fields maintained the practice of using race as a variable, thereby stabilizing the idea of race? Whose interests are served by entrenching the categories of race, ethnicity, and so on? Through discussion of a raciolinguistic perspective and its reception, raciontology and ontological overdetermination, and critique of power in general, this episode centers around hierarchies of the human and the problems that humans are made into based on their particular position within hierarchies. Rather than viewing race, ethnicity, disability, (fill in the blank), as intersectional phenomena, Jonathan asks that we move instead towards thinking of identity as a process of interconnection, and question the goal of intersectionality as a framework. For me, this all comes down to a rather unsettling problem: what if the inequities, pernicious ideologies, and their enabling structural frameworks aren't dismantled but rather perpetrated through the academic inquiry that originally sought to obliterate them? And what if that academic inquiry still purports to serve a remedial, ameliorative function? What then? This isn't to say everything is a paradox; this is to say that paradoxes abound. Description can become prescription. So if nothing else, I invite you to struggle through the frustration of irony. I invite you to squirm at the failures of academic inquiry and hegemonic ideas which have prevailed for quite some time. But hopefully we'll get to better questions and answers, and perhaps better ways of failing. Jonathan Rosa is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford. He is the author of a terrific book, Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race. I recommend reading it. Jonathan Rosa Stanford profile, all publications Kesha Fikes The Viral Underclass by Steven Thrasher Beyond Yellow English: Towards a Linguistic Anthropology of Asian Pacific America Angela Reyes' Language and Ethnicity Wesley Leonard Black Skin, White Masks Ana Celia Zentella's Puerto Rican Code Switching Labov's '4th Floor' Study Michael Berman's Toward a Linguistic Anthropological Approach to Listening Josh Babcock's Toward a “Both-And” Semiotics of Intersectionality: Raciolinguistics beyond White Settler-Colonial Situations

    1 h 16 min

  8. 29/06/2024

    Language and Law w/ Alex Walker: Part 2: Optimality Theory and the Tapestry of Law

    While legal academia is no stranger to questions of linguistics, it has been estranged (until now) from the practice of adopting linguistic theory and methods. In Part 2 of our conversation, Alex Walker and I discuss the implications of applying optimality theory (OT) to law. By utilizing the formalism of OT, Alex argues our entire legal system and conceptualization of law will change for the better. Rather than conceptualizing law as a set of rules, Alex argues we should view law as a tapestry of ordered preferences. For example, during the 51 years that Roe v. Wade dictated the “rules,” anti-abortion laws were never repealed or struck down, they were simply suppressed. Our system has never been about any given rule, but rather about the multitude of preferences continually shifting in their hierarchy. From AI judges to forum shopping, OT has something to offer the legal system both practically and Platonically.  Somewhat ironically—perhaps paradoxically—I’ve found that the application of OT to law pushes legal questions further away from linguistic ones. If law is about consequences and outcomes and why those outcomes exist, then it’s not really about the semantic change of a singular noun or the bounds of an entailment condition, right? And if law’s fulcrum isn’t language, then perhaps our legal outcomes—our laws, current precedent, and so on—shouldn’t be predicated upon questions of linguistics or deontological “rules.” But in order to come to that conclusion, perhaps we need the formalism of a linguistic theory.  Watch a short video on optimality theory here  Read about optimality theory  Alex Walker’s website  Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins Asking ChatGPT for the Ordinary Meaning of Statutory Terms Stare Decisis  The history of Arizona’s Civil War-era Abortion Ban Center for Law, Brain & Behavior

    45 min
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À propos

I say tomayto, but you say tomahto. Why? What cognitive, economic, racial, or social factors led you to say tomahto and I tomayto? How did you acquire the ability to produce and perceive coherent sentences? These are some questions that linguists attempt to answer scientifically. Led by Talia Sherman, a Brown University undergrad, this podcast explores language: what it is, how it works (both cognitively and in practice), and its relationship to politics, history, law, pedagogy, AI, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, critical theory, and more!

Informations

  • Création
    Talia Sherman
  • Années d’activité
    2022 - 2025
  • Épisodes
    31
  • Classification
    Contenu explicite
  • Copyright
    © Talia Sherman
  • Site web de l’émission
    Tomayto Tomahto