In this episode of the Mentor Project podcast, the hosts engage in an enlightening conversation with sociolinguist Valerie Fridland, exploring the fascinating interplay between language, society, and individual identity.
Guest: Valerie Fridland, Linguist and author of Like, Literally, Dude
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/valerie-fridland-0b29b5209/
The Mentor Project: https://mentorproject.org
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Hosts:
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone Ph.D., Host of The Mentor Project Podcast | Host of Perspectives | Systems Psychotherapist, International Coach, Talk Show Host & Producer, Professor | Mentor at the Mentor Project
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/dr-susan-birne-stone
Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine, Host of Redefining Society Podcast, and other shows on ITSPmagazine
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Introduction
Welcome everyone, to another enlightening episode of the Mentor Project podcast, where inspiring mentors and their impactful stories are highlighted. With hosts Dr. Susan Birne-Stone and Marco Ciappelli, listeners embark on a journey of knowledge and discovery.
The guest of the day is someone whose work is truly captivating. As a sociolinguist, Valerie Fridland's passion for language and the nuances of human communication has charted a course of learning for students globally. As a professor, an author, and above all, a mentor, Valerie's contributions to the field are substantial.
Valerie’s fascination with language extends beyond the usual academic perspective. She enables listeners to explore the social factors that shape language over time, bringing fresh insights to daily conversations. For the younger audience, she validates their contributions to language evolution, debunking myths around 'slang' or 'bad grammar'.
In the conversation with Valerie, listeners will explore how language connects to individual identities and cultures, how it is tightly bound with historical contexts, and how it continues to evolve with societal changes. Valerie will also share her journey with the Mentor Project, demonstrating how her expertise is being used to inspire and guide the next generation.
This episode promises to be a linguistic roller-coaster, offering both enlightenment and entertainment. Subscribing and sharing the podcast can spread the love for learning. To learn more about the Mentor Project's initiative, mentors, and ways to become a part of this vibrant community, listeners can visit The Mentor Project’s website. The journey to becoming a lifelong learner begins with the Mentor Project.
Without further ado, let's dive in!
About the Book
Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English
A lively linguistic exploration of the speech habits we love to hate—and why our “like”s and “literally”s actually make us better communicators
Paranoid about the “ums” and “uhs” that pepper your presentations? Concerned that people notice your vocal fry? Bewildered by “hella” or the meteoric rise of “so”? What if these features of our speech weren’t a sign of cultural and linguistic degeneration, but rather, some of the most dynamic and revolutionary tools at our disposal?
In Like, Literally, Dude, linguist Valerie Fridland shows how we can re-imagine these forms as exciting new linguistic frontiers rather than our culture’s impending demise. With delightful irreverence and expertise built over two decades of research, Fridland weaves together history, psychology, science, and laugh-out-loud anecdotes to explain why we speak the way we do today, and how that impacts what our kids may be saying tomorrow. She teaches us that language is both function and fashion, and that though we often blame the young, the female, and the uneducated for its downfall, we should actually thank them for their linguistic ingenuity.
By exploring the dark corners every English teacher has taught us to avoid, Like, Literally, Dude redeems our most pilloried linguistic quirks, arguing that they are fundamental to our social, professional, and romantic success—perhaps even more so than our clothing or our resumes. It explains how filled pauses benefit both speakers and listeners; how the use of “dude” can help people bond across social divides; why we’re always trying to make our intensifiers ever more intense; as well as many other language tics, habits, and developments.
Language change is natural, built into the language system itself, and we wouldn’t be who we are without it. Like, Literally, Dude celebrates the dynamic, ongoing, and empowering evolution of language, and it will speak to anyone who talks, or listens, inspiring them to communicate dynamically and effectively in their daily lives.
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Resources
Learn More About The Mentor Project: https://mentorproject.org
Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English (Book): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/671558/like-literally-dude-by-valerie-fridland/
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Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording as errors may exist. At this time we provide it “as it is” and we hope it can be useful for our audience.
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voiceover00:15
Welcome to the Mentor Project podcast, a place where you will learn discover new ideas, be entertained, inspired, and even mentored. Our shows explore a wide range of subjects, including science, technology, business, society and culture, art and entertainment, and life. If you would like to learn more about the mentor project, please go to www dot mentor project.org We hope you'll enjoy the show
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 00:56
Okay, Marco, how are you? You know, it feels like it's meant your project Friday,
Marco Ciappelli01:02
Sunday, it always meant to project something.
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 01:05
Something right. So here we are doing a nother episode of the mentor, Project podcast. This is so much fun. And we have a great guest another one of our brilliant mentors, Valerie Friedlaender. And Valerie is so interesting. I'm excited for the listeners to learn about her work. And I know Marco, you've you've you know a little bit about her work. But if this is gonna be really a lot of fun today.
Marco Ciappelli01:34
You know what, what she does want to say it's fascinating and the way that she brings it to, to the public. It's usually I have a lot of fun. I think we've done a couple of podcasts. So this is going to be I'm sure is fun, even if we're focusing more on the mental project. But like literally dude, I'm excited.
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 01:57
All right, and we'll have to explain the literally dude, comment in a moment. But Valerie, welcome to the Mentor Project podcast.
Valerie Fridland 02:05
Thank you know. And of course, I'm in great company of brilliant mentor. So I'm happy to be here hanging out with you guys a little bit.
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 02:13
So great. So let's start with, of course, the obvious question that we always ask our mentors. How did you get involved with the mentor project? How did you learn about it?
Valerie Fridland 02:23
That's a really good question. And it feels like it's been a long time. And I'm trying to figure out how exactly I made the connection. But Debbie and I were connected through a mutual acquaintance. I believe it was a friend of ours that we had both gone to a conference with. And we just started talking about potential collaboration. And Debbie invited me to come on with the mentor project. And that was really in the early days of the mentor project was, I think there were maybe 2025 mentors at that time. And it sounded like a great part of the types of things I did anyway, I am a professor. So mentoring students is really part of my job. And it's really part of the job I enjoy the most I have long lasting relationships with many of the students I've had in my classes that I follow for years. And we see them and I go to their weddings, and we keep up on social media. And I really enjoy that part. And so if I can make a difference in anybody's life or explain things as they have questions about, it sounded like a no brainer to me to join up.
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 03:23
That's great. So why don't you explain? We'll talk a little bit more about the mentoring that you've done for the mentor project. But now why don't you explain to our listeners and viewers a little bit about your work? Because your work is very different? You know, and so yeah, well, I
Valerie Fridland 03:40
think one of the neat things about the Mentor Project is it brings a lot of fields to the forefront that a lot of kids probably never thought about. I'm a socio linguist. And yeah, I know, I never heard of a socio linguist until I got to college. And I just happened to take a linguistics course as part of my major, which was a language major. And I thought, wow, where's this been my whole life, because it's such a really fascinating way to look at language. It's the science of language. And we look at language historically, we look at patterns in language, we do experimental research with language. And my special interest as a linguist is studying the social factors and Social Triggers that interact and engage with language every day and help shape it over time. So it's something that's really interesting and useful. And of course, we all ask those questions about language like why do men always say this? Why do women always say that that's a big one, gender differences, but also things like why did kids say like all the time, or what's up with risk? What is risk mean? We have questions about language all the time. And kids are the hotbed of language innovation, and they don't understand how valuable the work they're doing is because most of the time we tell them they're not doing valuable work when they're creating language when they're moving language forward when they're helping to to push its evolution forward. We tell them they're saying things that are slang or obscene or bad or bad grammar. Without recognizing the role that they play in the history of language to where we are speaking today from Beowulf. So I think this was a perfect opportunity to help validate what kids do and say, and help them understand it from a scientific point of view. So, you know, they think what a noun is, for example, a lot of times I've gone into schools and talked about parts of speech, if they think what's a noun, person, place or thing. Well, then is believing a person, place or thing? It's an idea. It's a concept, I mean, so you can see how it's not really classically in those categories. And actually parts of speech are something that are basically determined by where they occur in the Senate. So a noun is anything that fits in a slot that a noun goes into. And that's sort of how we cognitively think about it. But what if instead of learning these, you know, ideas, like a noun is this and that a verb? Is this based on just meaning, which is often not a very good way to determine parts of speech? What if we teach kids to look at the structure of language, which then will serve them? Well, no matter what they experienced in terms of recognizing a noun, so then they'll always know what a noun is because it has the distributional properties of noun because it has the morphological endings of the noun, because it's functioning like a noun. And that way, they can always get it right. So I think it gives them the tools and it's really fun for me, I love telling kids that they have been listening to their teachers tell them lies all these years. And I don't mean it. Obviously, the teacher and I have a good laugh. But what I mean is sort of get them excited about is we're going to do something really different because you've never thought of language this way. So that's sort of what I do. And I just study language scientifically. And I try to share that knowledge with the kids.
Marco Ciappelli06:36
You know, what is interesting is it's a two way things like we all talk about the mentor mentoring, and we mentor, but we also get mentored by the mentee, we do parallel mentoring. And when we look at these things that happen, I feel like there is a connection with what you just said about, you know, this is going to happen no matter what. Right? We can understand the rules and see why it happens. And it also makes me think why some people say, if you want to be creative in music, and painting in art, first, you should be understanding the basic the rules, and then with that in mind, you can create your own rule and break the rules. So I think it's really, there's a big lesson here, which I think as a mentor, you want to encourage that. You want to encourage creative thinking, but also like it's not just going random.
Valerie Fridland 07:34
You know, it's not at all random. Right? That's, I think the beauty of it. It's incredibly rule governed and principles and patterns. And people, you know, for example, kids that say, like, all the time, I have a friend, that's a middle grade teacher, and she said, Oh, my God, that's the worst habit they have. And I said, No, it's the best habit they have. You just need to have them understand where they're using it. And, you know, obviously, overuse is an issue. But that's a little different than whether it has a purpose. But if we look at how they pattern, they're actually patterning for very specific purposes. When mystically, they either are approximator, sentential, adverbials, are coded to verbs. So they're very specific. And if you teach a child, look, let's examine your speech. And let's understand what this like is doing. I'm actually teaching them how to analyze language. So they're learning something larger while they're learning something fun. And naturally, my goal and I love it, I have so much fun. One of my favorite groups to teach is about the middle school early high school level, because it's so revolutionary to them to have someone that understands their language. I don't speak it well. But I understand it, and they have fun learning about the things they do. And they've been taught their whole life. So it's bad. And it's bad grammar, it's bad English, but when they start to understand it, as a principled rule governed thing it gives them a lot of them say, Well, I'm gonna tell my mom that I can say like, anytime I want.
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 08:53
That's great. I love that. Because what you what you did, and I've listened to you talk about this stuff. And it's so fun. I always learn. I feel like I'm getting the answer today in this podcast. So I always learned something about language. And it's fascinating. Because like you said, the teacher was complaining about the what you're like, No, that's a great thing. So what are settling? Because that's a myth that you broke for the teacher, right? That like, is not a bad thing always and use it and learn why teach them why they're actually using it. What's some of the other fun myths that you've broken along the way either through the mentor project or through your recent book tour?
Valerie Fridland 09:31
Well, one really, really funny thing, I think, especially for kids to learn is that the dude the word that they use all the time, has a history that they would never use it if they knew its history. So if you go back about a century in the late 1880s, we find that dude was a term that was used only in mockery or to ridicule or insult somebody and it was really turned into century gossip if someone was a dude because they were basically a self absorbed, wealthy self. affected dandy with an ostentatious regard for their clothes. So they usually had very specific kind of effeminate ways of dressing. And mainly it was men, there were dudettes. But particularly dudes were men. And they were always from wealthier families, and they served no recompense for their living, which is what I article in 1884 claimed about dudes. And people were very upset if they got called to dude. In fact, there were several reports in newspapers at the time of duels that were inspired by being called a dude. So, you know, when my son was about a middle schooler, and he used to call me dude all the time. I'm like, you realize you're calling me an effeminate dandy? And somehow that just ruined the love for him. So he stopped calling me dude, but I love that word, because it's something that a lot of kids can relate to, and they use it and they think it's like, I'm this, I'm this chill, cool, non conforming dude. And I'm actually no, not really, if you go back in time, here's what the dude meant, and it was something completely different. And it's not until the 1930s with the Zoot Suit Riots, that it actually became cool and Nonconformist, because a lot of Zoot Suiters called each other dude to kind of stand out for their clothes and the statement they were making culturally. And that's when it got picked up by these subcultures and became cool. Oscar Wilde come to mind, he is actually taught in poet poetry at the time, and there are a number if you want to Google the dude, poetry, you'll find a lot of poems from the 1880s that ridicule either the cowboy sense of the dude which was prevalent in the West, or the dandy sense of the dude, and Oscar Wilde, and one of those poems is, is called the imported dude, because he was exactly the model it was primarily men that were associated with the aesthetics movement, the art for art's sake and beauty for BBC, because that were very superficial and, and tended not to want to work and they didn't do traditional masculine things. And so it was really a statement about these norms of masculinity being challenged at the time. And if you think about what dude means today, it's really an in its heyday, it's really about these norms of masculinity being redefined. So in both centuries, it's about masculine behavior and expectations for masculine masculine behavior and breaking those expectations. But how it was done was completely different. So when you're a we like it when you're when we don't,
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 12:14
you know, it's so interesting, because your work with language. And just and you see the end of which I want you to talk a little bit about the end. Is what you're doing, especially with kids, adults, too. But when you take a word like that, and you say, Do you know where that comes from? There's so much that you're teaching in there you're getting, they don't even realize that they're learning about history, about culture, about the differences in time, and the importance of understanding history. So it's really wonderful. You know, Valerie, you mentioned before you do you are a college professor, you do a lot of teaching. We've talked Marco and I on this podcast before about the differences between mentoring and teaching and educating? What for you is the difference when you're in the hat strictly of like, mentor? I know that there's a lot of overlap. But could you talk about that? Plus, we'll throw in we have to have you talk about the O's, and the arms and all of that, because it's fun to hear about?
Valerie Fridland 13:23
Sure. I do think there's a lot of overlap. But I think there is a fundamental difference when you're teaching. The audience is less involved, because you have content and your content is what drives the conversation, your content is what drives that interaction. And a lot of times people ask questions, but it's really about the structure you put on it. And so it's not mentorship in the sense that you're not building personal development of the students in the way that they may find most beneficial. They're trying to get a grade, and they want to do well on the final. And that's what's motivating their interest in that topic. And hopefully, also just general interest as well. But when I'm mentoring students, it's often in a position where I'm helping them figure out personal growth or life trajectory questions, helping them figure out where do I want to go to grad school? What kind of jobs will this work? How can I present myself a lot of times I do a lot of reading of students, essays or applications for graduate school, or I take questions about things that they're curious about. So when I'm mentoring, I'm much more open and flexible in the types of things we can discuss. But when I'm teaching, we have a curriculum, and I need to follow that curriculum so that we can make those learning goals those learning outcomes that are really important at a at a school level. So I think there's a personal element to it in the mentoring that's much more student or mentee driven, and much more developed around their personal goals and how you can help them achieve those. So it's really driven by the mentee and teaching it's really driven by that professor.
Marco Ciappelli14:55
Yeah, we mentioned on other conversation with other mentors that And it was kind of my suggestion to it's more of a one on one, kind of like more more personal more psychological than then that structor education curriculum that you have to follow. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I think some people can establish that one on one relationship with an audience. But it takes some kind of skills. And I don't know how truth is, in the end. I mean, I think you
Valerie Fridland 15:27
can do it to a different degree, I'm not sure it's mentorship in the same way that we tend to think of that word, I have given a lot of talks at businesses, for example, or two groups that have me there to solve certain issues that they have in communication, or to address certain themes that they think are relevant for the population that they have. So for example, I have given a lot of talks to groups that have women as part of their professional set, but maybe feel like those women are not heard in that context. So I talk to those groups about women in in business, or I've also talked to legal groups, because I do some consulting with law firms and with language of statutes and, you know, expert witness type thing. So in that sense, I'm helping a larger group understand how my knowledge background and my field can be helpful in their goal setting and their goal achievement. So in some sense, I think that's similar to mentorship. But you're right, it doesn't have that same relationship where I'm individually helping a person.
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 16:29
I like what you said earlier about what's driving the material that in your role as professor and teacher, it's the curriculum, it's the things that you there's a lot of IT tools. So there's a lot of requirements that we have to teach even if we don't want to, because it's there's lots of stipulations. And that is driving it. But in the mentoring relationship, it's a lot more about what the mentee wants and what the mentee is looking for. Not that they're going to tell us what, but it's more about what they want to learn and what the purpose is. So yeah, I liked the way you talked about who's driving, and what's driving the actual material. So that was a good talk about the atoms. There we go. Just did it right there. So tell, tell, tell, speak a little bit about those words that we hear are some fillers that we hear, do and we want to go? Ah, yeah,
Valerie Fridland 17:25
it's so funny, because I have what I call the like, arm effect on people, which means that whenever they talk to me, they start using legs and arms and noticing every single time they do, when, if we didn't talk about if it wasn't part of our conversation, I don't think people would be as aware of it. And it's not that they don't use them. It's just that once you mentioned and, um, you hear every um thereafter, but um, there are what linguists call filled pauses. So they're a little different than things such as like, or well, or so or you know, that our discourse markers, and sometimes it's called filler words. But those are substantively different in function than an amount, which are fairly automatic cognitive processing flags that come up when we're doing pretty hard cognitive retrieval. And what we find when we study them, and it's really, really fascinating, given our disdain for them, is that they tend to signal when speakers are doing harder work than average. So when they're coming up with difficult words, less common words, more abstraction, when they're building very complex embedded sentences. Those are the times that we see more isn't as a current speech compared to when they're not doing those things. So one great experiment, they had people describe a picture. And so the first time they described it, they used lots of atoms in us, because that was the first time they, they had that picture. And they hadn't activated those neural networks yet, but the second time, about an hour later, they had them describe it, it was the same picture, they already had activated those neural networks, and therefore were quicker and useless to us in describing it. That didn't mean they were more eloquent about it, that simply mean they were more practiced with it, and that the level of cognitive activation required to achieve that description was less, and therefore it reduced the things that were basically cognitive flags. So yes, that's great. Okay, so we're thinking hard, but there are actually some really substantial benefits to us. And from a listener perspective that we totally discount when we say they're just distracting and annoying. Because one of the things we found when we look at the time lapse, after you say an Amara, is that they also help a listener, understand that a speaker is not done with their turn, because if you just pause in the middle of the sentence, a lot of times speaker listeners don't know what to do with that and they either get uncomfortable or they feel like because they think you might be done with your turn, it leaves it some indeterminacy on the part of the listener. But if you say or arm it signals to a listener, I'm going to continue with my turn. It's a momentary pause while I'm thinking the benefit of vs arm is an odd seems to indicate a short delay whereas M indicate It's a longer delay, when we actually study the pause length after the or the arms or how long the speaker takes to come back to their train of conversation, as are followed by shorter delays and arms, which indicates they're actually being used in a purposeful way to indicate information to the listener. And then because they seem to work is a cognitive flag to a listener saying, Look, whatever I'm about to say is more difficult, more abstract, or more complex than what I would say otherwise. That seems to work as a flag to a listener that they need to devote more neural networks to it more neural resources. And they seem to have better information processing and better recall when an armor preceded a word in conversation than when it didn't. So they're pretty fascinating in their benefits. Now, that doesn't mean they're not distracting. It's someone over uses them. And it doesn't mean we liked them. But it certainly means that they're not useless. Like we tend to think of them.
Marco Ciappelli20:53
It makes me think about the old computers with a with a very low memory that has to make that noise as this process and things and you know, it's working. Right? That noise in the background, the hard drive stop, you're like, Oh, is it broken? Something? Yeah,
Valerie Fridland 21:09
that's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's interesting.
Marco Ciappelli21:13
See, now now you've put it in my head I've worked, you're gonna hear well, I give an advisor, I'm sure Susan can do the same. And you if anybody has done enough podcast, and they want to listen to themselves, there's no better way that work on your issues in communication than just listen to yourself, and the first day is just gonna suck. Right? But as you said, in regular conversation, it's very, very helpful. I totally Yes.
Valerie Fridland 21:48
And we don't need to totally, I totally, totally get any, you don't notice it. What we find with listeners is in context where you listen back to yourself, you notice everything. But in context in conversation, speakers are very good at filtering out all those things. And in fact, I think people are shocked when they listen to conversations and how little they control for those factors. And often, they don't even finish words and sentences, they are broken off, they start and stop and you listen, you think God, how did anybody understand this conversation? But in the moment, our processing is amazing, and we're able to do it and filter out all those false starts and restarts and repetitions and arms in us. So relax. I think that's always feel
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 22:29
better after I speak with or listen to Valerie talking. Always. And being an original Brooklynite and having a Brooklyn accent. And one of her talks, she talked about where the speech where it came from, I was like, Okay, I'm no longer embarrassed. I am now proud.
Valerie Fridland 22:47
So that's right. That's right. Yes.
Marco Ciappelli22:49
You know what I want to take a moment to associate more your conversation, the mentoring and teaching to the new generation, accepting what they bring new to the table, and I'm probably connecting to conversation we already had. But I learn from those. So I'm going to bring it back up. And maybe you can underline that, which is the fact that when you look at things from a sociological perspective, and you see these changes, like every year, there is new words, I remember one episode we had was about the new the new war, when you guys all get together, and and you look back, and of course, few the last year were full of pandemic related words, and but in general, we need to be open to the fact that society change, there are new things technology, which is my field often change. So we incorporate all of this. So maybe an explanation of how is important that actually, this change happened, then we have to put new things in the dictionary, and maybe some become our cake. And I think it's still important to know that the origin of that word, but
Valerie Fridland 24:11
absolutely, you know, I think a lot of times we also focus on vocabulary, and language has a lot of underlying changes that happen or speech without us noticing it because we noticed vocabulary, because it's part of our conscious awareness. We flag that all the time, especially when it's with Speaker groups that are disfavored in society, which is where a lot of times slang comes from. It comes from groups like adolescents that have sort of a bad rap, among most of us that have had teenagers particularly. But it also comes from groups like African American speaker groups or Latino groups, things that tend to be less disfavored socially, and therefore, we don't like those features, because somehow they're associated with these disfavored social groups. And somehow that makes them bad or wrong English, but I think what we also don't notice is all these tiny little changes that a lot of these speaker groups introduce in our language at a much more substantive level, because a word is here or there, right? Sometimes they stick around, sometimes they don't, they're pretty ephemeral. But other facets of our language, the morphosyntax, the sound system, those are much more impactful over the course of language over time, then whether I say eat or ribs, which may or may not stick around and become part of more mainstream culture. So for example, think about how you say passives, today, do you say I was fired or I got fired. This is a rise of a new form of passive verb, the got passive, and most people use it without even realizing it. And the reason it's come up is probably because it's, first of all, maybe a little less formal. But primarily, it seems to indicate that the agent, I'm sorry, the subject of the verb, had, the action happened suddenly, or that it was a more negative effect on the person to whom the action occurred, rather than just a was passive. So it actually gives a finer, nuanced meaning. And that's really why these things evolve, because we have experiences or intentions that we need to encode. So it's not simply that we have a new device that we need to give a name to. And that does inspire a lot of linguistic ingenuity. But it's also that we have different things we need to do with language and the language we have doesn't serve those roles. So like, for example, as a coder dif has come up, not just because you know, we have vacuous, empty headed young women, that's absolutely wrong. But because of what changes in our culture in terms of telling stories, and conveying emotions and thoughts have come in the last 50 years. So in previous decades, up to about the 1950s, and 60s, when we told stories, or we were laying events, it was simply a verbatim recounting of events. Here's a sequential process that happened. But in the last 50 years or so we have a shift in narrative style, where our own processing of events has become a really important part of what we are doing when we're telling stories. So think about the last time you told a story, you often set the grounds or the sort of foreshadowing by saying, first, let me tell you a little bit about where I was and what I was doing. Or first, let me tell you, the background, these other things that are important that we think to the story, and a lot of times our thought process, while that story is being told is very important. So what we were thinking when it was happening, or how we were processing the emotions, and that is a new thing that's only about 50 years old, that narrative style. So if I'm telling you a story, and I want to tell you what John said, but it wasn't actually what he said it was what I was thinking he was saying, if I said John said, Holy shit, as part of the story, what that indicates to you by using the verb to say is that he verbatim said that, but if I say John was like, Holy shit, that could easily be what I think he was thinking or what he told me later, he was thinking, not actually what he said, it's an emotional processing of the events. And so to be like, arose to fit that need in our changing narrative style. That's a long story to say, basically, that we do these things, because we have new things to describe New experiences to encode, or new devices and new creations to name. And all of those things help keep our language rich and evolving, rather than leading to his decay.
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 28:24
And some of the listeners in you both know that my background is in psychology. And language is so important when it comes to psychological concepts, and therapeutic concepts. Because if you don't have the words with which to use, then you can't express yourself. And the other thing I was thinking is the that society, it's it's the words that we have, and how much language we have a word to describe something really reflects what the values are of that society. So for instance, and I know I'm putting two concepts together, but the first piece is, like, when we ask people, How do you feel today? Or how are you? Or how do you feel right? Usually, what do you get happy, sad is like, but you know how many words there are to describe it. And so the more we can make that language known, it allows someone to really hone in on exactly the differences between those feelings. And as you know, once you identify once you're able to put a label on it, it can it can be really therapeutic and really have positive things. The other piece is about and, and I just wonder if you can talk a little bit about what what do you want people to know, like what's really like when you you're mentoring, let's say, or teaching, right? And it's not being directed by the curriculum, because you know so much about language that I haven't I did not know a lot of what you're telling us, you know, before we've had conversation, so what are some of the important things that you want to highlight or you would highlight, you know, for for listeners,
Valerie Fridland 29:59
apps Well, I think one of the reasons I wrote this book was driven by the questions that people brought to my attention all the time. So either in classes what students would say about their own speech,
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 30:10
I just want to interrupt because you said one of the reasons why you wrote the book. I don't think that we mentioned the book, the actual full title. So why don't you talk a little bit or think you have a behind you show the book? I do? The title is, yes,
Valerie Fridland 30:24
yes, I have the book, I just wrote a book like literally dude, arguing for the good and bad English. And it was really driven by the experience I had as both professor with my students and also as a public speaker, in contexts in which I would give public lectures, when I found that I would give lectures about the beauty of language, the evolution of language and larger forces of language, sort of the linguistics part of what I do. But then students would come to me and say, you know, I am really self conscious about the vocal fry my, my grandfather tells me I, you know, sound like I'm gargling stones, or, you know, something like that, or my mom or my dad always comment on my grammar, I got so much of that from the students that they feel self conscious about the way they speak. And these are kids that are in college, they're doing good work. They're studying linguistics, which isn't something that you know, your average everyday student picks. So it's a harder curriculum. It's a unique class. And I'd also get those same questions from adults at my public lectures like, Why did kids say like all the time, or AAC, Why are women using vocal fry, it's so annoying. And what I realized is we haven't done a very good job of communicating what drives language change what drives speakers to adopt these forms that we tend to dislike, nor have we done a good job of communicating why we have these reactions to it, what is it that drives these really strong tendencies to judge other people's speech habits in a way that's harmful to them, and hurtful and painful, we feel like we're doing them a favor. But it's shocking to me the kinds of rudeness with which people respond to young people's language, as if that somehow justifies your behavior. Because you don't like that. They say, like, you dismiss them as a person, you dismiss them, having someone has ideas and thoughts that are valuable. So I really want people to read the book, to understand that language has a really fascinating history that all these forms that we dismiss as useless and vacuous are actually really fascinating. From a historical perspective, they're really fascinating from a scientific perspective, we've got great experimental research to support their use as something innovative and creative. And that it's really their association with speakers that are disfavored socially, that tends to give rise to our dislike and distrust of them. So I think those are really important messages that we have not gotten enough.
Marco Ciappelli32:45
I think that's an important message, like, very important. Embrace it. I think it helps people embrace diversity, because we have a tendency to always see what is different from us as the enemy something like Oh, you're not part of my group, your you don't speak my dialect. You don't speak my you don't understand my slang. And I think sometimes kids do it on purpose, right? Like they want to have their own language, absolutely. To create their own tribe, let's say, but that's my opinion, very important part of growing up and developing, and we need that community. But we also need to know go and criticize the other because everybody wants to have his own community. Absolutely. So the big lesson here is embrace diversity, and maybe learn about that language. And I think that's an important part and topic for mentorship that we need to do. It's very, about embracing it. And I know you do a lot of that in the book, I was reading some excerpts in terms of, you know, women may use certain things more than other. You just mentioned, minority groups may do that. So again, not a book that we want to burn, or.
Valerie Fridland 34:04
And I tried to have fun with it. Because I think also language is fun. It's fun. There's so many facts about language that are mind blowing and silly. The history of language is really silly, the way that people when we watch when we step back and watch people in history and how they've acted around language, we laugh, it's easy to laugh at. And then you think, well, actually, we're doing the same thing today. So it's really a light hearted approach I take in the book for that reason, because it's so it's a joyous topic, and I'm so lucky to get to share it with everybody. And
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 34:34
I do want to underscore what you said in Marco, you alluded to this too, is that we people can be so judgmental of other people based on language. And we miss so much then it is really important as mentors, as humans, to not just make those assumptions that just because somebody is either struggling with an accent or language, that they're not intelligent, and we've seen that over and over again. And I just want to underscore Because that's really important. Again, being from Brooklyn that Brooklyn accent was always associated with being not intelligent.
Valerie Fridland 35:09
Absolutely. And my next book actually is about accents. And it's about our the historical development of different speech forms and sort of how these ideas about what type of talker you are, what type of person you are based on your accent, where that stems from,
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 35:24
right and what's valued in society, right. So if certain groups valued, then the way they speak, which goes into code switching, which we can have a whole other podcast about with code switching, right. And I've seen that happen a lot. But
Marco Ciappelli35:39
I come from Italy, where we don't understand each other if we, if we speak in dialect, I mean, we don't have a dialect in Florence, for example, but if somebody from Sicily speaking dialect, I'm done. I mean, I need a dictionary, literally, by but, but I want to ask you something to kind of wrap into the mentorship. And I'm wondering, the value of teaching all of this. And again, teaching mentoring to the young generation, which again, I go to inclusion, diversity, accepting, but also understanding our past to understand our future i jokes about this thing, often, actually, because even there are words, you probably can have a comment on this, like, we still use horsepower, to talk about cars, or even rockets that go to the moon, how many horsepower that rocket has. And it goes back to the conversion into the steam engine. Right? He's still using that we still call the mobile phone or the smartphone, it's not even a phone anymore. Right? So Right. My point is, is there a time maybe apart from the jokes that there is too early, in your opinion to talk about this to a kid? I mean, do we need to start with the basic rules, and then break those rules? Like I said at the beginning? Or is okay to just take it as
Valerie Fridland 37:06
I think you know, I think kids are really ripe for that kind of information. Because what is unique about young children is they ask the questions, adults fail to notice to ask. And what I mean by that is we get so accustomed to saying things horsepower is a great example that most people don't even think about the origin of that word, it doesn't even mean what it used to mean, it's become this totally different word that's bleached from its original meaning. Whereas a child would be the first to say, why is it called horsepower? Right? I think it's a wonderful time to bring up the evolutionary spirit of language with them. And to talk about why language is the way it is, I wish we taught linguistics. In an elementary program, I think children would really love it. And I'm not talking about the social linguistic side of it. But just linguistics because it helps children learn language by understanding the structure of language. And also in cases where you have non native speakers that really can help kids understand the differences between their language or dialect. And the one they're learning if they understand the structure better. But a great example is when my son was doing spelling words. And I think first grade, they'd have these lists every Friday that they had would be tested on Monday or something like that. Or maybe it was they got up on Monday for the test on Friday. 10 words or 15. And I dreaded that stupid list every week, because it was so ridiculous to show a kid all these words spelled in wacky ways that have nothing to do with the way we pronounce them anymore. And so yeah, learn it like that. And they want it to make sense. Children want to make sense of the world. So they're like, why is Nipe spelled with a K and A G? H? And how about all those weird words that have an E AE and then there's another one that has an E so like, beat and beat, like the beat you eat? And then listen to a beat? Where's that come from? Or meat and meat, you know, you eat meat, and then you meat. It's so confusing. And kids had to learn that and my son was could not he could not understand the EA and the E difference. He got got confused on that all the time. And so I told him and whether it helped him actually learn the words I don't I don't know. But it actually made a little difference to him. In terms of understanding why it was there. I said what that is actually from a time in English, when those words were pronounced differently. The E and the E AE were actually different. So it was more like met. And mate. So one was met and the other one's mate. But those fell in together around 15 1600 and just became meat and meat where they weren't even the vowel that either of them started with. They got raised to be an E vowel, and they merged. So I did it in more child friendly language. But I said so actually, in Old English, you know, you would have sent those differently. Isn't that cool? And this is actually a record so that we can know the secrets of our language 1000 years ago, and he thought that was pretty cool. Now whether it helped him on a spelling test. I don't know but at least it helped him understand and accept and enjoy this difference that seemed arbitrary and weird on the forefront. And then I told him about night. Well, in the olden days, nights were actually just boys, they weren't even nights. And that we used to call them club nights. And then there was a little that GH was a sound that German had, because we were German speaking group at the time, and it was connect. So I said that and those are just ways that we can see our history through words. So he found those things fascinating because he was super into knights at the time. And so I was able to scaffold what he loved and enjoyed and a lot of little kids love knights and princesses and things like that into understanding a little bit about the evolution of language, and then make him not feel so bad about the fact that it was hard. It's hard to learn this because it doesn't have a meaning for us today. But absolutely, I think you can start very young.
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 40:52
This is I'm learning a lot Marco, did you know any of that I really did not know that at all. So I'm getting mentored. This is amazing, because I too, sometimes I still when I have to spell something. It's like, Wait, how do you do this? Why am I spelling it this way versus that way?
Valerie Fridland 41:09
It's a cruel trick.
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 41:10
It is because it's all about rote memory, then because it's nothing. And for I don't I'm not great with rote memory, I have to understand and have meaning. So that's been a struggle of mine. And it's it's you do wait, what why is it this way? And what? Yes.
Marco Ciappelli41:26
Look, I started in advertising as a copywriter, and I still enjoy doing copywriter. My best friend has always been the Thesaurus non me a contract in Italian and just see how many different way there is that word, but there is a slight little difference. And then maybe you go to look at the origin. And we are all made up stories. So the language to be honest, is at the core of our society. So here's a big thank you. For for people like you. They're all geeky geeking out about these things. And yeah, I am very fascinated, I hope that this conversation will be listened by parents, by other mentors by kids and family and really get fascinated by this is an excellent way to learn. And to get a different perspective. But Susan, I'm going to use this word. Now. I know it's not the perspectives this show, but you know, it gives a different perspective.
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 42:28
Yeah, I was laughing Marco, because when you said about the thesaurus, I'm thinking isn't now replaced with chat. GPT
Marco Ciappelli42:35
Oh, God, let's not go there. I know, I have another hour.
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 42:39
I know, I don't want to hope
Marco Ciappelli42:40
that I was tempted to go there. I
Dr. Susan Birne-Stone 42:42
was gonna use that source anymore. You know. That's a whole. That's a whole nother podcast. Yes. So this has been great, Valerie. And I just want to say again, if you want to learn more about Valerie, you can go on the mentor project.org. And check her out and check out her book. And I think I believe we have it there as well. And yeah, this has been great. And I hope you'll come back again. And we'll talk more about absolutely next time and mentoring and some of the findings that you are going to be experiencing as you I know you're doing a lot more talks and mentoring on this. So great. This has been fascinating, really things that you don't often hear and think about. Thank you.
Valerie Fridland 43:28
Sure, absolutely. It's been fun to talk with you. I always like seeing your faces.
Marco Ciappelli43:33
Always fun. And for everybody listening, we have many other common episodes with other mentors. And if you want to learn more about the mentor project, there'll be links either under the video or under the podcast notes. Either you're enjoying those and how you're looking at us having fun smiling. And yeah, share, invite more people would love to have more people sharing all the conversation that we have. So thank you very much. Thank you. Bye bye. Hi.
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