Further ponderings on sociolinguistics in service of customer relations

I mentioned briefly in my epic post below that I would often use younger vocal patterns when working in fast food, because my customers seemed more comfortable with that.

When I'm shopping, I find that I'm generally more comfortable with salesmen whom I perceive to be gay, rhan with salesmen whom I perceive to be straight. I tend to lower my shields in the presence of gay. And, rational or not, if I'm shopping for clothes or shoes and cosmetics and I don't perceive the salesman to be gay, my shields are going up to maximum. Accordingly, I have also noticed that when I'm shopping for clothes or shoes or cosmetics, the majority of salesmen do come across as gay.

I have only discussed this with a few other women, but among my small sample group there is 100% consensus that gay is preferable at best and neutral at worst. This would suggest that there might be some benefit for a man working in sales of products intended for women to come across as gay.

So I wonder how many of these men are actually gay, and how many are affecting some gay inflections to put their customers at ease? Salespeople smile and say "Can I help you" and are generally friendly to put their customers at ease, so why not also adopt an inflection or two?

Young speech markers

The Star has an article on markers of young speech and how people interpret them. As I have most of these verbal tics myself, and most often use them very deliberately to communicate something specific, I thought I'd provide a handy translation reference.

So/such: "This chocolate is so good." "This is such good chocolate."

So/such is stronger than very. So means it's so good I'm enthusiastic about it. It's so adjective that emotions are involved. "She's a very good translator" means just that - she is more competent than average, but I'm surrounded by above-average people so I'm not impressed. "She is so good at medical translation," or "She is such a good translator," means I am rather in awe of her abilities.

Like: There are several distinct uses here.

"He's like, 'Are you kidding?'"

The implication of the quotative like is that I'm doing more than just quoting. I'm sort of acting out the role of the person I'm quoting. The person in question may or may not have said those exact words "Are you kidding?" but that is quite obviously what he meant. When I "quote" him using the quotative like, I use the vocal inflections and facial expressions that correspond with his "Are you kidding?" If I were to utter the sentence "He said, 'Are you kidding?'" I wouldn't be animated - there would be no vocal inflection or facial expressions." Note that "He goes..." can be used interchangeable with "He's like,..." in this context.

"He's like..." can also be used when nothing was uttered, to describe what the individual would have uttered if they had spoken. "I shook the baby's hand, and he was like, 'OMG, what just happened?'" Whether or not there was actually an utterance is usually clear by context. "He was all..." can be used interchangeably with "He was like..." in this nonverbal context.

"He weighed, like, 300 pounds."

This has two possible interpretations: He weighs approximately 300 pounds, or he is just heavy and the speaker is exaggerating for effect. I will distinguish between the two with two more examples:

"It costs, like, 20 dollars." It might cost $18 or $23, I don't remember exactly. The "like" tells you that I'm giving you a ballpark. In this case, I'm not too impressed with the 20 dollars - I'm waving my hand dismissively as I say it, with the corresponding tone of voice. However, people might also use this when they're impressed. "Condos in that building start at, like, two million!" That's a lot of money, so I'm impressed. The like means that it's approximate, but it also serves as a bit of a dramatic pause before I give you the big number.

"Under normal circumstances, Harry Potter would make a good teenage boyfriend, but as it stands he's too busy being, like, the messiah." While Harry Potter is, literally, "like the messiah," that's not what I mean here. In this case, the "like" introduces hyperbole or sarcasm or irony or some other literary technique. It's done entirely with tone of voice, so it varies greatly selon context. In "He weighed, like, 300 pounds!" the speaker is probably exaggerating to make the point that he's heavy. The "like" itself doesn't do this - you also need tone of voice and context. Note that sometimes (but not always!) the "like" can be replaced by "all." The "like" has to be verbally offset with commas, the "all" does not. Example: "The only person I know who's going to be at that wedding is the bride, and she's going to be busy all getting married." OR "...she's going to be busy, like, getting married."

All of these uses are very deliberate - I am choosing to use the word "like" to contribute something to the connotations of my sentence. However, I also use it as a verbal tic when I'm nervous, the same way other people would use "um". If I'm using it as an "um", the flow of my sentence is interrupted (not by deliberate pacing decisions) and I'm probably waving my hands around a bit too. Please note that when I use "like" when I'm trying to think of a word, it isn't a sign of deficient vocabulary, but rather a sign of introvert brain. I most likely know the word, it just isn't coming to me. I couldn't tell you whether or not this fumbling use of like applies to other people or if it's just something I do.

Upspeak: "Hi, I'd like to open a new account?"

Upspeak isn't, in and of itself, a sign of insecurity. It could be described as seeking approval, but not in the way they mean in the article. It is, in fact, a request for acknowledgement. It means "Are you following me?" or "Please confirm that you understand what I've said so far, so I know whether I need to make clarification or whether I can proceed with my next point." It might also mean I expect you to take the lead in the transaction - like if I've just walked into your bank and asked to open a new account. If I'm uncertain about my point, I'll make it clear to you by using words to that effect. If the tone of my speech rises towards the end of the sentence, it just means I am expecting you to say or do something, and am putting my next sentence on hold until I get the expected reaction. If I am actually feeling insecure, I am more inclined to control my upspeak, although I will still use it to request acknowledgement when necessary.

I'm likely to use a lot of upspeak if I'm trying to explain something to someone step by step. For example:

"So you look behind your toilet? And there's a pipe going from the wall to the toilet tank? And this pipe has a horizontal component and a vertical component? Now see the joint where the horizontal and the vertical meet? There's a nut on the vertical section, right at the joint? Now, are there any signs of damage on that nut?"

Some of these are questions, but most are requests for acknowledgement. I'm not going to go through the whole spiel unless I know that you're looking at your toilet and following what I'm saying. I'm absolutely confident in my description - I had a problem with that very part just last week - but I don't want to be asking you if the nut is damaged when you're still trying to locate the pipe I mean. A more pedestrian example of this is how I give my phone number: "416? 555? 1234." I upspeak the first two sections to make sure the person has them written down before I proceed to the next section.

So why would I use these speech markers when I know that older people take them as a sign of ditziness? I can circumlocute them in most cases (although I cannot entirely eliminate upspeak as a request for acknowledgement), but I often choose not to, for a number of possible reasons:

1. I'm comfortable around my interlocutor, so I'm acting naturally.
2. The situation requires deference on my part. I often made my voice and mannerisms more youthful when I was in working in fast food, because customers in that area seemed to have a need to feel superior to their local fast-food workers, and seemed to subconsciously take offence when I used my natural mannerisms. I also use youthful mannerisms in combination with puppy-head-tilt-confused question-asking when someone who "outranks" me is dead wrong, but it would be impolitic for me to say "You're wrong." Passive-aggressive, but effective. Luckily I'm still young enough to get away with this - I'll need a different strategy for when I get older.
3. I am ignorant, and want to exaggerate that fact. I often do this when dealing with things that I do not fully understand when I wish to maintain my interlocutor's goodwill. For example, I use this strategy when I have to call my superintendant on an emergency basis but I'm not 100% sure whether the problem requires immediate attention. "Sorry to bother you, but I have no idea how to fix it or what to do next! Oh, it's not a big emergency? I'm terribly sorry, I don't know anything about plumbing, I had no way of knowing!" My super is more likely to be forgiving about this when it's clear I'm ignorant but well-intentioned. If I eliminated all my youthful speech patterns when making this request, I'd come across as rather demanding, which isn't how I want to be perceived when I've just disturbed the super during off-hours. Same thing goes when I'm trying to get my dentist to explain the proposed treatment plan for the third time.
4. I am attempting to develop a rapport with my interlocutor by speaking to them as I do to a friend. This is the same idea as the customer-service theory that tells people to smile and address the customer by their first name. Just as I call my friends and contemporaries by their first name (and tutoyer them when speaking non-English languages), I use youthful speech patterns without hesitation. By doing so with my elders, I'm attempting to strengthen relationships by drawing them in as co-conspirators. I use this as a networking tool, just as I'd share a humorous anecdote or forward an interesting website.

How to make World Cup more interesting

France and Italy are in the World Cup final.

France and Italy both traditionally wear blue uniforms.

They have prepared for this eventuality and there are variations on the uniforms available so they will be sufficiently differentiated, but I don't think they should do this. I think they should both be blue, and be somewhat difficult to tell apart - just as an extra bit of challenge. They're both obviously very good, so let's add this little something extra to shake things up a bit.

Autoharmony

I just discovered I can sing one note while whistling another note, providing I sing "Doo doo doo" and not actual words (so as to keep my mouth in a whistling position).

This would be incredibly cool if I were physically capable of whistling more than one different note, but unfortunately I can only whistle one note, and can't even change that while I'm not simulataneously singing.

A simple solution to a problem that does not exist in reality

Star Trek often has plots about whether artificial life forms (like androids, clones, holograms, etc.) should have human* rights, or whether they should be considered objects or property.

I have a simple test for this:

Any lifeform that has a sufficiently sentient to come up with the idea that it should have human rights, is therefore sentient enough to deserve human rights.

*Yes, I realize that in Star Trek many of the life forms with human rights aren't humans, but I don't know what the standard phrase is in the 24th century. My terminology database doesn't come with time travel capabilities.

A research project for the Freakonomists

Freakonomics mentions in passing that in Switzerland, every adult male is issued an assault rifle for the purposes of militia service, and they are permitted to keep them at home. They then mention that Switzerland has a low gun crime rate, but don't go into the details because they're more focusing on the US.

This raises a serious question though: every adult male has an assault rifle in their home. So what about women? Are single women more likely to be victims of crime than in other countries? Do robbers scan the death ads looking for new widows to rob after the militia comes and takes away their late husband's assault rifle? Are women more likely to seek out male roommates? Do single mothers encourage their adult sons to continue living at home? Are women more likely to go straight from their husband's house to their father's house? How does this affect domestic violence? How does this affect gang violence? Do men with disabilities that prevent them from serving in the militia also get an assault rifle? If not, are they more likely to be victims of crime? Can women serve in the militia if they choose? Can they get a free assault rifle anyway, just to even things up?

Perhaps the omnipresence of firearms does help reduce gun crime overall - Freakonomics doesn't make it clear whether this was cause and effect or just correlation, and I'm in no position to speculate - but how does it affect crime against those who don't or are unlikely to have a firearm in the home?

MIlitary atrocities: the big questions

The big questions we need to ask about military atrocities, inspired by this post from We Move To Canada.

To what extent is the military an attractive job to the kind of person who would commit atrocities, and to what extent does military training and culture create the kind of people who would create atrocities? Or does the military contain the same proportion of atrocity-inclined people as the general population, and simply provide them with more opportunities to create atrocities?

If atrocity-inclination is a result of training and/or culture, what aspects of training/culture produce this, and what purpose do these aspects serve (i.e. why are they there in the first place)? How can the military fill the need that is currently filled by these atrocity-producing aspects without encouraging atrocities?

If atrocity-inclination is a result of recruits' personalities going in, how can military training and culture supress or remove this aspect of their personalities?* Does the military benefit from this aspect of their personalities, or is it a liability for them? If the military does benefit, how can they retain the benefits while removing the atrocity-inclination?

If military people are more inclined to atrocities than the general population, do they retain this once they return to the general population? Do they commit atrocities (likely on smaller scale due to circumstances) when in the general population? If so, how can they be reintegrated so they can function normally in civilian society without wanting to commit atrocities (not that civilian society deserves more protection from atrocities than people in war zones - atrocities are atrocities - but I have a feeling that separate approaches might be needed because they are such different environments).

*According to a course I took on institutional environments, taught by an ex-servicemember who was also an academic authority on the subject, the purpose of military training is to break down the recruit's own personality, and then build them back up as the kind of person that the military wants them to be.** This is why I do not think it is unreasonable to expect military training to be able to change recruits' personalities.

**Further questions, unrelated to the topic of atrocities: what is the self-esteem level of new recruits like? I don't claim to have the healthiest self-esteem in the world, but what I find most unappealing about the idea of boot camp (apart from the usual conflicts with my pacifist ethics and phobic sensibilities) is that it is so dehumanizing. I have no desire to work for any organization that would treat me with anything less than basic human respect. If I wanted to be abused and treated like garbage, I'd go back to middle school. So what are people thinking when they willingly signed up to be abused into submission? Do they think themselves so worthless that they deserve to be treated like that? Do they think themselves so great that they won't be treated like garbage? Do they dissociate? Are they already the kind of personality that the military wants them to be?

Confidence

This has nothing to do with anything, I was just doing the dishes and suddenly thought of a way to articulate a concept I was trying to explain a long time ago, but couldn't find the words.

Some people say that women find confidence attractive in men. I can't speak for other women, but I personally don't agree - I find that if there's enough confidence to be noticeable, it's generally a sign that the guy is a cocky asshole.

There's a certain amount of confidence required to go about everyday life and to do everyday things. This standard amount of confidence is unremarkable, because it's simply enough to function without difficulties. Because it is unremarkable, we don't notice it, just as we don't notice when a person has the physical ability to walk down the street carrying their purse. However, we do notice if a person has more confidence or less confidence than this standard amount, just as we notice if a person is physically incapable of walking, or if they're an amazing athlete and are walking twice as fast as everyone else while carrying a couch or something.

So when we notice how confident someone is and think "Wow, he sure is confident," that means he has significantly more confidence than is required for everyday life. In my personal experience, this extra confidence tends to manifest itself in a sense of entitlement, which seems to translate into a lack of consideration or thoughtfulness for others. (Fun fact: Roget's Thesaurus judges overconfidence even more harshly.) Being inconsiderate or thoughtless is not something I want in a mate, or a friend, or an acquaintance, or a person in my general vincinity, so when someone is confident enough that I notice their confidence, I take that as a sign that I should turn away.

While regular everyday functional confidence is certainly a convenient thing to have in a mate (or a friend, or an acquaintance, or a person in my general vincinity), it is so...default that I would never think to list it among things I find attractive, like how I'd never think to mention that I find it attractive when people have both their eyes, even though I am utterly, viscerally, irrationally repulsed by the thought of empty eye sockets and therefore would never consider pursuing a relationship (in the broadest sense of the word) with someone who was missing an eye.

Biking on the road

Many people don't like it when people ride bikes on the sidewalk, and say they should ride on the road instead. The law generally supports this.

But what about children?

Obviously, no one would think it's reasonable to have a four-year-old on training wheels, or a six-year-old who's just got her training wheels off, riding on the street, and only the crummiest curmudgeon would begrudge them use of the sidewalk. And obviously a 16-year-old should be on the road just like an adult, and if they were on the sidewalk everyone would go into Kids These Days mode.

But where's the dividing line?

I seem to recall that I was riding solo on residential side streets at the age of 10 or so, but I don't know when I started learning. I've never been fully comfortable with busier streets, although riding on the sidewalks of those streets would be terribly inconsiderate because the sidewalks are equally busy. (Unless you're in, like, Meadowlands, and then there's no one on the sidewalks anyway. But the SUVs would probably yell at you to get a car, because they're so threatened by non-cars. But I digress.)

Personally, I have felt threatened by way more cars while biking on the street than by bikes while walking on the sidewalk, so I have no problem with people biking on the sidewalk - so I'm inclined to lean in the direction of staying on the sidewalk for longer. But at what age does conventional wisdom imbue people with the responsibility of biking on the road at all times?

Mmmmm, biblioteka! (aka: the most unnecessary act of translation ever)

Being the geek that I am, I have translated spoken part of the French baguette commercial into Polish. My computer can't do Polish diacritics (not even with ASCII codes), so if you can actually read Polish, you'll have to fill in the blanks with your imagination.

Dzien dobry
Nazywam sie Bill
Gdzie jest Pierre?
Pierre jest w lazienki
Pracuje w dyskoteki
Niech otwiera okno, bezplatny!
Sok maliny!
Mmmm, biblioteka!

Open challenge: translate this text into the language of your choice, and post it on your blog. If you don't understand the French, I'll provide an English translation upon request.

Proof that if there is a god, it is not benevolant

Lightning is beautiful and dangerous.

Thunder is just loud and useless.

Lightning comes before thunder.

If the universe were really created by a benevolant, omniscient deity, the thunder would come first, to so we would have a warning of the approaching lightning. That way, we could look out the window to see the cool lightning and/or protect ourselves from the danger. As it stands, the lightning is over in, literally, a flash, and then there's some useless noise that only serves to frighten dogs. A truly considerate deity would have made the thunder come first.

Poetry reading

Imagine the poem "This Is Just To Say," by William Carlos Williams, being read aloud by Alan Rickman, using his Severus Snape voice.

Cranes

Do cranes have lightning rods? Right now, the tallest thing in a one-block radius is a crane.

The problem with poor judgement

I hate it when people who are supposed to be smart show poor judgement, because that puts me in a terribly awkward position. You see, I've always found it terribly insulting to be told the obvious, as though I were completely incapable of anticipating natural consequences. "Drive carefully!" Well golly, I never thought of that! Here I was planning to drive recklessly! "Put some ice on it!" Wow, good idea, and to think I was going to fix it by running a marathon! "Drink plenty of fluids and get a good night's sleep!" Oh really? And I always thought the solution was to stay awake and dehydrated!

Because I so dislike being told the obvious, I try my very best not to tell other people things they should already know, unless I am absolutely certain that they don't actually know for whatever reason. It does sometimes occur to me to tell people obvious things, but I try very hard to bite my tongue, as a gesture of respect. In the same vein, whenever someone who I know is smart enough to anticipate the consequences is preparing to do something for which I can see potential negative consequences, I do my very best not to nag them about these consequences, trying instead to assume that, being the intelligent person they are, they have obviously thoroughly assessed the situation and have determined it to be an acceptable risk. I do this because it is how I want other people to treat me, and I don't want to go around treating other people in a manner that I would consider disrespectful if I were treated that way.

Because of all this, I HATE it when someone who is smart and competent and should be able to anticipate and weigh consequences doesn't do so, especially when they're someone who is so smart and competent that I generally should defer to them in everyday matters. This makes me feel like I should have pointed out the consequences, even though I would have considered it insulting to do so. Then, in the future, whenever I see obvious potential consequences to their actions, I'm left wondering if I should point them out. On one hand, they have shown a track record of not being able to anticipate consequences. On the other hand, if they have already anticipated these consequences, I consider it insulting and disrespectful to point them out.

Musings

When I first started my job, three years ago, it seemed impossible. I felt like it would be ages before I could achieve what was expected of me, if ever.

Now I'm doing what's expected of me, and I believe I'm doing it adequately (certainly haven't received any indications to the contrary), but I don't feel like it's anything special.

This would probably indicate that I have more skills than I did three years ago, but I don't feel like I do. I have more experience, more familiarity with common genres, more familiarity with what kinds of situations are likely to cause me to make mistakes, but I'm not doing anything special. And I don't know when it became nothing special. Probably when our team* suddenly shrank - there was no time to fret over how I didn't know how to do anything, the deadlines were piling up and it had to get done. So I just kind of muddled through, did the best I could, and it somehow ended up being satisfactory.

*Aside: my father has this thing, where whenever I use the word team, he keeps trying to convince me that my work team isn't a really a team, via some definition that he read in some book. And apparently if I can't rattle offthat definition word for word, nothing I say about anything counts for anything, and I must defer to him about my team not being a team, despite the fact that he has no idea how things are even done in my workplace. And people wonder why I moved out.

How do you get to be a Starfleet captain when you're missing vital life experiences????

In the episode of TNG when Counselor Troi has a baby, her son gets to play with puppies in the little preschool/daycare thing they have on the Enterprise. Then later he's talking to Captain Picard, and asks him if he's ever played with puppies.

Picard says he hasn't.

HE HAS NEVER PLAYED WITH PUPPIES! HOW do you get to be, what, 50 years old - not to mention a Starfleet captain - without having EVER played with puppies?????

Half-formed thought

Every time there's a slow news day, some media outlet or another publishes an article about how Kids Today (i.e. young adults) aren't "becoming grown-ups" despite the fact that they're legally adults.

Have you ever noticed that the definition of "grown-up" in these articles is increasingly nebulous?

It started out during the 1990s recession, as commentary on the economy more than anything - people aren't able to find jobs that can support them and therefore aren't able to move out of their parents' house. Defining adulthood as self-sufficiency for the purpose of an article on the state of the economy - that does make some sense.

Then they moved on to more social things, like marriage and children - traditionally associated with adulthood, but not strictly necessary, and also not entirely matters over which one has complete control - all the good planning and responsible behaviour in the world, and a stroke or two of bad luck could still leave you unmarried and/or without children by the time you've reached age 35 or whatever the arbitrary cut-off is.

Then the criteria started getting more materialistic, like house and car ownership. Again, even less necessary for self-sufficiency and independence, and even more easily eliminated by circumstances - to say nothing of personal preference.

Then the criteria started getting ridiculous. I've seen articles declaring that today's young adults are not grownups because they wear sneakers to work or listen to certain music or wear headphones on the subway or enjoy unwinding with a video game. So basically the older generation of adults is now arbitrarily defining the younger generation of adults because their clothing, music, and recreation choices are not identical to those of the older generation - because a noticeable number of younger adults are not behaving in a way that is interchangeable with that of a noticeable number people who are 20-30 years older than them. Because the trappings of one generation are different from the trappings of the next.

What started as an illustration of economic realities had degraded to dissing the generation gap based on the superficial - declaring an entire generation immature based on their footwear, without even looking at the kind of life they were making for themselves.

I wonder if this happened in the past, with other generations? I'm too young to remember myself. But imagine it in the 1950s: "Kids today, with their suburbs and their televisions and their circle skirts - when are they going to grow up?" You know how the parents of the baby boomers are historically known as the greatest generation? I wonder if their parents felt that way?

If I were Lex Luthor...

In Superman I, Lex Luthor has kryptonite.

In Superman II, there are these three bad guys from the planet Krypton, and Lex Luthor has just broken out of jail.

So why doesn't Luthor use his kryptonite to destroy the bad guys from Krypton, and get the powers that be to give him Australia in return? Or did they kryptonite vanish when I wasn't looking?

Things that would be cool

It would be cool if, whenever a real-life person is a character in your dream, they're having the same dream but from their perspective. And when they only play a quick cameo, your paths cross in your dreams and then you both go off on your separate paths.