If you have a regional accent, please never try to get rid of it. Accents tell stories.

As we approach #nwav53, my dictation is channeling its inner Labov. Here I said “copy” but my phone heard “coffee.”

Y'all know what to do!

I recently realized that this month is the twentieth (!) blogiversary of Arrant Pedantry. My posting frequency has been pretty bad the last few years as I've dealt with health problems, pandemic burnout, and regular burnout, but I wanted to mark the occasion by sharing some of my favorite posts.

I knew I was looking at AI-generated student work when the supposed linguistic data they were reporting on was normally distributed.

I put together this brief guide for myself to keep track of FORCE, NORTH, START, and (surprise!) CLOTH. It might be helpful for you too if you work with lower back prerhotic vowels. joeystanley.com/blog/north-f...

Does anyone else have a vowel quality distinction in "hearty"-"Hardy" or "carted"-"carded"? Like if the following consonant is voiceless, it's higher (and shorter)? To me, it's akin to the "writer"-"rider" or "cited"-"sided" thing that I and others have.

In "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream", I have vowel quality, vowel length, stress, and possibly aspiration differences going on (e.g. [ˈaɪ̯ ˌskɹiːm] vs. [ˈəˑɪ̯s.kʰɹiːm]). Like, the joke didn't even land for me as a kid. Are they truly homophonous for some people?

So I guess we’re just going to have to live with the super bright headlights then, huh?

I'm enjoying scrolling through TikToks of British comedians to finding the best videos to show in class and having that count as work.

The department of #CognitiveScience at @jhu.edu is seeking motivated students interested in joining our PhD program -- including #sociophonetics in my lab! Applications due 1 Dec; for those interested, we have an Application Mentoring Program thanks to current grads. See flyer for QR link.

After talking about density plots today, I moved on to violin plots and, in a genuine no-pun-intended moment, I said "plot twist: it's just a density plot turned on its side." It was hilarious. And then someone made this for me.

Maybe it’s because I literally do research for my job, but I hate the “[here’s some interesting thing I noticed] and that needs to be studied” trend on social media recently.

#Linguistics at the University of Georgia is hiring a tenure-track faculty member in #phonetics and #phonology. Spread the word and let me know if you have questions! linguistlist.org/issues/36/31...

It was SUCH AN HONOR to speak in the Michigan State University Linguistics Colloquium Series and hang out with their awesome faculty and students! Beautiful weather and beautiful campus! I forgot to take a decent photo of so here's an awkward one of me with a scoop of the Spartan Swirl ice cream.

Postdoc in #sociolinguistics jobportal.ku.dk/videnskabeli...

This is my first time teaching Varieties of English since the British Library cyberattack. I didn't realize how much I relied on it for audio. If anyone has recordings (or preferably, TikToks that I can download) featuring regional British accents, I'd love to get a copy.

It’s just free variation.

The box we use for our Halloween decorations is about 10 years old and I can tell because it’s an Amazon box that was originally sealed with Amazon Fire phone packing tape.

It’d be cool to have a Midwest grammar toggle and make this say “needs charged” instead.

✅ Submit tenure portfolio.

Every time I teach about surveys, I have students spend time in class making the worst survey imaginable. Fluorescent colors, random images, terrible question design. They LOVE it. And what they don't know is that they're learning a lot about how to make surveys in the process.

Footage of me getting my 7x7 cube in the mail today.

There’s an #nwav53 presentation about this!

10% of my students in one class (3/27) didn't know how to "right click" on their laptops.

Done. Apparently I removed all the content a while ago, but now the account itself is gone.

OooOoOoohh!

Jobs: Phonetics: Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Pomona College

Aaaand my wife just solved it for the first time!

I know there’s a lot going on, but I picked up a 5x5 Rubik’s cube from a thrift store today and, after a few attempts, solved it in 10m45s, a full seven minutes faster than my record in high school!

Haverford College is looking for a tenure-track Assistant Professor of #Linguistics, with a primary specialization in #Sociolinguistics, secondary specialization(s) open -> www.haverford.edu/provost/news...

I ran more miles this morning than I got hours of sleep last night, so I'm kind of in a weird state for the first day of classes.

Sometimes I throw away my two-liter bottle of Coke in the department copy room instead of my office so that the custodians don't think I just pounded two liters of Coke by myself.

“I did it, take a nap” is how my 2;6 kid just told me he has already taken a nap. I guess “I did it” is a first person completive aspect marker and I’m here for it. #linguistbabyphotos

My kid has been in kindergarten for two weeks and he’s already adopted his first feature of Utah English.

Does anyone else hear acoustic correlates of a lowered larynx when some people say [i] in emphatic contexts? Does it increase the back cavity and therefore lower F1 maybe?

I had a wildly productive few months and just submitted my sixth manuscript of the summer. It feels good to clear out some pent up projects I've had for a while. Looking forward to just focusing on teaching this year without worrying much about research. #notsohumblebrag

And in the current political environment—with the federal government signaling its intention to slash overhead rates and eliminate huge swaths of research funding entirely—the economically rational move for universities would be to get out of the hard sciences. But it's still humanities getting cut.

Thankfully, the #BuckleyDrawFire appears smaller than it was last night, but it’s still a bit concerning to see a natural disaster so close to my office.

✅ Submited a paper using intransitive “obtain.”

My 9yo said “mutant “ with a tap! I know @lisabdavidson.bsky.social and @betsysneller.bsky.social have independently found taps in unstressed /tən/ in other regions. But I’ve never heard a Utahn say it. Until today!

I spent like 30 hours writing this week and another 8 either interpreting stats or reading. I don’t normally get to dedicate so much uninterrupted time to this, even in the summer, and it was awesome.

My favorite word, boustrophedonically, isn’t in their dictionary, but I’ll gladly be the first to use boustrophedons for the first time! Playing Snake while plowing a field? Two boustrophedons at once!

I had such a good time speaking with the incredible @annehelen.bsky.social for the Culture Study pod! Check it out to learn more about regional accents of English (including a detour through Utah, h/t @joeystanley.com) podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

This is Penny Eckert's references section for her tribute to Bill Labov in Language in Society this month. It's not far off from the references sections in some of the stuff I write. 😆

I finally got around to trying this walkthrough of using DCTs to normalize and model vowel formant trajectories. And it's pretty awesome. And you should try it.

I haven’t shaved in about a month, and while I didn’t like the beard at first, I’ll admit it’s kinda growing on me.

Kind of shocking to me that you can learn Klingon on Duolingo but not Hausa

Just saw Jaws on the big screen. First time. It was awesome.

Incidentally, if you use my research in your classes or if you or your students use my tutorials or R code, I'd appreciate hearing about it. I think it's one of the stronger parts of my portfolio but it's hard to track that kind of stuff.