What do I do with this?
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“I doubt there's a whole lot of rabid Trump supporters reading linguistic analysis academic journals”
I look at what’s happening in Florida and I'm not so sure that’s true any more.
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Do you think your university would defend you against outsiders trying to use you to advance their agenda? You're in a red state, so that's an additional layer of worry.
This is only a hypothetical risk, of course, but we have seen scholarship in the humanities used as a political football.
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@Steve-Miller said in What do I do with this?:
“I doubt there's a whole lot of rabid Trump supporters reading linguistic analysis academic journals”
I look at what’s happening in Florida and I'm not so sure that’s true any more.
Exactly.
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@Piano-Dad said in What do I do with this?:
Do you think your university would defend you against outsiders trying to use you to advance their agenda?
I have no idea... For one thing, I haven't been here long enough to have a sense of things like that.
The other thing is how paranoid am I? IOW, is the concern here some official sanction, or is it some thing unofficial, and possibly more damaging, that would be facilitated by doxxing....
I don't know how paranoid to be in my thinking.
And back to the comments from @Lisa and @Steve-Miller , either no one would notice because it's in an obscure linguistics journal.... or they would notice because they're paying attention?
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@Rontuner said in What do I do with this?:
Is there a real downside to shelving this for a bit - years?
Probably.... Besides the fact that not submitting this now for publication has an immediate impact on my output, some of it is quite timely and may be "stale" if I wait. Especially if I wait "years" ...
I would say that now is probably not the best time...
I know, that's my concern.
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This is called obeying in advance, or self-censorship. I am seeing a lot of people who understandably feel vulnerable--they are trying to scrub their online presence and they are worried about being targeted by MAGAs in their neighborhoods. I think this is the wrong tack. Not only is preventing becoming a target impossible--you can't scrub your online presence enough, and besides, Peter Theil already has all your information--but letting fear be our leader and guide is not a winning solution. Maybe it's because I grew up in a Jewish household, but I was raised to believe that the way we stand up to tyranny is to speak out and to be seen. It's important to set standards for what is allowed with our own behavior. I think of, a few years back, when a few Jewish households in Billings, MT, had rocks thrown through their windows at Hannukah. No one removed their menorahs from their windows. Instead, everyone else in town who wasn't Jewish put menorahs in their windows.
By retreating you are letting them win.
fear is the thief of dreams
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Money seems to buy the most happiness when you give it away.
Why does everything have to be so complicated, all in the name of convenience. -ShiroKuro
A lifetime of experience will change a person. If it doesn't, then you're already dead inside. -MarkJ
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On the other hand, your primary goal might be to remain employed. Do that and you can live to fight another day.
I’d keep my head down.
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@ShiroKuro said in What do I do with this?:
One is an exchange between a Japanese politician and a foreign (i.e., non-Japanese) reporter, and the other is an exchange between a past American president (guess who) and an Asian American reporter. For the record, this isn’t about politics or political policy, it’s a linguistic analysis that looks at discourse practices…. But it certainly doesn’t make either politician look good (they both look like jerks, although that’s not something I talk about in the analysis… it does speak for itself though...."
Something I learned a long time ago as a journalist: What you think makes them look bad only makes them look bad if you say it makes them look bad.
I'll give you an example (true story):
A reporter manages to befriend some members of the KuKluxKlan. Through those contacts, he gets to actually embed himself with the Klan, go to their meetings, record them on the record saying all kinds of outrageous sh!t, hang out with them for months.
Without judging them, without editorializing a whit on what he saw or heard, he published exactly what they said and what they did. Of course, to 99 percent of his readers, what he wrote was breathtakingly horrifying and outrageous. (IIRR, the piece came out in Esquire.)
Now, do you think the Klan was embarrassed or outraged or came after him after this piece was published?
Nope. They were thrilled. He portrayed them accurately. They felt he understood them. He told it like they see it. He was still their best pal, as far as they were concerned.
Because he simply reported what he saw and heard without telling the reader what to think. Of course, he didn't have to tell the reader what to think. He knew what they would think.
If you can follow this principle in your own paper, I think you are in the clear. People who find Trump a huge embarrassment will think what you wrote makes him look bad. People who support Trump--and maybe even Trump himself--will give you kudos for an accurate portrayal.
As for keeping your head down--and I address this to all of us--that is the opposite of what this moment calls for. The more of us who stand up for the way we see things, the more of us will be encouraged to do the same. And the more people who stand up, the sooner we get our power back. Please don't just roll over.
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Huh. My memory is better than I thought. I found the article. You can read it for free just for signing up with the magazine's website (you could always unsubscribe/block them if they send you emails). I think it is a pertinent read for this moment, seeing as in many ways we are reenacting the Civil War.
https://classic.esquire.com/article/1980/3/1/aint-nothin-you-can-do-but-join-the-klan
I know the author through my connections at grad school. Hearing him tell the story of how he reported this story was a hair-raising experience.
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Lots of food for thought here....
I do need to keep my job.
And anyone who's brain isn't made of rocks will see that my analysis is very critical (but again, not re politics)....
I'll come back to this. I have to go practice (i'm playing in a kids' recital on Sunday, which seemed like a good idea when I signed up, but now feels surreal)
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Can you change the characters to something other than politicians? How about chefs?
Everyone loves chefs.
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Noble, certainly. If one has a backup source of income it would be a fine choice.
But we’re looking at a fairly short period of time here. This is not gonna last and if it all goes pear shaped SK can certainly return to Japan for a year or two.
This is not the hill to die on.
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I remember the first time he was elected and many of us lived in fear.
I'm coming up on 60 in less than three years. I'm not going to spend one day of the time I have left living in fear of a politician and certainly not Donald Trump.
This isn't advice. I don't have any advice to give you.
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@Steve-Miller said in What do I do with this?:
Can you change the characters to something other than politicians? How about chefs?
Everyone loves chefs.
If only! It is common to hide or change small details to protect the identity of research participants. But in this kind of linguistic analysis, large excerpts from the interaction get included in the test of the article so the reader can see what the author has analyzed, and the author walks you through the interaction, explaining the discourse practices as they unfold.
It would be instantly obvious that these two exchanges are not taking place in a kitchen!
Although I could just give the two politicians pseudonyms, one would be “JP” (Japanese politician) and the other AP (American politician)…
I’m going to talk to my dept. chair, and also to another sociolinguist on campus who knows this work (she was at my talk) and she what they think.
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@Daniel said in What do I do with this?:
I remember the first time he was elected and many of us lived in fear.
I'm coming up on 60 in less than three years. I'm not going to spend one day of the time I have left living in fear of a politician and certainly not Donald Trump.
This isn't advice. I don't have any advice to give you.
@Daniel this is absolutely advice, and I mean that in a good way.
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@Steve-Miller said in What do I do with this?:
This is not the hill to die on.
This is the question, isn’t it. Is this the hill? IOW, does this work take a stand? And would I die on it? As in, would it get noticed, and could I write it up in such a way that it doesn’t? (Also, would I want to write it up in that way?)
My research has applications to linguistic human rights, and one of my new projects (on stereotypes about accents and accent stigma) brings that out even more.
This particular project, depending on how I write it up, could be more neutral, but it can also be more critical, which is how I presented it when I gave my talk.
Ugh, the more I think about it, the more I want to publish it because I agree with what @pique is saying.
But @Steve-Miller ‘s pragmatic take is also important. I definitely need to keep my job.
Also, here’s a super paranoid thing to say: my husband is not a US citizen. Yes, he has a green card, but how vulnerable are we as an international family?
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@ShiroKuro A few years ago I probably would have thought that you were being too concerned about running into problems, but after following @Daniel thread about what happened at places like New College, it's pretty clear that things are changing in academia in a bigly way.
It's too simplistic to write these concerns off as TDS. Trump is providing a powerful platform and paving the way for people like DeSantis, Paxton (TX) et al. They represent what a lot of people in America seem to want.
Seems like moving forward with your paper is the right thing to do, but the reality is there is potentially much at stake if you do.
I don't know what to tell you. I'm not sure what I would do.
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@ShiroKuro said in What do I do with this?:
And anyone who's brain isn't made of rocks will see that my analysis is very critical (but again, not re politics)....
The "brain isn't made of rocks" part here is key. Did you hear that google searches for "Did Joe Biden drop out" and "Is Joe Biden running" skyrocketed..... ON ELECTION DAY? And that in the past few days, one of the top searches on Google has been "What are tariffs and who pays them?" In other words, the intellectual ability of the average American honestly seems to be about the same as the average rock.
I do think getting the opinion of your department chair would be good, but I like the idea of calling them JP and AP - you aren't calling anyone out and your article isn't even overtly critical. Like Pique said about the KKK article, Trump supporters may even like that you are showing how "tough" and "manly" his rhetoric is and it wouldn't surprise me if Trump himself was flattered that someone wrote an academic article about him, especially if it's comparing him to another hardline politician that he admires.
