Rebecca Shapiro

@rebeccashapiro.bsky.social

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Historical Legal Lexicography and the Emoluments Clause (CUP '24), lexicographer, linguist, Edgeworth, #18thc, CUNY, down the shore

Posts Replies Media

Samuel Johnson did not write the first dictionary in English

Fiction: The words and definitions in dictionaries are unbiased and the "best" or "right" ones. Fact: Humans compile dictionaries based on previous works, other authors' language, current ideology, and corpora of words that show usage but not always fairness or accuracy.

Reply to

Nora Reed (they/them ze/hir)

Pretty late now, but it'd be fairly easy to look up sources in English by looking for "universal he", sexism, etc.

Reply to

Kevin J. Miller

"William his comb" is also correct

Reply to

Centuries of Sound

Bit birds have dialect web.stanford.edu/group/stanfo...

Vocal Dialectsweb.stanford.edu Vocal Dialects

Reposted by

Rebecca Shapiro

okay it's time for a prompt post: respond to this post with a correction to a common misconception about something you know a lot about. if you feel like it, boost your response. (please use a kindly tone about it, otherwise i, your prompt curator, will get anxious.)

Reply to

Cate Denial

Congrats and it looks amazing!

I had no idea there were that many blonde people in Milwaukee.

They may be trash pandas but they're much smarter and nicer than J. D. Vance.

Reply to

David C B

What about X (the band!)?

Reply to

Mrs. N

Ooh -- Genesis (Peter Gabriel), Kate Bush, Blondie, Joan Armtrading, the Pretenders, Queen, added Violent Femmes a year or so later.

Reply to

David C B

Now if I'd been able to say my music at 16 . . .

Reply to

Thinking Person's Guide to Autism

Will do, thanks.

Hey men: do not appear in messages with random hand-waves and "hey" -- women are harassed enough in real life that there's no reason to assume your odd appearance will be wanted. You are not that special.

Reposted by

Rebecca Shapiro

Hi (waves), white disabled woman here. We do this. A lot. It has to stop. White folks, we need to stop excusing our racist and otherwise bad behavior by waving our marginalized identities about like they're UNO Reverse cards. There is no excuse for racist pile-ons. No excuse for bad behavior.

And I say “white” here and not other descriptors because Tressie was not pushed out by a specific marginalized cohort. Not to mention, Black people have had to have this conversation with every white marginalized group ever. White gay men. White women (whew). White disabled people. This isn’t new.

Yeah but you can pass as right.

Reply to

Kaitlin Has Had Enough

People just want to go about living their lives without having to tell others they're racist, antisemitic, Islamaphobic, sexist, whatever. It's exhausting just existing without being everyone's conscience and you shouldn't have to do this. Please accept supprtive thoughts and care if possible.

Nice and simple

So you're saying the PATP is not a creepy man looking "to make new friends"?

Reply to

Avishay Ben-Sasson-Gordis

Trying to find a happy medium between what parents want and what kids want is probably hard, which is why I suggested old iPhone. Good luck!

Reply to

Saavik Ford

Oh, so sorry, and sending good wishes, healing, and blue skies.

Reposted by

Rebecca Shapiro

an excellent analysis of English antepenultimate infixes, which can be exclamatives, but never nouns

nobody: literally no one at all: me: just remembering that time almost a decade ago when I wrote this @stronglang.bsky.social post about why we don't say abso-jesus-lutely

Abso-jesus-lutely not: Why can you infix “fucking” and “bloody” but not other swears?stronglang.wordpress.com Here's a puzzle: why can't you say "abso-jesus-lutely"? (Recently brought to my attention by Leland Paul Kusmer.) Let's back up for a sec. The classic case of expletive infixation involves "fucking" o...

Reply to

Avishay Ben-Sasson-Gordis

Then I'd go with the outdated iPhone idea or the old Android. If it's to keep up with a kid, then definitely something low tech.

If anyone's spent time in rural *white* OH or PA you'll know how infectious narratives like Vance's are. And how completely false. These are frightening, misbegotten, grey places and the only thing that's salvageable about those places is their history.

Reply to

Kingfisher & Wombat

If they were literate, middle class-ish men.

Reply to

PlanetCarnival

Kitty!!

Reposted by

Rebecca Shapiro

Tired of the Vance mania, I commissioned this when I was books editor at the LA Times - a review of books by Elizabeth Catte and Leesa Cross-Smith. www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-...

What you are getting wrong about Appalachiawww.latimes.com It's not just white coal miners: "What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia" by Elizabeth Catte is reviewed by Appalachian writer Leah Hampton, alongside the novel "Whiskey & Ribbons" by Leesa Cross...

Reply to

Hannah Walser

If you were a journalist who asks questions like that you'd also have to be English.

So J D Vance's wife is going to get the same treatment as Mitch McConnell's wife: useful but not equal.

Reply to

k☭wagata

I think that it is, in fact, a coherent ideology to those who assert it (leaders/lieutenants) but less so for those who enforce it (drones). Which means that "pedophile" is one other term in the arsenal of them vs us, just updated for our particular social norms. But yes, that tracks.