Show notes
In this episode, we find our host particularly giggly with Dr. Maggie M. Werner, professor of writing and rhetoric at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, as they explore the politics of language and writing. The conversation begins with Dr. Werner’s most recent work (with Dr. Star Vanguri) exploring the fascinating, and often racist, origins of portmanteau words (i.e. words that bring two words together, such as Megxit or tradwife). In our conversation, we reflect on the struggles of academic life, the nature of stupidity, the role of language in the origins of totalitarianism, and the joys of having ADHD! Plus, Dr. Werner shares expert writing tips for improving your own work and teaching students how to write more effectively.
Guest Bio
Dr. Maggie M. Werner is a professor of writing and rhetoric at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, She earned a BA in English and an MA in professional writing and rhetorics from Illinois State University and a PhD in rhetoric and composition in the teaching of English from the University of Arizona in 2011. Her research focuses on rhetorical criticism, sexual rhetorics, and portmanteau words. Prior to her recent work on portmanteau words, she published Stripped: Reading the -Body (2020) based on a 15-year ethnographic study of strip clubs and burlesque shows to examine how dancers use their bodies to create meaning through performance. Her work has been published in the Western Journal of Communication, Feminist Formations, Rhetoric Review, and Composition Studies.
Content Promised in the Episode
Writing Supports
Excelsior University Online Writing Lab
Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)
University of Ottawa Academic Writing Help Centre
Methods Section Components – Doing Social Research
Good Writing Checklist | Doing Social Research
Paper Checklist – Doing Social Research
Paper Outline – Doing Social Research
Works Cited
Arendt, Hannah. 1973. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York :Harcourt Brace.
Bartholomae, David. 1993. “The Tidy House: Basic Writing in the American Curriculum.” Journal of Basic Writing 12(1):4-21.
Becker, Howard S. 2020 [1986]. Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start & Finish your Thesis, Book, or Article, third ed. Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press.
Vanguri, Star M., and Maggie M. Werner. 2024. “Unpacking the Portmanteau: Megxit’s Implicit Racist Ideology.” Western Journal of Communication 88(2):402–417.
Wallraff, Barbara. 2006. “Shouldn’t there be a word …? The holes in our language and the never-ending search for words to fill them.” The American Scholar, 75(2), 76–87
Werner, Maggie M. 2020. Embodied Rhetoric: Stripped: Reading the Erotic Body Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Interview Transcript
00:00:01 Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to the Social Research podcast where I talk with some of my favorite people who do Social Research to dig into the cool projects they’re working on.
My goal is to help demystify research for students, inspire other researchers, and provide a platform for all the brilliant work of folks doing research in the humanities and social sciences.
00:00:20 Speaker 1
I’m your host, Phyllis Rippey, a professor of sociology, the University of Ottawa and creator of the website doingsocialresearch.com.
00:00:28 Speaker 1
But today, we’re not here to talk about me.
00:00:30 Speaker 1
We’re here to talk about one of my oldest friends, Dr. Maggie M Werner.
00:00:37 Speaker 1
Dr. Werner is professor of writing and rhetoric at Hobart and William Smith colleges, specializing in rhetorical criticism and sexual rhetorics.
00:00:45 Speaker 1
She earned a BA in English and an MA in professional writing and rhetorics from Illinois State University and a PhD in rhetoric and composition in the teaching of English from the University of Arizona in 2011.
00:00:55 Speaker 1
Her research has been published in Western Journal of communication, feminist formations, rhetoric review, composition studies present.
00:01:02 Speaker 1
And the collection piece and social justice education on campus.
00:01:05 Speaker 1
Long time fans.
00:01:06 Speaker 1
Ha ha ha.
00:01:07 Speaker 1
I’m a me.
00:01:08 Speaker 1
That is, might also remember Maggie from the very final episode of the Ruppes Sisters Podcast.
00:01:13 Speaker 1
But I promise she didn’t.
00:01:14 Speaker 1
I wasn’t the cost.
00:01:16 Speaker 1
It’s.
00:01:17 Speaker 1
And on that episode, we talked about her 2020 monograph stripped, reading the ****** body published by Penn State University Press.
00:01:26 Speaker 1
This amazing book was listed as one of the best new rhetoric books to read in 2021 by the Book Authority website.
00:01:33 Speaker 1
Based on 15 years of ethnographic study of strip clubs and burlesque shows, IE she went to a lot of strip clubs and burlesque, she was among many other things.
00:01:43 Speaker 1
She expertly blended classical and contemporary rhetorical and performance pleased with intersectional feminist analysis and personal narratives to explore how we can read the sexualized body.
00:01:54 Speaker 1
Part of what I found brilliant about her work as how she gives agency to the subjects of her topic.
00:02:00 Speaker 1
Well, at the same time grappling with her own desires and potentially objectifying.
00:02:04 Speaker 1
Is rather than purely extracting information from the performers or dissecting their performances as a rhetorician, her aim was to read the messages that they themselves were trying to convey.
00:02:15 Speaker 1
What emerged was a beautiful and powerful understanding of how ****** dancers create and convey meaning through their bodies, thereby situating the dancers themselves at the centre of control.
00:02:26 Speaker 1
And this approach was a real radical departure from a lot of theorizing and writing that portray sex workers as victims at the hands of primarily male bouncers, pimps and consumers.
00:02:35 Speaker 1
And it also forced the reader to consider our own assumptions of what sexualized bodies are trying to tell us.
00:02:42 Speaker 1
However, she has more recently changed tax away from human subjects research and is currently working on a coauthor book about.
00:02:48 Speaker 1
Portmanteau words, which I’m going to let her explain because I keep having to Google this every time I look at like writing the bio notes.
00:02:55 Speaker 1
I’m like, what is a portmanteau word?
00:02:57 Speaker 1
And then I look it up.
00:02:57 Speaker 1
And then I’m like, oh, my God, this is so intriguing.
00:03:01 Speaker 1
So I’m very excited to hear what the heck that is.
00:03:05 Speaker 1
Also, Maggie teaches writing and rhetorical criticism, focusing particularly on analysis, argumentation and style.
00:03:12 Speaker 1
And I really would love to dig into that a little bit, maybe offering.
00:03:16 Speaker 1
Some advice on writing effectively for our listeners and we just have we got so much to talk about.
00:03:23 Speaker 1
It’s already like 17 minutes in and that did not take me 17 minutes.
00:03:28 Speaker 1
We can’t stop talking, so I’m so excited.
00:03:30 Speaker 1
I’m welcome to my new podcast, Maggie.
00:03:34 Speaker 2
Thank you, Phyllis.
00:03:35 Speaker 2
That was so nice.
00:03:37 Speaker 2
I was sitting here getting well, as you can imagine, really uncomfortable because you were saying.
00:03:42 Speaker 2
Nice things that I wanted to be like.
00:03:44 Speaker 2
No, wait, it’s dumb.
00:03:45 Speaker 1
Oh my God, it’s so funny to get well, cause like I asked people like, can you know if you can send me a bill?
00:03:50 Speaker 1
That would be helpful.
00:03:51 Speaker 1
And the differences between different people, like some people will send me like, I mean, everyone is a little bit sheepish, but it’s like some people will send me to their website and it happens to have a lot longer.
00:04:02 Speaker 1
Yours was like 3 sentences and you’re like, well, you can cut whatever you want.
00:04:06 Speaker 1
It was like cut.
00:04:07 Speaker 1
What your name anyway?
00:04:09 Speaker 1
I was like that is not nearly.
00:04:11 Speaker 1
That is not singing your praises nearly enough.
00:04:13 Speaker 1
So, and it’s all true.
00:04:15 Speaker 1
How I loved your book.
00:04:16 Speaker 1
Per my brands, doing Social Research, can you tell me about what’s the research that you’re doing these days and what the ever portmanteau words?
00:04:26 Speaker 1
And why are you writing a book about them or whatever?
00:04:29 Speaker 1
What are you researching?
00:04:31 Speaker 2
OK, um, well, portmanteau words are.
00:04:35 Speaker 2
That’s just the pretentious name for a blended word or lexical blends, as they’re called in linguistics.
00:04:43 Speaker 1
The lexical bland.
00:04:45 Speaker 2
Tom Portmanteau, which I is also a portmanteau, comes from the French words Porte and which means to carry and cope our Mantel which means code.
00:04:56 Speaker 2
So a portmanteau is like a kind of.
00:04:58 Speaker 1
Where to?
00:04:58 Speaker 1
Where to where?
00:04:59 Speaker 3
To where?
00:05:01 Speaker 1
Ports.
00:05:01 Speaker 3
So what this scary?
00:05:03 Speaker 1
It is like it.
00:05:04 Speaker 2
It can be OK, so it’s carry is the definition we wanna go with.
00:05:06 Speaker 2
So OK, so it’s the portmanteau.
00:05:09 Speaker 2
Is like a 19th century trunk that people use to care.
00:05:12 Speaker 1
Ohhhhh.
00:05:13 Speaker 2
So it’s like a traveling trunk.
00:05:15 Speaker 2
These big kid trunks anyway, it comes from Alice in Wonderland.
00:05:18 Speaker 2
It’s like a cloak carrier and it was the.
00:05:20 Speaker 2
Name of these trucks.
00:05:20 Speaker 1
Ohhhhh.
00:05:21 Speaker 2
So a portmanteau is a large hinged.
00:05:24 Speaker 2
Truck ohc insides so through Google it.
00:05:25 Speaker 3
With like taste, right?
00:05:27 Speaker 2
Yeah, you’ll find that.
00:05:28 Speaker 2
So in this is the longest explanation that you don’t need.
00:05:31 Speaker 1
No, I want long every discussion.
00:05:33 Speaker 1
Want.
00:05:33 Speaker 1
This is this podcast is brand as long explanations.
00:05:37 Speaker 2
Well, anybody who writes about Portmanteaus has to start.
00:05:39 Speaker 2
It’s almost a commonplace that you start with what it means and that it’s made of.
00:05:43 Speaker 2
It’s the these French words.
00:05:45 Speaker 2
It’s a blend and that where it comes.
00:05:47 Speaker 2
From is Jabberwocky when Humpty Dumpty is explaining the meaning of words like slimy and live, and he says to Alice, well, it’s like a portmanteau.
00:05:59 Speaker 2
There are two meanings.
00:06:00 Speaker 2
Packed up into one word, so that’s where.
00:06:04 Speaker 2
So we use the metaphorical portmanteau.
00:06:07 Speaker 2
Partially because we’re rhetoricians and we like that and we like the word and it’s sort of more in line with our research because we’re not linguist.
00:06:15 Speaker 2
And we’re not talking about things like patterns of combining and all of these other things that linguists write about were writing about meaning and how meaning gets generated and how they become sort of complex carriers of meaning and sometimes can be used to sort of problematically slide in, um, things into words that seem innocuous, which is the basis of our first publication.
00:06:45 Speaker 2
Um about which is not in my bio.
00:06:48 Speaker 2
I was like, damn, I have something else.
00:06:51 Speaker 2
Also.
00:06:51 Speaker 1
So you should I drew for website.
00:06:54 Speaker 1
I also noticed that the Ripley Sisters Podcast is not.
00:06:55 Speaker 3
If it’s updated, I’m sorry I haven’t updated it in years, so sorry the no.
00:06:58 Speaker 3
I.
00:07:01 Speaker 1
How? My God don’t.
00:07:03 Speaker 2
I love that show.
00:07:05 Speaker 2
I’ve listened to it more than once so.
00:07:06 Speaker 3
Ohhhhh.
00:07:09 Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:07:10 Speaker 2
Anyway, so we did an article on the port mantle.
00:07:13 Speaker 2
Mexit alright, which is from Megan Markle exiting the royal family.
00:07:18
Ohio.
00:07:18 Speaker 3
And.
00:07:19 Speaker 2
So the first article was about how that word, which seems again innocuous.
00:07:25 Speaker 2
I’m probably going to keep saying that actually became.
00:07:28 Speaker 2
This sort of.
00:07:30 Speaker 2
Um function kind of like an ideograph, which is like a one word that carries these entire ideological systems.
00:07:36 Speaker 2
So we found that people would use Megxit was already attaching it with, like, really racist politics and sort of pro monarchy, anti Megan or pro.
00:07:48 Speaker 2
Um, you S like patriots.
00:07:50 Speaker 3
Thompson.
00:07:51 Speaker 1
So how how?
00:07:52 Speaker 1
How was that bright like cause?
00:07:53 Speaker 1
I’m just thinking like Brexit and that.
00:07:55 Speaker 1
It’s so how?
00:07:56 Speaker 2
Yeah. So.
00:07:57 Speaker 1
Explain more like go go through all of it.
00:07:59 Speaker 2
OK.
00:08:00 Speaker 2
So I mean, the article the argument is that.
00:08:05 Speaker 2
Uh, so we what we do is we we provide a methodology kind of for breaking down these portmanteau words.
00:08:13 Speaker 2
So you sort of have to examine each input stem is what they’re called.
00:08:17 Speaker 2
So Megan and exit.
00:08:17 Speaker 3
Hmm.
00:08:21 Speaker 2
All right, so exit isn’t just exit.
00:08:21
I hmm.
00:08:23 Speaker 2
Exit gets its ideological baggage from Brexit.
00:08:27 Speaker 3
Brexit, right?
00:08:28 Speaker 2
Also, tied the sort of nationalistic, um, racist discourses Pro monarchy pro count.
00:08:36 Speaker 2
Three and the people who were using the term in the United States were generally also racist and patriotic.
00:08:48 Speaker 2
Um pro Trump magas.
00:08:50 Speaker 2
So we were saying, well, this is interesting, that the people who hate Megan and use this hashtag also have these others.
00:08:57 Speaker 2
So we sort of were talking about the baggage that comes from Brexit, right?
00:09:00 Speaker 2
It’s no longer means exit anymore.
00:09:03 Speaker 2
Now it means something else, and so then we sort of just you.
00:09:03 Speaker 3
Braids.
00:09:07
No.
00:09:07 Speaker 2
Gave a longer moco, more coherent argument.
00:09:08 Speaker 3
Have you?
00:09:11 Speaker 2
About how this.
00:09:12 Speaker 1
Was very coherent.
00:09:13 Speaker 1
That was very coherent.
00:09:14 Speaker 1
Have and I can.
00:09:15 Speaker 1
I’m I don’t know why this it do you.
00:09:19 Speaker 1
Have you ever read any of Sarah Ahmed stuff?
00:09:22 Speaker 1
Yeah, about like exit.
00:09:25 Speaker 2
No.
00:09:26 Speaker 1
That’s totally fine.
00:09:27 Speaker 1
But it’s, it’s just really interesting when you’re talking about this.
00:09:30 Speaker 1
It makes me think, and I hate it when people say people and I don’t know when I’m like, I’m a failure.
00:09:33 Speaker 1
I should have.
00:09:34 Speaker 1
I should have known that.
00:09:35 Speaker 1
So don’t feel that way.
00:09:36 Speaker 1
She’s been like, a million books and really an idea is.
00:09:38 Speaker 1
And the only reason why I think I’m.
00:09:41 Speaker 1
Um, I think I assigned it maybe in a class or something and anyway, but she talks about exit as a form of, like political protest.
00:09:51 Speaker 1
That could be really interesting, but she talks about it because she’s talking about why she left academia, basically.
00:09:58 Speaker 1
And so I’m very interested in because I often am like, do I want to be here?
00:10:02 Speaker 1
Do I want all of these things?
00:10:04 Speaker 1
Like do I like?
00:10:05 Speaker 1
There’s things that are very challenging and you know, there’s also like she talks about it in terms.
00:10:11 Speaker 1
Of the sort.
00:10:11 Speaker 1
Of like, you know, white supremacy.
00:10:14 Speaker 1
That’s like inherent in academia and in the UK, where she um, where she lives and works.
00:10:23 Speaker 1
But it don’t like it.
00:10:24 Speaker 1
There’s something like how you’re talking about this.
00:10:26 Speaker 1
It makes me like slightly sad, and it’s really because it’s like she’s trying, like, but it is.
00:10:32 Speaker 1
I mean, I think it’s a very similar thing though in terms of this.
00:10:36 Speaker 1
Idea of exit as a form of resistance like exit as a form of saying I I don’t.
00:10:44 Speaker 1
I don’t approve of this.
00:10:45 Speaker 1
I don’t like this anymore.
00:10:46 Speaker 1
And so like in a certain sense, like what you’re describing is, you know, Megan Markle trying to claim, like, attain some kind of agency, which also reminds me of your book and the sort of brilliant way of that you have at trying to explore the ways in which sort of those who are often.
00:11:07 Speaker 1
Vilified in the media.
00:11:10 Speaker 1
How they try to claim this kind of agency, but then also that is constantly tangled up in these kinds of conservative, controlling discourses and rhetorics of like trying to make the resistance or the control problematic.
00:11:28 Speaker 1
Does that.
00:11:29 Speaker 1
Does that all makes sense?
00:11:30 Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
00:11:32 Speaker 1
Yeah, but that’s like, that’s so fascinating.
00:11:35 Speaker 1
So.
00:11:35 Speaker 1
So.
00:11:36 Speaker 1
So in your book or so your article, where did it come out so people can read it?
00:11:40 Speaker 1
I need to take a note of it.
00:11:42 Speaker 2
Western Journal of communication.
00:11:44 Speaker 1
OK.
00:11:44 Speaker 2
I said with a question mark.
00:11:46 Speaker 2
Yes.
00:11:46 Speaker 2
No, that it absolutely was.
00:11:47 Speaker 2
The Western Journal of Communication, and it’s probably it’s I’m listed as the second author.
00:11:53 Speaker 2
We’re coauthors, though we’re in the humanities and we don’t do that.
00:11:56 Speaker 2
Kind of ********.
00:11:57 Speaker 1
Ohhhhh, there’s no ranking of who was number oh so.
00:11:59 Speaker 2
There’s no ranking about who does more.
00:12:05 Speaker 2
Anyway.
00:12:07 Speaker 1
That sucks.
00:12:07 Speaker 1
That your last name starts with AW, do you do it alphabetically or do you?
00:12:10 Speaker 2
Well, she’s star van Gurry.
00:12:12 Speaker 2
Um, so we are very, very close.
00:12:14 Speaker 2
I just wanted to say for that you to look up the article.
00:12:16 Speaker 2
It’s like the first author is * Van Gory VAN, G Uri and star is my bestie from grad school, and now my bestie for life and.
00:12:26 Speaker 3
OHS.
00:12:28 Speaker 1
I love working with besties.
00:12:30 Speaker 2
Oh my gosh, it’s just so great.
00:12:32 Speaker 2
I I don’t know if I used to would be like I’m never going to collaborate and I’m kind of like, I don’t know if I ever want to write by myself again, but.
00:12:40 Speaker 2
Yeah, we’re working on the book together.
00:12:42 Speaker 1
I wanted to talk about that actually.
00:12:44 Speaker 1
Let’s just digress for one second about I would love to talk about process like talking about working with others because I just.
00:12:52 Speaker 1
I know that when we were emailing back and forth, they were like, well, I can’t run these days cause I have this standing meeting with my coauthor and I was like, that is so cool because I often when I’m collaborating with someone, it’s like I’ll do a version and then I’ll send it back to them and then I’ll come back.
00:13:06 Speaker 1
And so generally speaking, it is every week I say to my coauthor, sorry, I have nothing.
00:13:10 Speaker 1
To report or talk to you next week.
00:13:11 Speaker 2
That’s makes our meeting.
00:13:13 Speaker 1
You have nothing to report, so I’m just like, I’m really curious about strategy.
00:13:19 Speaker 1
What are your strategies?
00:13:21 Speaker 1
How are you doing?
00:13:22 Speaker 1
What are you?
00:13:23 Speaker 1
Are you Co authoring the book with star?
00:13:25 Speaker 1
Also, OK, cool.
00:13:25 Speaker 2
Yes, yes.
00:13:26 Speaker 2
And she’ll be first author on that too.
00:13:28 Speaker 2
So no.
00:13:28 Speaker 2
OK.
00:13:29 Speaker 2
Um, yes, my collaborator is Doctor Starvin Gurry, and she’s a professor of media and communications at Nova Southeastern University.
00:13:29 Speaker 3
Darn.
00:13:39 Speaker 2
Um in Florida, um and.
00:13:43 Speaker 2
And yeah, so I just wanted to give her a shout out because she’s brilliant and is the reason why I’m on this track.
00:13:50 Speaker 2
So I’m sorry, what was the question?
00:13:51 Speaker 2
It was.
00:13:51 Speaker 2
How do we how do we work those meetings?
00:13:52 Speaker 3
Yeah.
00:13:54 Speaker 3
What is the meeting OK.
00:13:54 Speaker 1
Are your meetings like?
00:13:55 Speaker 1
Are they totally linear and never have tangents and you never change this checked like you and?
00:14:00 Speaker 3
But.
00:14:01 Speaker 1
I are doing.
00:14:02 Speaker 2
Exactly.
00:14:03 Speaker 2
Yeah, after like 20 minutes of being like, why don’t.
00:14:06 Speaker 2
Why isn’t it our job to name products or you know?
00:14:11 Speaker 2
Sorry.
00:14:14 Speaker 2
Now, yeah, we meet and I’ve been on sabbatical this semester, so I, you know, took on more of the right, I mean.
00:14:22 Speaker 2
And, you know, stars teaching four and is like the, you know, chair of the graph program it.
00:14:28 Speaker 1
Oh my God.
00:14:30 Speaker 2
And it has 2 two small children.
00:14:30 Speaker 3
You.
00:14:33 Speaker 2
We’re not small, they’re under 10 though.
00:14:34 Speaker 3
So yeah, OK.
00:14:34 Speaker 1
That’s small.
00:14:36 Speaker 2
Well, I don’t know.
00:14:36 Speaker 3
Yeah.
00:14:38 Speaker 2
I mean, they’re not little.
00:14:39 Speaker 2
They’re like big.
00:14:39 Speaker 1
No, no, no.
00:14:40 Speaker 1
But that’s like, that’s demanding you.
00:14:41 Speaker 2
Little.
00:14:42 Speaker 1
You think that drive themselves?
00:14:42 Speaker 2
Yes, exactly.
00:14:43 Speaker 1
They, like, are still like you don’t know why.
00:14:44 Speaker 2
So it’s like.
00:14:46 Speaker 1
Butts.
00:14:46 Speaker 1
But they do like.
00:14:48 Speaker 1
You don’t wanna know what they do, master.
00:14:50 Speaker 2
Mortal activities.
00:14:50 Speaker 3
Little.
00:14:51 Speaker 2
You know, it’s like anyway.
00:14:53 Speaker 2
So we’ll go on and start.
00:14:55 Speaker 2
I’ll be like I’ve done nothing and I’m OK.
00:14:57 Speaker 2
And then she’s like, I was like.
00:14:58 Speaker 2
No, that’s what we agreed on.
00:15:00 Speaker 2
Um, So what we usually do is we like, talk a little bit.
00:15:04 Speaker 2
About what we’re doing and we talk through problems and we set agendas and I think the most fun thing that probably not a lot of people do is we actually write together when we get to, yeah.
00:15:17 Speaker 1
That’s what I wanted.
00:15:18 Speaker 1
Know.
00:15:20 Speaker 2
So when we get to the stage where we usually like, well, write stuff separately and then come together.
00:15:27 Speaker 2
Sure.
00:15:27 Speaker 2
And then our general best process is for me to read because I can’t, as you might, you might have this problem.
00:15:34 Speaker 2
I can’t listen, so I I I really find listening a challenge.
00:15:35 Speaker 1
Right, yeah.
00:15:38 Speaker 2
So star listens.
00:15:39 Speaker 2
I read and she’s like able to and then we’ll stop and be like, OK, and she she’s really good at being like this makes no sense.
00:15:41
Believe me.
00:15:48 Speaker 2
Or we’ve said this three times and then we play with wording and we just correct it and then then we go on and.
00:15:56 Speaker 2
I love those days.
00:15:57 Speaker 2
Is because it’s really like as you are telling on my students this the other day.
00:16:01 Speaker 2
It’s like you have to who’s going to grad school?
00:16:03 Speaker 2
You have to get to the place where you realize that revision is your writing, you know.
00:16:08 Speaker 2
Yes.
00:16:08 Speaker 2
That’s where the work is done, yeah.
00:16:09 Speaker 3
Just.
00:16:10
Oh my God.
00:16:11 Speaker 1
Yeah, I bought.
00:16:12 Speaker 1
And I just started to read it.
00:16:13 Speaker 1
I’m so I I I can.
00:16:16 Speaker 1
Sometimes I listen better than I read, but I anyway.
00:16:20 Speaker 1
I don’t always take in all the information, but I have.
00:16:22 Speaker 1
I often listen.
00:16:23 Speaker 1
This is the sort of another thing we’re all over the place because both of us have ADHD, which is another topic to talk about. But.
00:16:29 Speaker 1
Sometimes I will listen wall reading because it helps focus my brain a little bit more, which I think is a really good like technique.
00:16:35 Speaker 1
And so I think like reading aloud is another thing that helps.
00:16:39 Speaker 1
But anyway, so there’s this book by Howard Becker that it’s like I keep citing things that I’ve read, like the first chapter and then put down.
00:16:45 Speaker 1
And then I don’t, it’s not in front of my face, so obviously it ceases to.
00:16:49 Speaker 1
List.
00:16:50 Speaker 1
But he talks about and I’m thinking about assigning it for like all of my classes into the future that he says, like people, students need to understand that writing is editing.
00:17:00 Speaker 1
And an undergrad.
00:17:02 Speaker 1
It’s so often that you have like 5 papers to do at the same time, and so you end up like writing them the night before and like whatever comes like you write it.
00:17:11 Speaker 1
It like shoots out of your printer and you hand it in.
00:17:13 Speaker 3
Hmm.
00:17:13 Speaker 1
And so students in grad school, they really struggle because they don’t understand that it’s like that needs to happen like weeks, months, years, sometimes before, whatever the final outcome.
00:17:24
He will.
00:17:25 Speaker 1
This and that the work is editing and editing and editing.
00:17:30 Speaker 1
It’s never like nobody writes like we write **** on the first draft, you know?
00:17:34 Speaker 1
I mean, I’m sure.
00:17:35 Speaker 1
Not you, but many of us.
00:17:37 Speaker 2
It’s so.
00:17:39 Speaker 1
You know.
00:17:39 Speaker 1
But I mean just as.
00:17:40 Speaker 1
You said writing is editing.
00:17:42 Speaker 1
OK, I’m talking too much.
00:17:43 Speaker 1
I want this to be about you.
00:17:45 Speaker 1
So so you, so that’s amazing.
00:17:47 Speaker 1
So the two of you can write together and um, but you you sort of have your own drafts that you’ve developed on your on your own, kind of, yeah.
00:17:55 Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:17:56 Speaker 2
And then because we.
00:17:57 Speaker 2
The you know, Polish together.
00:17:59 Speaker 2
I think we did a good job of having a, you know, a coherent voice, so it doesn’t really sound like me.
00:18:05 Speaker 2
In the same way that my book sounds like me and it doesn’t really sound like her in the stuff she doesn’t do with me, right?
00:18:08 Speaker 1
Interesting.
00:18:14 Speaker 2
So it’s kind of.
00:18:15 Speaker 2
Like our argument about the portmanteau? It’s.
00:18:17 Speaker 2
Like it’s not really our argument.
00:18:19 Speaker 2
It’s just kind of the way it.
00:18:20 Speaker 2
Is that there’s?
00:18:22 Speaker 2
It’s like a new third thing.
00:18:23 Speaker 2
It’s like the blend becomes is not just a sum of the two parts.
00:18:27 Speaker 2
The blend becomes a third thing, a new third thing, and that’s kind of how our writing is.
00:18:31 Speaker 2
So if you read our article does not sound, but there will be always be something.
00:18:35 Speaker 2
I’m always the one who wants to put, like, something pretentious in there and yeah, that’s such a Maggie word.
00:18:38
It’s.
00:18:40 Speaker 2
Or like put in things like fate accompli and.
00:18:43 Speaker 2
**** like that, you know, like.
00:18:44 Speaker 2
And I’ll be like, so anytime it’s like, super pretentious, I’ll be like, that’s the Maggie line.
00:18:52 Speaker 1
It’s OK.
00:18:52 Speaker 1
I was talking with my the last episode that was released was my friend Mike Allen.
00:18:59 Speaker 1
He his supervisor.
00:19:00 Speaker 1
I like so bad about angry, but I can’t help it.
00:19:02 Speaker 1
History, one of his supervisors and grad school, was due to the Butler.
00:19:05
Now.
00:19:05 Speaker 1
And I know so we were talking and he writes like I don’t.
00:19:10 Speaker 1
I don’t like calling it pretentious, but I would say like and you also are very good at this at writing in a way that I am terrible at, which is like that.
00:19:19 Speaker 1
Very like esoteric academic stuff like.
00:19:23 Speaker 1
Um and like there’s there’s a part of her.
00:19:27 Speaker 1
One of her books that I should probably look up to see where it is, but she talks about she sort of engages in that idea of why people criticize her for writing like that.
00:19:37 Speaker 1
But she’s like.
00:19:38 Speaker 1
**** ***.
00:19:39 Speaker 1
I like it like I like writing like this.
00:19:41 Speaker 1
It’s interesting, it works.
00:19:43 Speaker 1
My brain.
00:19:43 Speaker 1
There’s like a challenge, and it was after that cause I used to be one of the critics of it.
00:19:47 Speaker 1
I’m like, just make it simple.
00:19:48 Speaker 1
Make it clear for everyone.
00:19:49 Speaker 1
And then I was like, well, no, there is something kind of engaging and interesting about really like finding just the right words.
00:19:57
Hmm.
00:19:57 Speaker 1
Like I don’t see you as a pretentious person at all.
00:20:00 Speaker 1
Like as a human.
00:20:01 Speaker 1
Thing.
00:20:02 Speaker 1
So the fact that you describe the rating as pretentious, they feel like maybe it’s not that it’s pretentious, but it is precise.
00:20:10 Speaker 1
I don’t know.
00:20:12
Possibly.
00:20:17 Speaker 1
Is it just?
00:20:17 Speaker 2
I’ve also criticized Judith Butler’s problems, but I it’s hard for me.
00:20:23 Speaker 2
I don’t.
00:20:24 Speaker 2
You know, I’m not like you, but they’re stupid.
00:20:26 Speaker 2
But I realize that her her style is her.
00:20:28 Speaker 2
Style, you know.
00:20:29 Speaker 2
And it works for her.
00:20:30 Speaker 2
And like you said, when I can, although it’s very difficult for me because of the way I read or don’t read.
00:20:37 Speaker 2
So I sort of don’t read words I eat, I just take in pages at a time, which is why I can’t learn French after like what, 30 years and you know, like I struggle a lot.
00:20:51 Speaker 2
I can’t read poetry.
00:20:51 Speaker 2
I’ve just finally given up.
00:20:53 Speaker 2
If it doesn’t like rhyme and have stanzas, I just I cannot do it.
00:20:58 Speaker 1
In what way?
00:20:59 Speaker 2
Um.
00:20:59 Speaker 1
What do you mean you can’t do?
00:21:00 Speaker 1
Your brain is just like.
00:21:01 Speaker 1
Nope, not yeah.
00:21:01 Speaker 2
It took my brain.
00:21:02 Speaker 2
Doesn’t do it.
00:21:02 Speaker 2
It just doesn’t process it.
00:21:03 Speaker 2
I I really tried to like and it was like like Victorian.
00:21:04 Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah.
00:21:08 Speaker 2
It wasn’t even like weird modernist, like there was just.
00:21:11 Speaker 3
Right.
00:21:12 Speaker 2
I was just like.
00:21:13 Speaker 2
If asking too much of.
00:21:15 Speaker 2
You know, it’s asking me to think in a way, but I can, like, sit and read performances or movies and give you 40 interpretations.
00:21:15 Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
00:21:25 Speaker 2
But I cannot read poetry and I I think it’s all tied together.
00:21:27 Speaker 1
Oh my God, this is so.
00:21:29 Speaker 2
Sorry, I’m just that isn’t tangent and I have.
00:21:30 Speaker 1
No, this is no.
00:21:32 Speaker 1
This is so validating because I mean one of the reasons why I wanted to create this podcast.
00:21:37 Speaker 1
Just, I mean, there’s lots of reasons why and there’s lots of reasons why I like this is the favorite.
00:21:43 Speaker 1
My favorite thing I’ve ever done in my career, I think, is this podcast because I just love talking.
00:21:49 Speaker 1
Love talking about myself and I love talking about other people and their work, but one of the big reasons also like that whole, like demystifying thing is like I have struggled with imposter syndrome my entire career still.
00:21:52
Anything.
00:22:00 Speaker 1
Can and like I want what I love about the like the the format of a podcast is it’s just much more relaxed.
00:22:08 Speaker 1
It’s more authentic.
00:22:09 Speaker 1
It’s like for articles.
00:22:10 Speaker 1
We spend so much time editing them like it’s not.
00:22:14 Speaker 1
Like even when you can say like, that’s my Maggie voice, it actually it’s like that’s not the voice that like I know from.
00:22:20 Speaker 1
High school right here.
00:22:20
Please 3.
00:22:21 Speaker 1
You know, it’s like that’s not the voice of you.
00:22:25 Speaker 1
Like when we’re chatting here, that’s your scholarly voice, and it is your voice.
00:22:30 Speaker 1
But it is a different thing and I think that it’s like being honest about our struggles.
00:22:38 Speaker 1
The more in my life that I’ve become honest about my struggles, the less I struggle and it’s like I can just kind of accept and just hearing you talk about like, my brain just doesn’t take in poetry.
00:22:48 Speaker 1
It’s like I could spend my time being like I’m so stupid.
00:22:51 Speaker 1
I can’t do this.
00:22:51 Speaker 1
I can’t do this and then it’s.
00:22:52 Speaker 1
Like no, I have ADHD.
00:22:55 Speaker 1
I can’t do this.
00:22:56 Speaker 1
You know, it’s like it doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with me.
00:22:59 Speaker 1
It just means like I’m really good at connecting dots between ideas.
00:23:03 Speaker 1
Like, that’s my jam.
00:23:04 Speaker 1
I’m really good at being like, oh, this idea connects to this idea, but like I cannot.
00:23:07
Hmm.
00:23:10 Speaker 1
If you were to give me directions to like, get from point A to point B and it was more than walk straight ahead, I would be lost.
00:23:19 Speaker 1
Like my brain cannot retain that kind of info.
00:23:22 Speaker 1
Patient.
00:23:23 Speaker 1
So I just think it’s like really helpful for people aid to understand that, you know, it’s just like writing as editing that like a lot of us combat research without fully formed, beautiful like ideas, that this is all a process of growth and that there are certain things that, like, just because we’re not good at certain things in doesn’t mean that we have nothing to offer or that we’re not brilliant in some other way.
00:23:41
Yeah.
00:23:50 Speaker 1
Like you are.
00:23:52 Speaker 1
That’s my my little.
00:23:55 Speaker 1
The more you know, lecture.
00:23:55 Speaker 2
So you’re giving me permission to not be able to read poetry even.
00:23:58 Speaker 1
Oh my God.
00:23:58 Speaker 2
With the HD.
00:23:59 Speaker 1
Totally.
00:24:00 Speaker 2
Any poetry like, not even hard poetry.
00:24:02 Speaker 3
Feeling I was.
00:24:03 Speaker 2
Like I’m gonna pay attention to every ******* work.
00:24:05 Speaker 2
Can I say oh, sorry every athlete swear.
00:24:06 Speaker 1
I totally.
00:24:07 Speaker 1
On here.
00:24:08 Speaker 1
And yet I want my university to promote this podcast sometime.
00:24:10 Speaker 2
OK, at thin freaking.
00:24:11 Speaker 1
And I’m always, but I say I just, I already said, I said I already said the F word, it’s just I.
00:24:14
Freaking.
00:24:18
Did you?
00:24:18 Speaker 2
I wouldn’t.
00:24:20 Speaker 1
Who you didn’t notice? Yeah.
00:24:21 Speaker 2
But I I don’t even.
00:24:23 Speaker 2
It’s like every other word for me especially.
00:24:26 Speaker 1
Like same.
00:24:27 Speaker 3
Ohm.
00:24:27 Speaker 1
The only word I say more than ****.
00:24:28 Speaker 1
Is like so.
00:24:29 Speaker 2
That’s why it’s hard to be authentic because my.
00:24:30 Speaker 3
Look like.
00:24:31 Speaker 2
Authentic self says no.
00:24:33
**** every.
00:24:34 Speaker 1
Other word I know, but this is also part of what I love doing this podcast is because this is real and this is what academics professors like we need to be professional, but also.
00:24:44 Speaker 1
So it’s like we’re human beings and we’re not the regular profits, Maggie, we’re the cool props.
00:24:49 Speaker 3
We’re like well.
00:24:50 Speaker 2
Yeah, I think I I just like, I mean, I don’t wanna go down.
00:24:54 Speaker 2
I I’m really like you’re trying not to go down rabbit holes because every time you say something, I wanna say something to like progress.
00:25:02
Now.
00:25:03 Speaker 2
And so I’m trying not to do that, but I just have to say that one thing that age, there’s something about happened this past year I turned 50 and.
00:25:14 Speaker 1
Happy birthday.
00:25:15 Speaker 2
Thank you so.
00:25:17
It’s.
00:25:19 Speaker 2
And I’m going through menopause and which I’d rather talk about ADHD.
00:25:25 Speaker 2
I’d talk about.
00:25:25 Speaker 1
Menopause. Menopause, which makes a yes, it is destroying my brain.
00:25:27 Speaker 2
Not hot.
00:25:32 Speaker 2
Um, yeah, so I think I think that I mean, which I think if we you know get to the time effects sort of my sex research too and like why I’m changing tracks on my life and so, uh, I finally giving a **** a little less.
00:25:48 Speaker 2
And Phyllis, I think you and I.
00:25:50 Speaker 2
Are a lot like like.
00:25:52 Speaker 2
It’s like, you know, every time we talk, I’m like, wow, we have really, really alike.
00:25:58 Speaker 2
Just why we probably like I get along so.
00:26:00 Speaker 2
Well, with Rosalie.
00:26:01 Speaker 2
It’s easier like bestie bestie.
00:26:03
Steve.
00:26:05 Speaker 2
By yeah, it’s.
00:26:07 Speaker 2
Like I tried to not get a **** like.
00:26:09 Speaker 2
But like you, I’m like.
00:26:11 Speaker 2
I don’t give a ****.
00:26:11 Speaker 2
I really give a **** a lot.
00:26:12 Speaker 2
And I’m gonna go cry, right?
00:26:13 Speaker 1
Oh my God.
00:26:15 Speaker 3
But everybody like me, everybody liked me.
00:26:17 Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:26:17 Speaker 2
I want everybody like me.
00:26:18 Speaker 2
Yes, I absolutely do.
00:26:20 Speaker 2
And and, but I’ll be like ********.
00:26:22 Speaker 2
But I’m really trying this year to sort of just be like.
00:26:28 Speaker 2
Who do I have to prove something to anymore?
00:26:30 Speaker 2
I’ve done.
00:26:31 Speaker 2
I’ve done the things.
00:26:32 Speaker 2
I have a publication record.
00:26:34 Speaker 2
I have very good teaching evaluations.
00:26:37 Speaker 2
You know, my students say really, really nice things to me.
00:26:41 Speaker 2
For the most part, you know I don’t.
00:26:44 Speaker 2
I’m just trying to be like I I don’t.
00:26:46 Speaker 2
I don’t have to prove myself as an academic anymore, but and I know you felt this when you were young too, as the stupid kid.
00:26:53 Speaker 1
Yes.
00:26:54 Speaker 3
Oh.
00:26:54 Speaker 2
My God, Emily.
00:26:55 Speaker 3
My God.
00:26:55 Speaker 2
You know.
00:26:56 Speaker 1
Everything was always really rosalie rosalie.
00:26:57 Speaker 3
Ridley, Ridley really AM.
00:26:58 Speaker 2
And I’m the **** **. And we both ended up with, like, doing really well.
00:27:03 Speaker 2
And actually, yeah, you know.
00:27:06 Speaker 1
Because we’re also stubborn.
00:27:06 Speaker 2
And I actually like academia, which it makes me really uncool.
00:27:10 Speaker 2
It just works really, really well for me and I’m I can’t imagine myself doing anything else.
00:27:16 Speaker 2
Um, but anyway, I’m trying to just be like this is who I am, you know.
00:27:21 Speaker 2
And really, but you know, there are parts of my.
00:27:26 Speaker 2
Neurodivergent, I know not everybody loves that terminology, but that.
00:27:30 Speaker 1
Is that a portmanteau or no, that’s different.
00:27:33 Speaker 1
That’s a type scientific words.
00:27:34 Speaker 3
Actually I I it kind of is.
00:27:36 Speaker 2
Yeah, because it’s a a blended word in which one of the two stems, at least one of the two stems, is shortened.
00:27:44
Now.
00:27:44 Speaker 2
So neuro well they, yeah, but then I’m like is it just a prefix?
00:27:46 Speaker 1
Would be like neurology like.
00:27:49 Speaker 1
Neuro.
00:27:51 Speaker 2
I don’t know.
00:27:52 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:27:52 Speaker 1
Using and is it?
00:27:55 Speaker 1
Is that why we don’t like it?
00:27:56 Speaker 1
Because I do want to get back to Porto words but finish this thoughts and then we’ll go back to it.
00:28:00 Speaker 1
So being neurodivergent.
00:28:02 Speaker 2
Oh, in the ways that I am there is some masking that I think that that happens as well.
00:28:02 Speaker 1
Mean it’s.
00:28:06 Speaker 3
Hmm.
00:28:08 Speaker 2
So it makes it really hard to get to sort of like, um, authenticity.
00:28:13 Speaker 2
And then I think as a critical thinker and a critical theorist, I’m like, what is authenticity?
00:28:19 Speaker 1
Oh my God.
00:28:19 Speaker 2
You know, everything is a performance.
00:28:21 Speaker 2
Like what?
00:28:22 Speaker 2
So you know, I’m just.
00:28:24 Speaker 2
I’m just trying to like chill the ****.
00:28:26 Speaker 2
Chill the F out and like um.
00:28:30 Speaker 2
Yeah, just like not heat myself for the I’m who knows what.
00:28:30 Speaker 1
Stop over thinking.
00:28:34 Speaker 2
I’m gonna freaking die, you know, like.
00:28:35 Speaker 3
God ohmy.
00:28:36 Speaker 1
God, I am having these.
00:28:38 Speaker 1
Yes, this is like my year, partly why I’m on sabbatical this year.
00:28:41 Speaker 1
Is, um like just to figure out like who am I?
00:28:45 Speaker 1
What do I want?
00:28:46 Speaker 1
What do what am I doing?
00:28:47 Speaker 1
And I actually know, I often say like, oh, I hate academia.
00:28:50 Speaker 1
I don’t wanna be doing this, but I think I I love it.
00:28:52 Speaker 1
I don’t think I could be doing anything like I this year.
00:28:55 Speaker 1
Could have chosen to do basically nothing, like I could have.
00:29:00 Speaker 1
And yet I started a podcast.
00:29:02 Speaker 1
And I’m working on three like articles.
00:29:04 Speaker 1
Really kind of five articles.
00:29:06 Speaker 1
I’m like, I can’t stop doing it and it’s like, and So what?
00:29:11 Speaker 1
I’ve I’m trying to really figure like what is it that I don’t like.
00:29:14 Speaker 1
What is it that I struggle with and I do think it has to do with the neurodivergent, but one thing is so the concept of rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria.
00:29:25 Speaker 1
Yes, I’d like just learned this and I’m like, what, like between 70 to 100% of people with ADHD have this, it’s like.
00:29:33 Speaker 1
I am like because I can be very like I can be a leader, I can be in positions of authority.
00:29:40 Speaker 1
I can know what to do, but the second someone like I witnessed somebody else experiencing this or I experience it myself.
00:29:47 Speaker 1
If someone saying you’re doing it wrong, I will burst into tears.
00:29:51 Speaker 3
What?
00:29:52 Speaker 3
It’s just like.
00:29:54 Speaker 1
Ohm.
00:29:54 Speaker 1
My God, I’m not doing it right like and so I think there’s this kind of like.
00:29:59 Speaker 1
Like both this anxiety, but also like empathic anxiety that I experience because we are, it’s a it is a field, it is a career in which we are constantly like it is literally our jobs to point out how everyone is doing it wrong, like at all times.
00:30:16 Speaker 1
You know, it’s like, yeah, our students, other like the thing I hate about grading.
00:30:17 Speaker 3
Yeah.
00:30:21 Speaker 1
I realized like sometimes it’s like, yeah, the rating is bad or it’s like boring for people.
00:30:24 Speaker 1
Don’t give a ****, but were, like my least least favorite part of greeting is having to like assign like AB plus where it’s like you know, it’s like the deer off.
00:30:36 Speaker 1
It’s like, OK, yeah, this person did.
00:30:37 Speaker 1
And care, but it be plus is like there was effort put into this.
00:30:42 Speaker 1
I feel bad like.
00:30:43 Speaker 1
Yeah, like I will overthink it.
00:30:44 Speaker 1
It’s like everything.
00:30:45 Speaker 1
It’s like there’s so much overthinking and so part of it is like like there is a kind of like hating myself kind of thing.
00:30:52 Speaker 1
But there also is a like.
00:30:55 Speaker 1
I just want everybody to get a trophy, but I also am critical of the notion that everybody, it’s like, no, everybody doesn’t deserve a trophy like, you know.
00:31:02 Speaker 1
But then it’s like.
00:31:02 Speaker 2
That’s through.
00:31:03 Speaker 2
When I’m an ex coming.
00:31:04 Speaker 2
We’re, like, caught between that, like the the sort.
00:31:07 Speaker 2
Would like, uh, silent generation of our parents.
00:31:11 Speaker 2
You know our greatest generation, you know, and whoever they wherever they fall and the sort of toughen up and are the sort of like soft and cushy millennials.
00:31:23 Speaker 2
Who followed us, you know?
00:31:26 Speaker 2
And so I.
00:31:26 Speaker 2
Feel both of those things.
00:31:27 Speaker 2
I’m constantly like, toughened the FU.
00:31:31 Speaker 2
See how good I’m getting.
00:31:32 Speaker 1
Good. I’m.
00:31:33 Speaker 2
On top in the F up and stop crying and nobody cares about your feelings and ohm.
00:31:39 Speaker 2
My God, I’m a monster. Yeah.
00:31:40 Speaker 1
I feel so bad.
00:31:42 Speaker 1
Exactly. Exactly.
00:31:44 Speaker 1
It’s it’s a really.
00:31:47 Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s a really tricky thing.
00:31:49 Speaker 1
There’s like, Oh my God, we have started.
00:31:51 Speaker 1
I’m like, just in my head, imagined an outline of our conversation this far.
00:31:57 Speaker 1
And it’s like tree roots that are going in so many directions all at the same time.
00:32:03 Speaker 1
So let’s get back.
00:32:04 Speaker 1
Let me try to focus us back just because I really do want to talk.
00:32:06 Speaker 2
So it’s not a good time.
00:32:07 Speaker 2
For me to ask you about.
00:32:08 Speaker 2
I’m like, oh, what’s your news research?
00:32:10 Speaker 2
Oh my God, is it still?
00:32:11 Speaker 3
Speaking.
00:32:12 Speaker 2
It’s like.
00:32:13 Speaker 2
After Speaking of brilliant books that we’ve like wonderful interpersonal insights and empathy.
00:32:16 Speaker 3
Eve.
00:32:22 Speaker 2
And critical theory together, Phyllis’s book is tops.
00:32:28 Speaker 1
Oh my God, did you actually.
00:32:29 Speaker 1
Read my book.
00:32:30 Speaker 2
I did read your book.
00:32:31 Speaker 1
Oh my God.
00:32:32 Speaker 3
But I don’t have it because I.
00:32:33 Speaker 3
Wanted to hold it up.
00:32:35
OK.
00:32:35 Speaker 1
Ah, that’s OK.
00:32:36 Speaker 1
Oh my God, I’m so touched.
00:32:37 Speaker 1
I feel like nobody read my book, although I did.
00:32:40 Speaker 1
I went to.
00:32:41 Speaker 1
This is an interesting question, but I don’t want people to get anxious about it, but I was feeling.
00:32:46 Speaker 1
But I went to the American Sociological Association meetings this summer, which I rarely do, but I.
00:32:52 Speaker 1
And I I was going just for a few days like I was.
00:32:56 Speaker 1
I had.
00:32:57 Speaker 1
I was coauthoring in paper and but I wanted to go to the.
00:33:01 Speaker 1
I just got in the mail.
00:33:02 Speaker 1
Sorry, focus.
00:33:03 Speaker 1
I just got in the mail of report of like how many books from my publisher like how many books I had sold and I was like I am a total loser because I have sold.
00:33:13 Speaker 1
He was like 400 bucks and I was like, that is like.
00:33:17 Speaker 1
And this is not the New York Times bestselling list or whatever, and I’m just like, feeling sorry for myself.
00:33:23 Speaker 1
And so I went and has, like, I’m not going to do it.
00:33:26 Speaker 1
No, I’m going to do it like I went to the book fair.
00:33:27 Speaker 1
And I’m like walking around and I was like, **** it.
00:33:29 Speaker 1
I’m just going to, I mean budget.
00:33:31 Speaker 1
I’m just gonna ask someone be like, so I go up, you know, casually to a publisher.
00:33:35 Speaker 1
And I was like so like.
00:33:37 Speaker 1
What’s considered a successful number of books sales?
00:33:42 Speaker 1
And I was shocked to what what would be your guess.
00:33:47 Speaker 1
Of what she said.
00:33:49 Speaker 2
Uh for an academic monograph.
00:33:51 Speaker 2
Yeah, good number.
00:33:52 Speaker 2
Yeah, Phyllis, I don’t know.
00:33:54 Speaker 2
1002 thousand are you serious?
00:33:55 Speaker 1
100 a hundred.
00:33:57 Speaker 2
And I guess I had a good.
00:33:59 Speaker 3
My guess why?
00:33:59 Speaker 2
Books sold well. I mean, I didn’t.
00:34:01 Speaker 2
If I sold 400, I’d be.
00:34:02 Speaker 2
I mean, I got one check and it.
00:34:04 Speaker 1
Was the same like $130.00.
00:34:07 Speaker 3
Yes, friend was thinking.
00:34:08 Speaker 1
You’re gonna strike it rich.
00:34:09 Speaker 1
Being a scholarly book author, think again.
00:34:15 Speaker 2
I have a funny story about star and I trying to negotiate pay on our book, but I didn’t.
00:34:15 Speaker 3
Please.
00:34:20 Speaker 3
What’s up?
00:34:21 Speaker 3
It’s.
00:34:21 Speaker 2
I’ll try to just make it really quick, so they approached us and so about writing the book and.
00:34:28 Speaker 2
And so we had they sent the contract after we did the we did OK, we’ll write up.
00:34:33 Speaker 2
We weren’t thinking about doing this, but what the hell, let’s do it.
00:34:35 Speaker 2
So we wrote a proposal, sent an end, and when they sent.
00:34:37 Speaker 2
The contract back it was.
00:34:39 Speaker 2
We realized that it was saying for both it was like anything that says author.
00:34:43 Speaker 2
From now on, is both of you basically in the contract and then it’s like the pay is 400.
00:34:45
OK.
00:34:48
Dollars.
00:34:48 Speaker 2
And we were just like, and I was like, well, certainly we could ask for 400 each, you know.
00:34:53 Speaker 2
But it was right.
00:34:53 Speaker 2
It was 400, right?
00:34:54 Speaker 2
So we sent back.
00:34:55 Speaker 2
So somehow stars like, well, my friends who write textbooks get this.
00:35:00 Speaker 2
We ask for something like $1000 each.
00:35:02 Speaker 2
And she just wrote back and.
00:35:02 Speaker 3
Oh, thank you.
00:35:03 Speaker 3
Said that’s.
00:35:05 Speaker 2
Four times as much as like I.
00:35:08 Speaker 2
He and his buddy, how about 4:50 for both of you?
00:35:11 Speaker 2
That’s the top and we just and I was like it started, just said.
00:35:13 Speaker 3
I.
00:35:15 Speaker 2
OK, we had.
00:35:16 Speaker 2
That we had to try LOL and she’s like.
00:35:17 Speaker 3
Oh yeah, *******.
00:35:19 Speaker 2
Hey, no, it’s have like I will of course, was like stars.
00:35:22 Speaker 2
Like whatever we should do it.
00:35:23 Speaker 2
And I was like, they’re gonna be mad at us.
00:35:25 Speaker 1
I know, right?
00:35:25 Speaker 2
Um, but then they.
00:35:26 Speaker 1
They’ll take it away, which actually I.
00:35:26 Speaker 3
Have this and then we realized 4.
00:35:29 Speaker 2
No, but let me just say real quick, $225.
00:35:33 Speaker 2
For a year’s worth of work is what I’m worth.
00:35:35 Speaker 2
That’s.
00:35:37 Speaker 1
So much more than that, but it is like that is a whole conversation we could have about like.
00:35:44 Speaker 1
Like anyway, I don’t want to go too far down there and it’s also I have had sometimes students who say they like it when I’m kind of all over the place.
00:35:53 Speaker 2
Hmm thing.
00:35:53 Speaker 1
Like just because they identify with it, it’s like how they think.
00:35:58 Speaker 1
And so it’s anyway, we can have more linear ones with you know everyone is different, that’s OK.
00:36:06 Speaker 1
Um, but oh, but I was just gonna say too, about like that sort of.
00:36:11 Speaker 1
You know people, that ethics.
00:36:14 Speaker 1
Partly the ethics of publishing and how much you know students or others don’t realize how much work we do.
00:36:21 Speaker 1
Like we have our salaries that were paid, but that, you know we don’t, you don’t get any money for articles, you don’t get any money for reviewing articles like occasionally you’ll get like a few copies.
00:36:32 Speaker 1
Like you can pick out a free books if you edit like things for publisher, that is you know like for a.
00:36:38 Speaker 1
If they are writing a textbook, I’ve had that before, it’s like would you read these three chapters and then you can you can have $100 credit towards our catalog of $100 books.
00:36:43 Speaker 3
Hmm damm.
00:36:49 Speaker 3
Thank you.
00:36:52 Speaker 1
And so, but it is an interesting question.
00:36:56 Speaker 1
Like it’s not something I get.
00:37:00 Speaker 1
That upset about usually because I’m like, well, I get my salary and this is just this is the job.
00:37:04 Speaker 1
Like this is what we do, but I do.
00:37:06 Speaker 1
Think it’s um.
00:37:08 Speaker 1
It’s something that people in the world at large don’t really understand how research works.
00:37:15 Speaker 1
I think like I think like people don’t realize that the reason why we’re doing this has nothing to do with the money that we’re getting for this.
00:37:22 Speaker 1
We don’t get money.
00:37:24 Speaker 1
It’s because, you know we are.
00:37:28 Speaker 1
Curious like we have some.
00:37:32 Speaker 1
Let’s get back.
00:37:33 Speaker 3
Hey.
00:37:33 Speaker 1
I just want to get back to your book a little bit.
00:37:34 Speaker 1
I mean, I think to me all of this stuff is relevant because.
00:37:37 Speaker 1
Really it is.
00:37:38 Speaker 1
I mean, what we’re talking about is, besides just our struggles to stay focused, but it’s also about, I think a lot of what we’re talking about is this kind of genuine curiosity about the world and about sort of teasing out and identifying the things that other people maybe haven’t thought about or things that.
00:38:02 Speaker 1
You know, might seem kind of obvious to others and so that or sorry not to say that it seems obvious to others things that we we kind of have a it’s really fun I think for both of us to challenge things that other people take for granted is like oh this is true and it’s like you know it’s like well let’s actually dig into why that is that way like I was saying to my students recently sort of my way of doing research often is just by saying why like over and over again like well why.
00:38:32 Speaker 1
Is this this way and OK?
00:38:33 Speaker 1
Well, it’s because of that.
00:38:34 Speaker 1
Well, why is that that way?
00:38:36 Speaker 1
8 And so I just like, I’d love to hear a little bit more about like so your article was about Meg’s and the ways in which that particular portmanteau was a way of sort of subtly or not so subtly communicating a kind of, you know, and it sounds clever and fun.
00:38:45 Speaker 3
Being.
00:38:57 Speaker 1
And it’s like sort of, you know, cute in a certain sense, but it also is this way of reinforcing a kind of.
00:39:04 Speaker 1
Um, you know racist.
00:39:07 Speaker 1
Colonialist.
00:39:09 Speaker 1
Perhaps imperialist like support for the UK or whatever for Brin.
00:39:16 Speaker 1
So what are some of the other portmanteau words that you’re exploring in your book with * noun?
00:39:22 Speaker 2
Yeah, I was just like, oh, ****.
00:39:23 Speaker 3
National.
00:39:23 Speaker 2
She just looked up like what we’re doing is wait.
00:39:25 Speaker 2
Well, we’re just taking a break at the minute while star finishes up the semester.
00:39:29 Speaker 2
So we can.
00:39:29
Look.
00:39:30 Speaker 2
Over the break on included.
00:39:33 Speaker 2
So I’ve just been planning my classes, but I think the most exciting 1 is probably trade wife.
00:39:38 Speaker 1
Oh my God, I have a student.
00:39:40 Speaker 1
Who just wrote a major research paper like her final paper for her masters on Trat Wives?
00:39:46 Speaker 1
I find this, yeah.
00:39:46 Speaker 2
It’s.
00:39:47 Speaker 1
Fascinating.
00:39:48 Speaker 1
Tell me more about trad wives well.
00:39:50 Speaker 2
I think like, I mean we haven’t fully like written that I’ve drafted a lot of of the background on that.
00:39:57 Speaker 2
We haven’t like fully done the analysis of it and spent a while now, but that 1 I think.
00:40:05 Speaker 2
So I think like not all of them like tread wifely announces itself like we kind of know like it.
00:40:11 Speaker 2
It’s not a.
00:40:11 Speaker 2
Big B, like Trad wife is like articulated with um, patriarchy and white supremacy.
00:40:19 Speaker 2
And it’s like, yeah, you know, like, whatever tradition.
00:40:20 Speaker 3
Right, right.
00:40:21 Speaker 2
So it’s not like hiding anything really like that.
00:40:24 Speaker 2
Some portmanteaus can do.
00:40:26 Speaker 1
Right. And again, just for our listeners who don’t know what trade wives are.
00:40:26 Speaker 2
Um.
00:40:29 Speaker 1
This is traditional wives, right?
00:40:32 Speaker 1
And this is like people on TikTok or whatever who are making these kind of ridiculous.
00:40:37 Speaker 1
Like I wake up in the morning and then I make my children gruel and oats based on my field.
00:40:43 Speaker 1
Of out making no I use my own oatmilk and then my puree dates from the date tree I planted in my right that it’s sort of this returned to traditional domesticity, right? Yeah.
00:40:44 Speaker 3
Oh.
00:40:56 Speaker 2
Yes, and.
00:40:57 Speaker 2
That’s very much it.
00:40:58 Speaker 2
But but weirdly tied to like it’s got.
00:41:01 Speaker 2
A huge aesthetic component that I think it is.
00:41:03 Speaker 3
Hmm, that’s me.
00:41:04 Speaker 2
Like, really interesting what that aesthetic is, is, you know, sometimes it’s, um, like farm corps, and sometimes it’s very like little house on the Prairie.
00:41:11 Speaker 3
Boo.
00:41:18 Speaker 2
And other times it’s very like I’m a 50s house.
00:41:22 Speaker 2
Wife.
00:41:23 Speaker 2
So the aesthetic thing is like super interesting, and I think the aesthetic.
00:41:27 Speaker 2
So like I think part of what our our argument is sort of leading to about the portmanteau is, like we all know, like all of the research, pretty much so far is exploring how it takes on.
00:41:40 Speaker 2
It is used to it is is based on ideologies of of patriarchy and white supremacy.
00:41:44
Yeah.
00:41:45 Speaker 2
Alright, so it’s not like I mean that’s like what you know, so it’s not like we can’t go out here and be.
00:41:50 Speaker 2
Like, OK, we’re not gonna reinvent the wheel, right?
00:41:52 Speaker 2
So we wanna really look at.
00:41:53 Speaker 2
How?
00:41:54 Speaker 2
Um, the sort of history of traditional and the sort of history of of why wives, but and that comes together, but the trad wife is is is an influencer largely right?
00:42:06 Speaker 2
So there’s this complete like there’s odds, right?
00:42:06 Speaker 3
Hmm.
00:42:11 Speaker 2
Like and I again it’s it’s.
00:42:12 Speaker 2
I don’t.
00:42:13 Speaker 2
I’m not the we’re not the first people who talk about this, but we want to sort of point out the mechanisms in language and communication that facilitate, um, this kind of identity building um through through language, you know.
00:42:28 Speaker 2
And so yeah, part of that works through.
00:42:32 Speaker 2
I cognitive process of like it’s called conceptual blending and so there’s this.
00:42:37 Speaker 2
You know ways that that we process this and end up with all these sort of like new blended concepts.
00:42:44 Speaker 2
And so it’s just so fascinating, I.
00:42:45 Speaker 2
Think to us where we’re.
00:42:46 Speaker 2
Like.
00:42:48 Speaker 3
I.
00:42:48 Speaker 2
Where it’s like I’m here for my man.
00:42:52 Speaker 2
I’m here for my man and a lot of times they’re, like, making the book of the money.
00:42:55 Speaker 2
They’re the.
00:42:56 Speaker 2
And winner in the family.
00:42:57 Speaker 3
My.
00:42:58 Speaker 2
And it’s like the Phyllis Schlafly thing.
00:43:00 Speaker 2
Right, like women should be staying at home while Phyllis Schlafly is off having a very active political career.
00:43:06 Speaker 2
So that’s how I always like kind of imagine it.
00:43:07 Speaker 1
Yeah, totally.
00:43:08 Speaker 1
And it yeah.
00:43:09 Speaker 2
So how do we get to traditional wife actually ends up to like, esthetically driven influencer is?
00:43:15 Speaker 1
Totally.
00:43:15 Speaker 1
It’s like, what part of the 1950s were wives like setting up a camera on their counter to like their marble top counters to like and pure white kitchen or whatever to, you know, create their brands of, you know, like that’s just.
00:43:34 Speaker 1
It it’s so just like detached from, yeah.
00:43:38 Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s weird.
00:43:38 Speaker 2
It’s it’s like aestheticizing something that wasn’t driven by esthetics and it it’s just it’s very strange and it’s really, really interesting.
00:43:47 Speaker 2
So I think that, um, that that is a really fun one to do and one that I think that even though it’s kind of seems really obvious that there’s.
00:43:52 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:43:58 Speaker 2
Some interesting stuff.
00:44:00 Speaker 2
Um going on there?
00:44:01 Speaker 1
I don’t think it seems like this.
00:44:02 Speaker 1
I don’t think it’s obvious, and I think it seems really interesting and it’s all like what what I love about all of this is like it.
00:44:12 Speaker 1
It’s like all of these examples are so ****** stealthy like these are.
00:44:19 Speaker 1
It’s like this really.
00:44:22 Speaker 1
It’s like the the right, well, art are there.
00:44:26 Speaker 1
It feels I’m I keep having all these arguments with my older kids about, like, politics and the election and because it’s like we we share the same values and beliefs, but we have different analysis of like what explains the most recent election, let’s put it that way.
00:44:37 Speaker 3
Hmm.
00:44:40 Speaker 1
Then these can sometimes become very sort of heated discussions, but one of the things that I’ve been arguing is that the Republicans are, I think, really really at effective at developing like at rhetoric like that.
00:44:55 Speaker 1
They are very effective at sort of create.
00:44:56
Hmm.
00:44:58 Speaker 1
Being and also I’ve been listening to um, I just started listening to Hannah Renz.
00:45:03 Speaker 1
The origins of totalitarianism and which just super funds ease.
00:45:08 Speaker 1
I just taking a break from true crime, which is the only thing I ever really listened to.
00:45:12 Speaker 1
But um.
00:45:14 Speaker 1
But I was thinking about it with my son Jack, who came over yesterday and I was like, maybe she, like, bad.
00:45:21 Speaker 1
I was like, I’m cooking dinner and I’m like Google.
00:45:23 Speaker 1
Like what are critiques of her?
00:45:24 Speaker 1
Like what do I anyway?
00:45:25 Speaker 1
So I found this.
00:45:27 Speaker 1
Bad.
00:45:27 Speaker 1
Could you?
00:45:27 Speaker 1
I’m like, no, I’m still love her and.
00:45:29 Speaker 1
Yeah, but, but I keep pointing out to to him and like into my daughter too.
00:45:34 Speaker 1
I’m like there’s like, there’s a difference between ideology and research and research means we’re, at least for me, I’m constantly trying to prove myself wrong instead of constantly just trying to find more evidence to support my claims.
00:45:47 Speaker 1
And my point about all of this is to say that one of the things in this critique of a rent that the author was pointing to was this idea that her argument of what?
00:45:58 Speaker 1
This sort of leads to totalitarianism, and I think it’s also in one of my favorite books, human condition, which is the third podcast.
00:46:04 Speaker 1
I’ve been **** episode I mentioned this, but she talks a lot about transcendence and this idea of like human beings or like trying to use technology to transcend the human condition and that what totalitarian leaders are so effective that is transcending history, like real historical context.
00:46:23 Speaker 1
And so she’s wanting us to have this very, like, detailed historical like.
00:46:28 Speaker 1
Understanding of particular events to see how like every event is kind of unique and so we like if we really understand that detailed history, we can understand it better.
00:46:33 Speaker 3
TV.
00:46:37 Speaker 1
And what people on the right are so effective at is like sort of detaching their explanation?
00:46:46 Speaker 1
So it’s like we’re going to stereotype and we’re going to, like, need scapegoats of.
00:46:50 Speaker 1
Let’s say I don’t know illegal immigrants, for example, and we’re going to be like, we don’t need to think about, like the context that led to any of the reasons for why people are coming to this country.
00:47:00 Speaker 1
We don’t need to look at like, you know, CIA involvement in Latin America.
00:47:04 Speaker 1
We don’t need to look at any of that.
00:47:05 Speaker 1
We’re going to be like these people are.
00:47:07 Speaker 1
That, and it feels like one of the things that you’re pointing to with portmanteau words is this really it’s like, so sneaky.
00:47:16 Speaker 1
It’s like that.
00:47:17 Speaker 1
It almost seems like these words are kind of a way that that transcendence happens.
00:47:22 Speaker 1
It’s like this total like this creation of a new words that.
00:47:29 Speaker 1
Evokes these racist, imperialist like, you know, colonialist ideas, but completely erases it at the same time.
00:47:40 Speaker 2
Yes.
00:47:41 Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly it.
00:47:43 Speaker 3
Yeah.
00:47:43 Speaker 1
And makes it so that people are like, Oh yeah, I want to be a tread wife.
00:47:45 Speaker 1
That sounds fun like trad wives.
00:47:48 Speaker 1
It’s like, no, I want to support my man.
00:47:50 Speaker 1
I love this because she’s making like $1,000,000 from her subscribers or whatever, so it’s.
00:47:56 Speaker 1
Think you know what’s fun about it?
00:47:57 Speaker 1
Is not that she’s like a treadway.
00:48:00 Speaker 1
That’s that.
00:48:00 Speaker 1
She’s not a trade wife.
00:48:01 Speaker 2
Right.
00:48:02 Speaker 1
You know, so it’s like, again this like this sneaky.
00:48:02 Speaker 3
But it’s like no.
00:48:07 Speaker 1
And it’s like what it seems like you’re doing is you’re like, no, no, no.
00:48:11 Speaker 1
Like, hold on.
00:48:12 Speaker 1
Hang on a second.
00:48:14 Speaker 1
You were trying to like create these slippages this like you’re trying to create these areas of to reassure, and I’m gonna shine a light on it.
00:48:25 Speaker 1
It’s like, no, no, I’m not gonna let you erase it.
00:48:25 Speaker 2
Hmm.
00:48:27 Speaker 1
I’m going to detail it and I’m gonna like, does that like?
00:48:32 Speaker 1
Does any of that make any sense?
00:48:33 Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely.
00:48:34 Speaker 2
And I think like one of the reasons people get, like, frustrated with academics and are like ******** and like to pull up our, you know, work and make fun of it and **** like that.
00:48:40 Speaker 3
That’s all.
00:48:45 Speaker 2
But like I think one of the reasons that happens is that people imagine.
00:48:52 Speaker 2
That by pointing this stuff out that we are implying that everybody’s like, consciously being like I’m going to slip my, you know, this is how I’m going to design this word and it’s going to do these things and and it’s it’s it’s it may or may not be that it’s like rhetoric start rhetorical criticism really was invested in finding people’s motives last century and I you know I’ve come to the point.
00:49:17 Speaker 2
But like, we can’t discern motive, ultimately we can, like, make arguments about it through traces and the document.
00:49:25 Speaker 2
But it’s like whether or not somebody intends for this **** to happen.
00:49:28 Speaker 2
It does because it.
00:49:30 Speaker 2
That’s how language works, hence the port manteau carries baggage.
00:49:36 Speaker 2
You know, like this that was.
00:49:37 Speaker 1
The I got.
00:49:37 Speaker 1
I love that Maggie is just for a listeners is picking up.
00:49:42 Speaker 1
She’s miming the picking up of the suitcase.
00:49:44 Speaker 3
Soon.
00:49:45 Speaker 1
Carrying it, which I love.
00:49:47 Speaker 2
Um, yeah, I can like.
00:49:48 Speaker 1
It carries.
00:49:49 Speaker 2
That’s.
00:49:49 Speaker 2
Yeah, I keep.
00:49:50 Speaker 2
Like forcing the metaphor of the portmanteau and the writing.
00:49:53 Speaker 2
So and and I’ll be like, so we pick up the portmanteau and carry it through.
00:49:58 Speaker 2
You know, I’d like to sort of do that ****.
00:50:00 Speaker 2
But but yeah, I think it’s it’s it’s exactly it’s like it’s language is still I mean everything I do is about the significance right of language.
00:50:08 Speaker 2
I’m a scholar of language.
00:50:10 Speaker 2
And so the idea of of intent or or motive is ultimately not interesting to me.
00:50:18 Speaker 2
It’s more like, um, I say impact necessarily, but just like, what can we trace in this moment that will feed into impact and reception and all these other things you know?
00:50:34 Speaker 2
And what makes it?
00:50:36 Speaker 2
What makes Trad wife pick up, you know?
00:50:39 Speaker 2
But but something else, like we’re going to talk about failed blends, you know, and ones that like don’t work.
00:50:45 Speaker 3
Who?
00:50:47 Speaker 2
Um as well.
00:50:48 Speaker 2
Well and.
00:50:49 Speaker 1
What do you like?
00:50:51 Speaker 1
Are there some like that you know of?
00:50:52 Speaker 2
I I have like a I I do but like these are I’m totally taking these from an article by Barbara Wallraff.
00:50:53
Yeah.
00:50:59 Speaker 2
Um, but like one of them is, but I remember what it meant, but one of them was like I lie.
00:51:06 Speaker 2
It was like EYEL i.e., but people would spell it like pronounce it like I.
00:51:12
Me.
00:51:12 Speaker 2
Um, and it was supposed to be like something that looks different.
00:51:12 Speaker 3
Hello.
00:51:15 Speaker 2
I don’t really remember what it was, but like somebody corned apartman toke zone for the place in the dryer where your socks disappear.
00:51:24 Speaker 2
But it’s like, well, that doesn’t sound like like a hose.
00:51:27 Speaker 1
Who like HO so?
00:51:29 Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:51:30 Speaker 2
Like like like.
00:51:30 Speaker 1
Oh, hose like Panini was.
00:51:32 Speaker 2
Yeah, like a blend of hose and zone and hose.
00:51:35 Speaker 1
But that does not.
00:51:35 Speaker 1
That takes way too much explanation.
00:51:36 Speaker 2
One it’s like.
00:51:37
Yeah.
00:51:38 Speaker 2
That’s like a totally diff.
00:51:39 Speaker 2
1.
00:51:39 Speaker 2
So, I mean there’s there’s tons of them.
00:51:42 Speaker 2
Those are just the ones that pop up off the top of my headache.
00:51:45 Speaker 2
I wish I remembered what arlie really was because it was kind of fun.
00:51:49 Speaker 2
It was actually would have been a fun word, but no one’s going to pronounce it that way.
00:51:54 Speaker 2
So that’s all like what linguists do is they’re like, why do we pronounce things this way?
00:51:58 Speaker 2
And how do our brains make these?
00:52:01 Speaker 2
And how does our language system give rise to this?
00:52:05 Speaker 2
You know, and and we’re like, what does it do once it’s embedded in language in various contexts?
00:52:11 Speaker 3
Yeah.
00:52:12 Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s so interesting.
00:52:14 Speaker 1
I have two things I want to ask.
00:52:16 Speaker 1
One is, I realized I never finished my question because I went down a rabbit hole of Hannah rent.
00:52:21 Speaker 1
But my question is, do you think that it’s accurate to say that Republicans are, like conservatives are better at developing portmanteau words and creating these things like do you think that there is, like, if there is a kind of ideology behind?
00:52:36 Speaker 1
Them is that like more effective for certain political or is it just that I pay more attention to them because they annoy me, whereas I’m like just not like is this like observation bias on my part?
00:52:47 Speaker 1
And then my second unrelated thing is, could you also in your book talk about iPads because when I was coming, it was Googling, what is a portmanteau?
00:52:55 Speaker 3
It is.
00:52:56 Speaker 2
Making a note.
00:53:00 Speaker 1
It kept saying, like, iPod is like that word.
00:53:02 Speaker 1
So it’s and it’s started with.
00:53:05 Speaker 1
I don’t even know how, but I just remember when the iPad came out like it’s kind of an example of the inverse of what you were just saying where?
00:53:14 Speaker 1
I thought it would totally fail.
00:53:15 Speaker 1
I’m like nobody is gonna actually no self respecting person is gonna say I have an iPad because I could only think maxi pad so and there was like a whole like joke about it on Mad TV or something back in the day or I know right.
00:53:30
We have.
00:53:32 Speaker 1
I’m sorry, but I think it was Maddie anyway.
00:53:34 Speaker 1
And so, and yet now I’m like, you know, I just keep pre iPad from my bank because I switched.
00:53:37 Speaker 2
Called.
00:53:39 Speaker 1
I opened a new bank account but.
00:53:43 Speaker 1
Anyway, so more importantly is is it?
00:53:46 Speaker 1
Are there particular ideologies I guess, to rephrase it that are better at better or worse at creating portmanteaus?
00:53:53 Speaker 1
Or is that?
00:53:53 Speaker 1
Is it everybody?
00:53:54 Speaker 1
Does it?
00:53:55 Speaker 1
It’s always happening.
00:53:56 Speaker 2
Alright, well caveat before I answer this is just this is not based on research because I haven’t really like research that particular question, so it’s more just like it might be observation bias.
00:54:06
Yeah, yeah.
00:54:10 Speaker 2
I think they are way better.
00:54:11 Speaker 3
I think they’re way.
00:54:12 Speaker 2
They better with with with language in ways that.
00:54:20 Speaker 2
Try to bat bypass, um, deep thinking, um and and as a way to sort of Mr. Act.
00:54:30 Speaker 2
And yeah, I think they’re way better at creating sort of catchy buzzwords, and we are a catchy buzzword.
00:54:39 Speaker 2
People you know, we we are a viral people and um and I I absolutely think so, right.
00:54:39 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:54:45
Yeah.
00:54:48 Speaker 2
I mean, I think like in trying to unpack Trump’s.
00:54:48 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:54:56 Speaker 2
Brisbane.
00:54:57 Speaker 1
Right.
00:54:58
His which I had.
00:54:58 Speaker 3
Spring, sorry.
00:54:59 Speaker 2
It is clearly he is a charismatic leader, right?
00:55:02 Speaker 2
Like I was not charismatic to me.
00:55:02 Speaker 3
Yeah.
00:55:03 Speaker 1
Oh God, yeah.
00:55:04 Speaker 2
I don’t need to keep justifying this, but I have to say these charismatic right and I think if you look at him against like JD Vance do understand like what, that that charisma is for people, but he’s very good at that.
00:55:18 Speaker 2
And I don’t know if it comes from him or or, you know, his speechwriters.
00:55:22 Speaker 2
It doesn’t really matter, but is that kind of.
00:55:27 Speaker 2
Mr. Action, with and buzzworthy speech, and in general, yeah, I don’t think um, Liberals or Democrats or or progressives, even though we’re not all the same thing.
00:55:40 Speaker 2
Yeah, know how to do that?
00:55:41 Speaker 2
Partially because there is like a.
00:55:43 Speaker 2
A carefulness.
00:55:45 Speaker 3
Yes.
00:55:46 Speaker 1
This is, I remember when I was in grad school at the University of Iowa.
00:55:49 Speaker 1
I mean, it’s still is happening all the time, but I just I remember a particular moment where a lot of politicians were like, universities are just full of liberals and this is about bias, that concern no one will hire conservatives into academic positions.
00:56:03 Speaker 1
And my argument has always.
00:56:04 Speaker 1
And like maybe it just is like universities are full of complex thinkers who are.
00:56:12 Speaker 1
It’s our job to think and complicated and nuanced ways, and it just doesn’t lend itself, you know, there’s certain concern, like, I don’t think that every single conservative idea is, like simplistic or bad or anything.
00:56:23 Speaker 1
I mean, I don’t like it, at least in principle.
00:56:27 Speaker 1
I I I would like to think that that like I don’t, I don’t wanna be a.
00:56:32 Speaker 1
Uh, I don’t wanna be an ideologue about my ideology use, but but like, I just like, there are certain things that are like, you know, they’re completely, you know, like Adam Smith, like, the wealth of nations is not like a simple to read book.
00:56:49 Speaker 1
Right.
00:56:49 Speaker 1
Like it doesn’t mean necessarily agree with it, or that I think all of the logic, the logic behind it, is completely, you know, accurate and there could be.
00:56:58 Speaker 1
But it’s, you know, everything isn’t a buzzword like you can.
00:57:01 Speaker 1
You don’t have to be.
00:57:03 Speaker 1
You know what?
00:57:04 Speaker 1
I’m I’m stumbling here, but it’s like you can have complex ideas and and come out of that with, you know, whatever political ideology you might, you know, sort of lean towards, but at the same time, I do think like when we start as like as I was saying before, it’s like my my sort of overarching methodologies, they well, why is it, you know, like that’s how I got into my research on breastfeeding.
00:57:04 Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:57:27 Speaker 1
And it was because I it’s a way of sort of challenging our assumptions.
00:57:33 Speaker 1
So it’s like people like, well, breast is best or whatever and I’m like, well, is it?
00:57:36 Speaker 1
Let’s look at the research like why do we think it’s a best?
00:57:39 Speaker 1
Where did that come from?
00:57:40 Speaker 1
What are they like?
00:57:41 Speaker 1
If we ask why a lot we are, there’s a lot of room and potential for disrupting the status quo and disruption of the status quo is inherently.
00:57:52 Speaker 1
OK, not conservative because conservative means like not wanting change?
00:57:57 Speaker 1
And so if you don’t, if you want things to stay the same or how they used to be, it’s like it’s not gonna help to ask why a lot because it’s like, you know, it’s sort of lends itself to saying like it just is.
00:58:09 Speaker 1
OK, just accept it is so.
00:58:11 Speaker 2
That makes me think of two things.
00:58:12 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:58:14
You.
00:58:14 Speaker 2
One like breast is best is, you know like linguistically.
00:58:19 Speaker 2
See, you know, it’s catchy as hell, and it’s got the internal rhyme and.
00:58:23 Speaker 2
It’s got the.
00:58:24 Speaker 2
Bilabial plosive and put the.
00:58:25 Speaker 3
Thank.
00:58:26 Speaker 2
Know I’m not.
00:58:27 Speaker 1
Yes, I never thought about it that.
00:58:27 Speaker 2
I’m first and last and you know there is that the the sound symbolism between the two words is powerful.
00:58:29
Way, yeah.
00:58:35 Speaker 2
So sound symbolism is something also that that port mantos work off of, right?
00:58:41 Speaker 2
And so you can’t, like, pretend this stuff is not happening.
00:58:43 Speaker 2
You can’t make anything.
00:58:46 Speaker 2
With exit and a blend and not have it call back to originally to Grexit, you know to like you, you can’t.
00:58:54 Speaker 2
You can’t say I’m not drawing on.
00:58:56 Speaker 2
Though so I was just thinking about sounds that symbolism there.
00:58:59 Speaker 2
And the second thing it there was not me who said this.
00:59:02 Speaker 2
I don’t remember where I heard it, but I’m on a podcast.
00:59:06 Speaker 2
Um, I heard something.
00:59:09 Speaker 2
It might have been if looks could kill.
00:59:10 Speaker 2
I’m not sure that body.
00:59:11
I love.
00:59:12 Speaker 3
Yeah, but they were talking about how ohe.
00:59:12 Speaker 1
Ohm Y God like. Hold on.
00:59:14 Speaker 1
Is my hero.
00:59:16 Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:59:16 Speaker 2
Conservative or not conservative, I’m sorry.
00:59:19 Speaker 2
Conspiracy thinking is like research and critical thinking for stupid people like it’s like research for stupid people.
00:59:25 Speaker 3
Yeah.
00:59:28 Speaker 2
You know, like because you have a way.
00:59:31 Speaker 2
And to make it kinder, right, if you have, um, a segment of the population who feels disenchanted with academia or distance from it, giving something that people can feel super smart about, like you don’t know the real history because academics are always coming in and being, like, but you don’t really know what you’re saying.
00:59:50 Speaker 2
Right.
00:59:50 Speaker 2
So that conspiracy theories with the Q Anon **** and part of that is it gives people a way to feel like they’re super educated about this one thing without having to have any of the the the sort.
01:00:04 Speaker 2
Of like rigor or standards, that academic research ideally should have.
01:00:10 Speaker 1
Yes.
01:00:10 Speaker 1
And and and I wanna.
01:00:12 Speaker 1
I giggled when you said for stupid people I want.
01:00:15 Speaker 1
I want to, I want to retract my giggle only because it was funny how you said it, but because I was, I’ve been actually talking with Willow.
01:00:28 Speaker 1
My daughter who’s editing those podcast and one of the things that I think is so like what has led to the rise?
01:00:37 Speaker 1
Of basically to tell a terian ISM, again in the United States and like you know, populist movements, you know, one of the things I think is this sense of the like, you heard a lot of this like, oh, you know, Democrats or academics, they think there’s so much smarter than everybody.
01:00:58 Speaker 1
Like exactly what you’re talking about, but you don’t really know and you know, universities are very inaccessible to a lot of people, especially in United States due to the cost, but also just to the.
01:01:07 Speaker 1
Like you know, the habit is like that.
01:01:10 Speaker 1
If your parents didn’t go to university, you didn’t go to university like it’s a thing to like be sort of go against that green.
01:01:18 Speaker 1
Um, but it also I think there is this bias again like a bias towards intelligence that doesn’t get talked about very much.
01:01:29 Speaker 1
It’s like, you know, there’s like.
01:01:31 Speaker 1
All the you know like anti fat bias, feminist research like there’s racism is bad, but it looks like this is gonna sound so ridiculous.
01:01:41 Speaker 1
But nobody is talking about bias against stupid people, and it sounds so ridiculous to say because it is so like there is this like on like this unquestioned assumption that the best thing to be is smart, that it is, that we all have to be smart.
01:02:01 Speaker 1
And if we are not smart, if we don’t know something that not like to be stupid is to have zero value, it is to be completely.
01:02:10 Speaker 1
Like useless and.
01:02:11 Speaker 3
Really.
01:02:12 Speaker 2
Like I do not see this country as one that like.
01:02:18 Speaker 2
I mean, we don’t spend any money on education.
01:02:20 Speaker 2
We don’t value critical.
01:02:22 Speaker 3
We thinking.
01:02:23 Speaker 1
I’m not saying education.
01:02:24 Speaker 1
I’m not saying education.
01:02:25 Speaker 1
I’m not saying that there is that I’m saying that people want to be SMA.
01:02:29 Speaker 1
Hurts.
01:02:30 Speaker 1
But they’re not doing anything without it.
01:02:33 Speaker 1
And So what I think Trump is doing, this is my argument is that what Trump is doing is he is providing value.
01:02:42 Speaker 1
He is telling people they are still good, like they don’t have to be smart like you don’t have to go to school.
01:02:47 Speaker 1
You don’t have to put money into education.
01:02:49 Speaker 1
You don’t have to like all of these things like these.
01:02:51 Speaker 1
People think like to be smart.
01:02:53 Speaker 1
You have to go to university and you have to be educated, but you can be like you’re just as good if you are.
01:02:59 Speaker 1
Like if you are, you can think whatever you want and still be smart.
01:03:04 Speaker 2
Now I fully agree with that.
01:03:05 Speaker 2
Yeah, I do.
01:03:06 Speaker 2
And I I mean like backtrack a second like I’m very, very mad right now.
01:03:10 Speaker 2
And so I do think people who vote for Trump are stupid.
01:03:14 Speaker 2
And part of those people work in my building and I don’t think that stupidity has to do with um.
01:03:22 Speaker 2
Education at all in this sense, like like I I.
01:03:27 Speaker 2
So I I do.
01:03:29 Speaker 2
I mean, there’s plenty of conspiratorial thinking, and in academia, you know, and so.
01:03:35 Speaker 2
So I just want to clarify myself that that’s not like to devalue anybody who has, you know, different levels of education are different levels of.
01:03:48 Speaker 2
Education or natural intelligence, whatever you want to say, aptitude.
01:03:52 Speaker 2
Um, yeah.
01:03:54 Speaker 2
But yeah, I know I I agree with what you’re saying.
01:03:54 Speaker 3
I.
01:03:57 Speaker 1
This is what I want people to take away from this episode and this podcast that it is.
01:04:03 Speaker 1
Oh, OK.
01:04:05 Speaker 1
And it is not just OK, but it is important that we let ourselves be stupid.
01:04:09 Speaker 1
We let our.
01:04:10 Speaker 1
Twelves like have ADD that we let ourselves be human because it is when we think we have to be superhuman, that we end up with conspiracy theories or we end up with just like garbage because we are trying to like prove that we know things and it like that.
01:04:27 Speaker 1
It’s just that’s not what research is about and it’s like, let’s call ourselves stupid, like, not, like own, like, not, like, deeply internalized it.
01:04:36 Speaker 1
Be like that was a bad idea.
01:04:38 Speaker 2
It’s a bad idea and I didn’t defend it.
01:04:38 Speaker 1
I said that thing.
01:04:40 Speaker 2
And what am I saying?
01:04:41 Speaker 2
That’s what we should be doing, and I, and I think that like one of the things.
01:04:46 Speaker 3
That you would we?
01:04:47 Speaker 2
You would put on the script was to talk about, you know, writing and things like that.
01:04:51 Speaker 2
And I think like a big move, at least in the latter half of the 20th century and how I came up was that you, you take a stance and you defend it and you, you know, and I’m trying to, like, get away from that.
01:05:09 Speaker 2
And my mother tried.
01:05:10 Speaker 2
They really get.
01:05:11 Speaker 2
Away from that and just be like.
01:05:13 Speaker 2
So we’re torical criticism used to really be about, like making your argument like this is the reading and this.
01:05:18 Speaker 2
Is the preferred reading.
01:05:20 Speaker 2
And now it’s more like, you know, this is an opening.
01:05:24 Speaker 2
This is a reading, you know, this is a reading that we hope leads to other readings of it. Um.
01:05:26 Speaker 1
Of that.
01:05:31 Speaker 3
Hmm.
01:05:34 Speaker 2
And so I think that like that posturing of go in and make an argument and like, like leading with an argument.
01:05:43 Speaker 2
And I’m a rhetorician, you know.
01:05:44 Speaker 2
But I’m like, I don’t think we should leave with analysis rather than argument, even though they’re analysis is argument argument.
01:05:50 Speaker 2
As an analysis, you know we.
01:05:51 Speaker 2
Can go back and forth with that.
01:05:53 Speaker 2
But I think like pulling back and.
01:05:54 Speaker 2
Leading with a little.
01:05:56 Speaker 2
At Curiosity and, you know, exploration is is something that I think can help students um.
01:06:05 Speaker 2
And one other thing that I thought would be interesting, and this is sort of back on track.
01:06:10 Speaker 2
Um, is that I try and teach puertorican analysis and my whole program is into this.
01:06:16 Speaker 2
That analysis is research, right?
01:06:19 Speaker 1
Like yes.
01:06:20 Speaker 2
People don’t think that it is, and so I’m really invested in the idea.
01:06:26 Speaker 2
Like I don’t like being like our program doesn’t teach research.
01:06:30 Speaker 2
I don’t teach research in here because we’re not going to the library and looking at the databases or doing interviews.
01:06:35 Speaker 2
I’m sorry but.
01:06:37 Speaker 2
An *** is research.
01:06:39 Speaker 2
You were deeply looking into something.
01:06:41 Speaker 2
You are posing questions.
01:06:43 Speaker 2
You are trying to find answers and so even if it’s research into just like even if you don’t, you do like old school close reading, you are researching that text no.
01:06:56 Speaker 1
Yes, I love that.
01:06:57 Speaker 1
And I remember you had said in an e-mail, you’re like, well, I’m not really doing human subjects.
01:07:01 Speaker 1
So I don’t know if you even want me on your podcast.
01:07:02 Speaker 1
And I was like, you were totally doing research.
01:07:05 Speaker 1
But I also like as someone who is trained to like, go into the databases like a lot more of my ideas and my thinking is much more analysis and I think I’ve been hesitating or like.
01:07:13
Hmm.
01:07:16 Speaker 1
Like I’m struggling to just do it and to sit down and like, do that writing cause I’m like, well, this does this count?
01:07:23 Speaker 1
Is this like this isn’t what I was trained to do like is this real?
01:07:24 Speaker 3
Yeah.
01:07:27 Speaker 1
And then I like when I’m looking for other articles or for other ideas.
01:07:32 Speaker 1
It’s like I find, you know, it’s like I’m listening to the Hannah Redbook and.
01:07:36 Speaker 1
And like this is so valuable like this is helping me understand the world.
01:07:41 Speaker 1
Like this is helping me make sense and it doesn’t mean like you have to have like a survey where you know because you can’t like you can’t like you’re not going to answer the original like what are the origins of totalitarianism by running a *** **** a social survey like standing around with a clipboard and being like what do you feel like that’s the worst kind of research question ever in terms of survey design is asking the participant to tell you why.
01:08:08 Speaker 1
So it’s like there’s certain questions that have can only be answered through analysis and by thinking and by questioning and by, you know, challenging each other.
01:08:19 Speaker 1
And I just, I love that idea.
01:08:22 Speaker 1
And and I also I just I want to go back to like you know, when you were talking about just your first point about the idea, I just want to turn 2 about this idea of like having to have an argument, because I think that like what you’re talking about is a really nuanced idea.
01:08:38 Speaker 1
And I’m really.
01:08:40 Speaker 3
It.
01:08:41 Speaker 1
I like I everything you’re saying.
01:08:43 Speaker 1
I’m like, Oh my God.
01:08:44 Speaker 1
Yes.
01:08:44 Speaker 1
And then I’m also like, but I always am telling my students you need to have an argument, you need to have a point.
01:08:52 Speaker 1
Like you don’t want the writing to be just like, here’s like a Wikipedia summary of like a review.
01:08:52 Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely.
01:08:58 Speaker 1
So like like, can you just talk?
01:09:00 Speaker 1
Because you teach rating.
01:09:02 Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:09:03 Speaker 1
And like, you know, one of my questions is like what is good writing?
01:09:05 Speaker 1
What is bad writing?
01:09:07 Speaker 1
Does such a thing exist?
01:09:08 Speaker 1
I say yes, but I want to hear what you have to.
01:09:09 Speaker 1
Say, but like, just tell me more of like.
01:09:12 Speaker 1
Expand on those ideas.
01:09:14 Speaker 2
Well, I mean obviously like they.
01:09:16 Speaker 2
Have to have an argument.
01:09:17 Speaker 2
I mean like fully like claims.
01:09:18 Speaker 2
Evidence analysis over here and thesis statements and thesis driven arguments.
01:09:23 Speaker 2
I think it’s more the like.
01:09:25 Speaker 2
Ostarine that comes around like in order to make an argument.
01:09:32 Speaker 3
Yeah.
01:09:32 Speaker 2
I have to sort of just look up, find everything that supports my thesis as opposed to the thesis being a true hypothesis of the.
01:09:37 Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:09:42 Speaker 1
Yes.
01:09:43 Speaker 2
This is where I’ve arrived at this.
01:09:45 Speaker 2
Moment.
01:09:46 Speaker 2
You know, and I am open.
01:09:48 Speaker 2
you can make an argument without saying like this is the answer you know.
01:09:54 Speaker 2
Again, it’s the sort of like this could be an answer or this is an answer and that’s still has to be, you know, like argued and it still has to be like cohesive and it still has to like be warranted, you know and and and supported and all that thing it’s still it’s like the idea that I have to just sort of like get behind.
01:10:01 Speaker 3
The.
01:10:09
Yeah.
01:10:15 Speaker 2
And what my thesis is, and just like pound the hell out of it to sort of in my field, there’s like a really interesting to me.
01:10:16 Speaker 3
Hmm.
01:10:26 Speaker 2
Um, debate in the field of composition study is and a lot.
01:10:32 Speaker 2
Of.
01:10:33 Speaker 2
Teaching around students being taught to sort of act like academics before they are academics.
01:10:39 Speaker 2
You know, I I I can’t believe Bartholome, OK?
01:10:39
Hmm.
01:10:43 Speaker 2
Um and I’m blanking on this first.
01:10:47 Speaker 2
Name but Bartholome was writing about how kids kind of like come into college and ******** college pros.
01:10:56 Speaker 2
And we asked them to do this.
01:10:58 Speaker 2
We asked them to pretend that they are eggs and we asked them with like and that’s how they learn, right?
01:11:05 Speaker 2
They try it on.
01:11:06 Speaker 2
But they fumble through it so badly because they they don’t know the difference because like.
01:11:09 Speaker 1
Totally.
01:11:14 Speaker 2
Making a solid argument they haven’t quite understood that.
01:11:16 Speaker 2
That’s not just, you know, twisting everything to sort of make it prove what you’ve decided your thesis is before you did any research, you know.
01:11:24 Speaker 1
Right. Totally.
01:11:24 Speaker 2
And so and so like a lot of the and a lot of the stylistic stuff comes from, I read academic prose and it’s confusing.
01:11:35 Speaker 2
Therefore, my own pros.
01:11:37 Speaker 3
You think it’s tortured?
01:11:38 Speaker 1
Oh my God, I totally remember.
01:11:40 Speaker 3
Remember using.
01:11:40 Speaker 1
And when I was an undergrad, and I remember, like the rare occasion that I actually read a paper after printing it, I remember reading sentences or working on them being like I don’t understand this, but I bet the.
01:11:51 Speaker 1
Professor will, yes.
01:11:55 Speaker 2
And your professors like what the actual?
01:11:55 Speaker 1
Like here’s.
01:11:59 Speaker 1
Right. It’s like.
01:12:00 Speaker 1
Here’s my tip to all listeners.
01:12:02 Speaker 1
The professor did not understand.
01:12:04 Speaker 2
No, they just assume that you need to make yourself clear that that would help.
01:12:09 Speaker 2
I tend to be a really easy grader, but a kind of sarcastic commenter.
01:12:13 Speaker 2
So sometimes now with students that know me really well or had mail a lot, I’ll just use like emojis.
01:12:19 Speaker 2
Like there will be a cliche and I’ll be like just like do the life straight line across or the cringing face.
01:12:26 Speaker 2
A lot.
01:12:26 Speaker 2
I’ll be like what?
01:12:27 Speaker 3
What the hell?
01:12:28 Speaker 2
I don’t do that to all my students, but like if they’ve worked with me for a long time, you know better than this.
01:12:33
Come on.
01:12:35 Speaker 2
But.
01:12:37 Speaker 2
Yeah, I don’t.
01:12:38 Speaker 1
So what should students you so you were saying that like there’s this debate and I find that fascinating of students like in composition studies that students come in were asking them to sort of.
01:12:48 Speaker 1
It’s like play.
01:12:49 Speaker 1
It’s like fake it till you make it pretend to sounds like an academic, but they don’t really know how to do it.
01:12:51 Speaker 2
So I could tell you mate.
01:12:54 Speaker 1
So what are people saying should be done instead?
01:12:58 Speaker 3
My.
01:12:58 Speaker 2
Just for everybody in composition.
01:13:00 Speaker 2
Studies that the thousands of compositions who are listening to your million listener podcast.
01:13:06 Speaker 3
No.
01:13:07 Speaker 2
This is a debate from last century and I don’t do compositions studies, you know, so I don’t like at all know what the current like, thoughts about teaching college writing are.
01:13:17 Speaker 2
Um, because it’s just not where my research is like I do.
01:13:18 Speaker 1
For it’s right, but you do teach college, right?
01:13:22 Speaker 1
So you can.
01:13:22 Speaker 2
I do all the time, you know, so I don’t.
01:13:23 Speaker 3
Yeah.
01:13:24 Speaker 2
Conversations are having about it, but I think that I think that like so.
01:13:29 Speaker 3
Well.
01:13:31 Speaker 2
It was like a debate between Peter Elbow and David Bartholomay, and it was at.
01:13:34 Speaker 1
Oh, thank God you mentioned them because I was like judging you this.
01:13:38 Speaker 2
Now I had a my name no.
01:13:40 Speaker 2
But like Bartholomeus Point I I think it was just to like sort of point out that this is happening and sort of do some close reading of student texts and try to understand.
01:13:54 Speaker 2
What they were doing and what we read as bad writing is really them trying to try on this academic suit, you know and like and that like that can be instructive to us to sort of understand, you know, that it’s not that you read this and then you suddenly are able to, you know, produce academic prose.
01:14:03 Speaker 1
Image sting.
01:14:20 Speaker 3
I love this.
01:14:20 Speaker 2
So that’s like my I don’t remember what the ultimate argument that is, what I took away is that, I mean, I was.
01:14:30 Speaker 2
I don’t know.
01:14:31 Speaker 2
I just am trying to get away from like this.
01:14:33 Speaker 2
I just feel like it’s leading to bad writing when they’re just standing behind and pounding this like thesis in Round Lake and like some like, that’s not how it works like.
01:14:43 Speaker 1
Every single episode, I keep turning the conversation to like AI and people thoughts on AI because it’s like doing it.
01:14:49
Oh yeah.
01:14:50 Speaker 1
That writing, but I also like there and there’s a colleague of mine who is in at the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies.
01:14:58 Speaker 1
But she’s she’s a historian.
01:15:00 Speaker 1
I’m going to have her on going to be interviewing here in a few weeks and I know that I’m very curious, like she has very and I’ve had a lot of conversations about student writing and frustrations with, like what students know and like, graduate students, not just undergrads of like they don’t know what a journal article is like or what the difference is between like a book chapter and a journal or something.
01:15:23
Thank.
01:15:23 Speaker 1
And she’s like, how is it that they don’t know this?
01:15:24 Speaker 1
How is it that they haven’t learned this?
01:15:26 Speaker 1
And also my department, like we’ve had lots of department meetings of people being like students, don’t know how to write.
01:15:32 Speaker 1
We need to have, you know, there’s been lots of, like we were when I was chair at the Institute Foundation General Studies.
01:15:37 Speaker 1
We talked about what we should introduce as a writing course and there’s, but it seems to me that there’s a lot.
01:15:43 Speaker 1
It’s like everybody seems to have a sense that student writing is on the decline or I don’t know if it ever was, knew what they were doing, but that student writing is insufficient.
01:15:56 Speaker 1
It’s and AI poses an existential threat to student writing, and everybody also, it seems, other than like this colleague she has been introducing a lot of sort of remediation in her courses.
01:16:09 Speaker 1
So I’m not speaking about her, but other people that I’ve heard talking about this.
01:16:13 Speaker 1
It feels very much like they are pointing at other people who should.
01:16:17 Speaker 1
Be just like.
01:16:18 Speaker 1
I want students to come into my class as fully formed writers and I want them to be good writers.
01:16:23 Speaker 1
And So what is wrong with everybody else but like so I’m just curious.
01:16:27 Speaker 1
Like you teach writing like.
01:16:30 Speaker 1
Is that like my thinking is, I’m always trying to teach all my students about writing, no matter what the class is, and partly how I do that is with like, very clear rubrics, but there’s a lot that I don’t.
01:16:42 Speaker 1
It doesn’t occur to me.
01:16:44 Speaker 1
I’m like, oh, they didn’t know that.
01:16:45 Speaker 1
Like and it’s like I don’t know.
01:16:48 Speaker 1
Like what are your thoughts?
01:16:49 Speaker 1
Like how?
01:16:49 Speaker 1
Like what’s this?
01:16:50 Speaker 1
What is your experience teaching?
01:16:52 Speaker 1
Writing what are the things like?
01:16:54 Speaker 1
Does any of that make sense?
01:16:55 Speaker 1
What are your thoughts?
01:16:55 Speaker 1
On any of that.
01:16:56 Speaker 2
Yeah, I have like.
01:16:57 Speaker 2
4000 thoughts, which means I will.
01:16:59 Speaker 2
Has none of your home.
01:17:02 Speaker 3
That’s hit.
01:17:03 Speaker 2
OK, so it just a caveat before we start talking about I have done no research again in this area besides talking to ChatGPT and.
01:17:11 Speaker 1
I tell I use it like it’s.
01:17:13 Speaker 2
Yeah, my bestie.
01:17:15 Speaker 2
I mean, I’ve had, like, 3 besties in those conversation, but yeah.
01:17:18 Speaker 2
No.
01:17:18 Speaker 2
Like I’ve kind of like turned it into sort of like, you know, I don’t know.
01:17:22 Speaker 2
Um, so I’ve done.
01:17:24 Speaker 2
I’ve done this is all just experiential experiential.
01:17:28 Speaker 1
That’s that’s well, I’ve.
01:17:31 Speaker 2
OK, so the first thought which.
01:17:33 Speaker 2
I do think is interesting.
01:17:34 Speaker 2
Again, I have to like put on my composition education from 2005 and and talk about that.
01:17:41 Speaker 2
So the whole like student, it’s like the Johnny can’t write thing is is, is, is kind of like a moral panic and it resources in the country like it’s one of the reasons why we have composition studies like Canada doesn’t have composition studies you don’t go and learn English.
01:17:50
Yes.
01:18:00 Speaker 2
101 you know you don’t Teach First year as well.
01:18:02 Speaker 1
They do.
01:18:03 Speaker 2
You don’t take first year comp, do you?
01:18:05 Speaker 3
Yeah, they get OK, yeah, yeah.
01:18:05 Speaker 1
Yes, exactly.
01:18:06 Speaker 1
English.
01:18:07 Speaker 1
No, no, no, no, you’re right.
01:18:08 Speaker 1
They get English 101 they don’t get.
01:18:12 Speaker 1
Composition like and in high school they get in like my kids, who are like my stepson is in grade 12 English and they’re reading Shakespeare and all.
01:18:20 Speaker 1
And that is great.
01:18:21 Speaker 1
But I’m like what?
01:18:22 Speaker 1
Like I did AP composition with Miss Hayworth.
01:18:24
Hmm.
01:18:26 Speaker 1
I I know remember, like I still draw like I learned so much in that AP composition course that it.
01:18:36 Speaker 1
Anyway, I get very fresh.
01:18:37 Speaker 1
I’m like why there is a problem in the Canadian educational system.
01:18:41 Speaker 1
I think in the high schools in like Kato 12, yeah, that it’s very still I think like it’s 1975 and creativity is key.
01:18:52 Speaker 1
Anyway, carry on.
01:18:53 Speaker 3
Well, I think that so it’s also.
01:18:55 Speaker 2
Tied into like a lot of times.
01:18:57 Speaker 2
So that the the panic around it emerges like.
01:19:00 Speaker 2
I I’m sure that there’s research on how often it emerges and how under what conditions it emerges.
01:19:05 Speaker 2
It’s like satanic panics, you know?
01:19:06 Speaker 2
They come up to um, like periodically.
01:19:10 Speaker 2
So now this is not to say that there’s not a problem with writing it.
01:19:14 Speaker 2
It’s more to say that it’s kind of always been there and when it resurfaces, it’s very common for it to resurface with a technology that that changes writing in in some.
01:19:25 Speaker 1
This is what I’m saying. This is what I’m saying anyway.
01:19:26 Speaker 2
OK so so I I think that like my first.
01:19:31 Speaker 2
At first I was.
01:19:32 Speaker 2
Just like not paying attention to it all.
01:19:34 Speaker 2
I’m like whatever.
01:19:35 Speaker 2
Like, I’m not gonna, like go through.
01:19:35 Speaker 3
Yeah.
01:19:37 Speaker 2
And I had.
01:19:38 Speaker 2
I had a friend who was just, like, obsessively tracking it down, and I’m like like spend an hour grading the paper to prove that they cheated.
01:19:45 Speaker 2
I’m like, why do you care that much?
01:19:47 Speaker 2
Like this grated grated like I just wouldn’t put the effort into it, so I can’t asked with tracking down every, you know like instance like that.
01:19:57 Speaker 1
I’m not a cop.
01:19:57 Speaker 2
But anyway, I’m a.
01:19:58 Speaker 1
I keep saying that I’m not a cop.
01:20:00 Speaker 2
I’m not at all, you know.
01:20:02 Speaker 2
So anyway, so like part of me was like whatever.
01:20:04 Speaker 2
It’ll sort itself out, right and then.
01:20:08 Speaker 2
I think I started like I use started using it myself and I was like ohhhhh.
01:20:15 Speaker 3
Yeah, I know there is.
01:20:17 Speaker 2
Like I’ve been getting AI writing and I could almost like sense exactly when it was coming in and then that bothered me, right?
01:20:24 Speaker 2
So yeah.
01:20:25 Speaker 1
Well, Oh yes, which is I.
01:20:26 Speaker 1
I was just on a podcast as a guest talking about because I have 0 expertise.
01:20:30 Speaker 1
I just have a lot of thoughts on AI so.
01:20:32 Speaker 1
Every time you’re like, doing these caveats, I’m like, this is how I am, But yeah, but this is.
01:20:37 Speaker 1
I totally believe people need professors need to be using AI and my colleague Michael McLaughlin actually said this too.
01:20:44 Speaker 1
We need to use it so we know how students are using it, but the more I use it, there are certain phrases that are like, Oh my God, this is.
01:20:51 Speaker 1
It’s like AI has a voice and it is right.
01:20:53 Speaker 2
In this document.
01:20:55 Speaker 1
Like so? Like hyperbolic.
01:20:58 Speaker 1
And just like this is a mate.
01:21:00 Speaker 1
Like there’s certain phrases.
01:21:01 Speaker 1
It’s weird.
01:21:01 Speaker 2
It does have a voice.
01:21:01 Speaker 3
It’s like, yeah, that’s for sure.
01:21:02 Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:21:04 Speaker 1
It’s weird.
01:21:05 Speaker 2
And I and I understand it and.
01:21:09 Speaker 2
And also what I started using it.
01:21:10 Speaker 2
I was like, holy ****, I can have it summarize an article before I go teach it and I can have it come up with discussion questions.
01:21:18 Speaker 2
You know what?
01:21:18 Speaker 2
I’m terrible at Phyllis discussion questions like, I mean, now I’m using it.
01:21:23 Speaker 2
I’m like I’m gonna use it for this.
01:21:25 Speaker 2
I I’m using it to like.
01:21:28 Speaker 2
But well, like create summaries, like I said of articles I write, but then also I’m like putting these summaries into Microsoft OneNote and then I tag them and I cross reference like this article, this article, this article, you know tag and it’s an enormous help.
01:21:42 Speaker 2
I like pay for the AI version of this program called UPDF and and it’s like I I don’t ever.
01:21:51 Speaker 2
When I, but I don’t want.
01:21:52 Speaker 2
To write for me like I.
01:21:54 Speaker 2
Yeah, I can’t stand the like when we talked about Grammarly was on the nodes.
01:21:58 Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:21:59 Speaker 2
Um.
01:21:59 Speaker 1
Yeah, you thought.
01:22:00 Speaker 1
What are your thoughts on grand?
01:22:00 Speaker 2
I hate it.
01:22:01 Speaker 2
Taking out all of my, I mean, sometimes I’m like, alright, you know, you make that change, but no, I want some stylistic flair here.
01:22:11 Speaker 1
And I’ve never used Grammarly only because I’m cheap, so I.
01:22:11 Speaker 3
Hmm.
01:22:14 Speaker 2
Never. It just pops up whether I want.
01:22:16 Speaker 2
No, I don’t pay for it.
01:22:17 Speaker 2
It just like in Google Docs, it just I have it.
01:22:18 Speaker 1
OK.
01:22:20 Speaker 2
I think I have it.
01:22:21 Speaker 2
The plugin installed somewhere OK, but even Microsoft Word now is like concision, concision, concision, and I’m like.
01:22:23 Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:22:28 Speaker 2
I’m all for concision, but it’s not.
01:22:31 Speaker 2
The end all be.
01:22:32 Speaker 2
You know, like I ultimately think that academic writing should be good writing, and that not enough of academic writing is good writing.
01:22:33 Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
01:22:39 Speaker 2
And yes, I do believe there is such a thing as good writing.
01:22:41 Speaker 3
It’s.
01:22:41
Yes, yes.
01:22:42 Speaker 1
So what is good writing and what is bad writing?
01:22:44 Speaker 3
I mean I I think it’s like all the um, and it’s probably not even anything.
01:22:50 Speaker 2
I think the good writing like.
01:22:53 Speaker 2
It tells a story of someone that you know.
01:22:57 Speaker 2
Um, I think good writing is cohesive.
01:23:02
Serve.
01:23:02 Speaker 2
You know, I think that good writing is, in whatever way you can be somewhat reflective of something in you, you know, in whatever way.
01:23:16 Speaker 2
I don’t like people feeling so now.
01:23:17 Speaker 2
I’ve had this when.
01:23:18 Speaker 2
I first started publishing like people. I think I talked about this maybe on the last public.
01:23:22 Speaker 2
Like you don’t use the word *******.
01:23:23 Speaker 2
And I’m like.
01:23:24
Really.
01:23:25 Speaker 2
You know, but like good writing should.
01:23:27 Speaker 2
Allow you to choose.
01:23:28 Speaker 2
The word *******, as part of developing your voice, you know?
01:23:29
What’s?
01:23:29 Speaker 1
This is.
01:23:32 Speaker 1
This is why I have not working as hard as I could to get rid of all the times.
01:23:37 Speaker 1
I say **** on this.
01:23:38 Speaker 2
Podcast and I.
01:23:40 Speaker 3
No.
01:23:40 Speaker 2
Sorry, I mean, I’m just not being good.
01:23:42 Speaker 1
No, this is who we are.
01:23:43 Speaker 2
And then it is his who I am and um.
01:23:48 Speaker 2
I I think for and this like for academic writing, I’d like academic writing to be closer to sort of like creative writing and I’d like to have like I really am invested in sort of these stabilizing the creative academic divide that like academic writing can be bad.
01:24:05 Speaker 2
It shouldn’t be bad.
01:24:06 Speaker 2
It should still be like understandable.
01:24:09 Speaker 2
I think good writing steaks connection with its audience.
01:24:13 Speaker 2
I think good writing seats now.
01:24:13
Ooh.
01:24:16 Speaker 2
This is not necessarily true.
01:24:17 Speaker 2
Of creative writing has different goals, right?
01:24:20 Speaker 2
But but for other writing informative writing, scholarly writing, you know you should be your should be seeking, even seeking complication in in clear if you know, like uh.
01:24:34
Hmm.
01:24:35 Speaker 2
So I’m just like really invested in what kind of connection can I make with the audience?
01:24:42 Speaker 2
Um, and I think part of that is through, at least in stripped, wanting to sort of take out that thing and say.
01:24:43 Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:24:51 Speaker 2
Um, no.
01:24:52 Speaker 2
I slept with research.
01:24:53 Speaker 2
Jackson, you know, like, wow, I am.
01:24:57 Speaker 2
I am bad, you know, like, you know, whatever.
01:25:01 Speaker 2
Just to sort of like say I have to step out of that academic posture.
01:25:06 Speaker 2
Every once in awhile, you know.
01:25:08 Speaker 1
Yeah, I love that.
01:25:10 Speaker 1
That’s why I love the format of the podcast.
01:25:12 Speaker 1
Because it really.
01:25:13 Speaker 1
The facilitates letting us like, allowing ourselves to be part of our research like that, and to think about these ideas in their sort of roughness in there, like in their full humanity, and like not this sort of fake, inauthentic posture of like we were just really formal and do everything perfectly.
01:25:25 Speaker 3
Hmm.
01:25:37 Speaker 1
And look at this beautiful final product.
01:25:39 Speaker 1
But at the same time, it’s like I’ve been thing.
01:25:41 Speaker 1
I think a lot about like the editing of podcasts, and I was really editing one um, like the episode with Tyler, cause we were talking about sex a lot, and I was like gonna release it.
01:25:53 Speaker 1
And then I was like, Oh my God.
01:25:54 Speaker 1
I’m gonna be cancelled and.
01:25:55 Speaker 1
It’s like it went back in and I was like listening.
01:25:57 Speaker 1
And I was like, OK, what did I like?
01:25:58 Speaker 1
I realized that.
01:26:00 Speaker 1
Because of my style of speaking, it sounded a little bit like I was saying at one point that I I think that having sex with your mother is hot.
01:26:10 Speaker 3
Thought I was like.
01:26:13 Speaker 1
Because he was talking about **** ****.
01:26:14 Speaker 1
But I was like, are you?
01:26:14 Speaker 3
It.
01:26:15 Speaker 3
I.
01:26:15 Speaker 2
Was talking about like family ****.
01:26:17 Speaker 2
It’s really.
01:26:18 Speaker 2
Right now I’m having a moment.
01:26:19 Speaker 3
It is.
01:26:20 Speaker 1
Listen to that episode.
01:26:21 Speaker 1
But yeah, it’s so good.
01:26:21 Speaker 3
I will, yeah.
01:26:23 Speaker 1
But it was like cause I was all excited and I had all these thoughts at once.
01:26:27 Speaker 1
So I was like basically speaking like three thoughts and what the sound came out of.
01:26:32 Speaker 1
My audio player was.
01:26:35 Speaker 1
I totally get it.
01:26:36 Speaker 1
I get like, you know, moms like sex with power is hot.
01:26:40 Speaker 1
It’s it was some convoluted thing and so it’s.
01:26:46 Speaker 1
I appreciate beautiful edited work like as we were saying like good writing is like.
01:26:51 Speaker 1
I think good writing is we’re considering our audience and we’re also considering the format like it is.
01:26:55 Speaker 1
What is the like venue for this writing and that we want to be writing?
01:27:00 Speaker 1
You know, we’re talking like rhetoric is going to differ depending on where it is located.
01:27:07 Speaker 1
Like and I think partly it’s like our expectations.
01:27:10 Speaker 1
Like what is it that we’re expecting?
01:27:12 Speaker 1
And sometimes, if we disrupt those expectations, it leads to some really cool ideas.
01:27:18 Speaker 1
And sometimes it just is.
01:27:19 Speaker 1
So like you know, there’s like Phillip Glass and then there’s like, my kid playing on a, you know, design Elephone you different.
01:27:24 Speaker 2
No.
01:27:24 Speaker 2
Yeah, for sure.
01:27:25 Speaker 2
There are disruptions that absolutely don’t work, you know, and and they’re like.
01:27:30 Speaker 2
You know, and and maybe I maybe when I was in an early writer, I didn’t do it as well and that’s why I got flagged for it.
01:27:36 Speaker 2
You know I don’t.
01:27:37 Speaker 2
I don’t know, but they’re certainly, yeah, like.
01:27:41 Speaker 2
That doesn’t mean that I’m like, you know, I do go in and I’m like, why are you saying this?
01:27:45 Speaker 2
You don’t.
01:27:45 Speaker 3
Don’t say this is.
01:27:46 Speaker 2
Exactly like we don’t do that.
01:27:50 Speaker 2
Um, yeah.
01:27:50
Right.
01:27:51 Speaker 2
So yeah, I think that learning so you know, it’s like the questions like.
01:27:55 Speaker 2
It’s hard for students because the way that you have to do the way you do good scholarship is that you do.
01:28:01 Speaker 2
You go, you write a million drafts, you know, like I have 50 drafts of articles that I’ve published, you know, because I’m hyper, I save everything. And.
01:28:12 Speaker 1
Totally OHP.
01:28:13 Speaker 1
There’s one very practical tip.
01:28:15 Speaker 1
Totally for study.
01:28:16 Speaker 1
If you like, you gotta Kill Your Darlings, you gotta kill the words.
01:28:19 Speaker 2
Oh yeah.
01:28:19 Speaker 1
But like create out files I do this all the time.
01:28:21 Speaker 1
Yeah, is like putting out file copy, cut it, paste it there and then you don’t have to.
01:28:27 Speaker 1
Like you can someday reuse it.
01:28:29 Speaker 1
Usually I don’t, but occasionally I do, but at least I know it’s there.
01:28:33 Speaker 2
Yeah, there are times that I’ve been working on things and I’ve gone back and I do it.
01:28:37 Speaker 2
Don’t copy it into a second dot God comment, which I probably should.
01:28:40 Speaker 2
I just save a new version, so I’ll be like version 26 after I’ve cut something.
01:28:42 Speaker 3
OK. Thanks.
01:28:45 Speaker 2
But years later, I’ll.
01:28:46 Speaker 2
Like Google something and it’ll be like a section that I cut out and never put back in.
01:28:51 Speaker 2
And I’m like, oh, have you used for this?
01:28:52 Speaker 2
Now, but it’s like when you’re taking five classes, 4 classes, even graduate students, you don’t have time to work on an article for a year or, you know, you don’t have a time to to edit for a year.
01:28:53 Speaker 1
Yes. Yeah.
01:28:59 Speaker 3
Hmm.
01:29:02 Speaker 3
Yeah.
01:29:05 Speaker 2
So so the students who end up.
01:29:08 Speaker 2
So that sort of natural writing them bility, which I do think that.
01:29:11 Speaker 2
I mean, I don’t know how natural it is, but there are people who it’s way easier for.
01:29:17 Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:29:17 Speaker 2
Yeah, than others.
01:29:19 Speaker 2
But I always think writings teachable like like and that’s what gives me really excited.
01:29:19 Speaker 3
Totally.
01:29:21
Yeah. Nice.
01:29:23 Speaker 3
About it because.
01:29:25 Speaker 2
I learned how to do it from teaching it.
01:29:29 Speaker 2
I think I was a fairly good writer just from growing up with the parents.
01:29:33 Speaker 2
That I did.
01:29:35 Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:29:35
Um.
01:29:36 Speaker 2
And you know, they read to us and everybody was a big reader in my family.
01:29:41 Speaker 2
And you know, my parents were upwardly mobile and sort of, you know, were, like, really careful about, you know, wanting us to be, like, educated and thoughtful.
01:29:53 Speaker 2
So like a lot of stuff like.
01:29:56 Speaker 2
Came from my background, but I I didn’t know why I was doing things.
01:30:00 Speaker 2
It was like, well, I know what sounds right and then I started teaching grammar a nightmare.
01:30:06 Speaker 2
But now I know it, and once the more I knew it, the more like it’s like somebody had given me some kind of secret code.
01:30:13 Speaker 2
And when I learned about how you can structure a paragraph to make it cohesive using like the no new contract and how you could, there’s stylistic devices that people have been studying for 3000 years that can like pull people into your writing and and and you know, and I get super excited.
01:30:27 Speaker 3
What?
01:30:27 Speaker 1
OK, I need to look where can I?
01:30:34 Speaker 2
And my students.
01:30:35 Speaker 2
Ultimately, are like I learned from that you know those you demised. I want to demystify the writing process.
01:30:43 Speaker 2
In whatever way that I can, and I think that that translates into other thinking and other writing that my students go on to do and.
01:30:51 Speaker 2
The feedback shows that it is.
01:30:53 Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:30:54 Speaker 1
No 100%.
01:30:55 Speaker 1
I would say two of the classes, maybe three classes that were the most important to me in high school, two of which are never offered in Canadian.
01:31:03 Speaker 1
Bulls.
01:31:04 Speaker 1
Typing drivers Ed.
01:31:06 Speaker 1
You don’t.
01:31:06 Speaker 1
You have to pay for drivers Ed here in Canada and then AP English, but it’s like the things that like, you know, there’s plenty of other things that I learned.
01:31:14 Speaker 1
But it’s like those fundamental skills like and especially with the AP like AP English was composition.
01:31:21 Speaker 1
It is under and I was saying this on the episode with Mike.
01:31:24 Speaker 1
It’s like they’re, you know, everyone wants to write like Sarah Ahmed or, like, is trying to copy Judith Butler or someone like.
01:31:30 Speaker 1
But it’s like there’s a very basic conventions of writing, and like you can play with those, but you have to understand what they are first.
01:31:38 Speaker 1
You know, it’s like, you know, it’s like Picasso, like, you know, his little painting of a piece dove or whatever.
01:31:46 Speaker 1
It’s like you had the whole series of pins that were just like single line drawings long before we became but it.
01:31:51 Speaker 1
Just like like there’s classical training that goes into that, like you’re not just, like drawing stick figures and then becoming able to write with very just a few lines something beautiful, right?
01:32:01 Speaker 3
Bear asked.
01:32:04 Speaker 1
Like you have to get the foundation of it.
01:32:06 Speaker 1
So first students, or like people who are struggling with their writing like I love that you’re saying like people can learn what? What are something?
01:32:13 Speaker 1
And I was looking at your website.
01:32:15 Speaker 1
There’s writing stuff because my because doing socialresearch.com.
01:32:18 Speaker 1
I do have some things like a formula for an introduction and like what you were just saying.
01:32:23 Speaker 1
I’m like, I don’t.
01:32:23 Speaker 3
Oh cool.
01:32:23 Speaker 1
I don’t know anything like.
01:32:24 Speaker 1
I don’t.
01:32:25 Speaker 1
I’m not.
01:32:26 Speaker 1
I’m way less of any kind of an expert in any of this than you are, and it’s sort of like I just picked it up or one thing like a paragraph.
01:32:34 Speaker 1
Oh my God.
01:32:34 Speaker 1
I was a professor when I learned that like I was teaching a research methods and I brought in.
01:32:40 Speaker 1
We had a writing statuses at Acadia and we had a.
01:32:42 Speaker 1
Centre and the guy who ran at Steven Hearn, who’s was in the English department, such a smart guy.
01:32:49 Speaker 1
Um and I invited him in to just talk about, like, how do you write a paper in the second year class?
01:32:54 Speaker 1
And he was like, deconstructing a paragraph.
01:32:56 Speaker 1
And I was like Ohta topic sentence.
01:32:58 Speaker 1
I didn’t know that.
01:32:58
What’s?
01:32:58 Speaker 1
Was and I’m like, so embarrassed now.
01:33:01 Speaker 1
But I’m always like to students like.
01:33:02 Speaker 1
Do you have a topic sentence?
01:33:03 Speaker 1
But it’s where.
01:33:06 Speaker 1
We are for those who are students or professors in their careers and still don’t know what a topic sentence is, where, where should I send?
01:33:14 Speaker 1
Where should what would be helpful do you think I mean besides taking your class in Upstate New York?
01:33:20 Speaker 1
What else can they do?
01:33:21 Speaker 1
Would you say?
01:33:25 Speaker 2
Can I ask if answer another question first.
01:33:27 Speaker 1
Yeah, totally.
01:33:28 Speaker 2
That’s like, really.
01:33:29 Speaker 2
Cause I I’m thinking about it and I wanna answer it.
01:33:31 Speaker 2
One thing that I think faculty can do better, and this is not for our own writing, but probably ultimately for our own writing.
01:33:38 Speaker 2
Because when you teach writing.
01:33:39 Speaker 2
You learn right?
01:33:40 Speaker 2
I mean, that’s.
01:33:41 Speaker 3
Yes.
01:33:41 Speaker 2
Just.
01:33:42 Speaker 2
That’s just it, like, but I think that that sort of like I don’t say every other department, but being in like a composition studies or writing and rhetoric or whatever it’s called, it’s like students come into my class and they can’t write.
01:33:56 Speaker 2
And I’m like, but why would your students know how to write in a three?
01:33:59 Speaker 2
100 level history glass.
01:34:01 Speaker 2
Like, why would they?
01:34:02 Speaker 2
The sort of like they don’t know how to write.
01:34:04 Speaker 2
I’m like, no, they don’t know how to write in that context.
01:34:07 Speaker 2
Alright, you you can’t mostly.
01:34:07 Speaker 3
I’m no.
01:34:09 Speaker 2
Like say that they can’t.
01:34:10 Speaker 2
Hate because obviously they write all the time.
01:34:13 Speaker 2
This was literate, you know, time and in culture because of the typing constantly, you know.
01:34:13 Speaker 1
Interesting.
01:34:20 Speaker 2
So um, so this sort of like idea that somehow their education would have prepared them for disciplinary writing is kind of bizarre to me.
01:34:20
Yeah.
01:34:28 Speaker 3
Did you?
01:34:29 Speaker 2
I was.
01:34:30 Speaker 1
Yeah, I was thinking about that cause again, I was talking with my son, Jack and my stepson, and they were just talking about because they, um, you know, like, what are they reading?
01:34:39 Speaker 1
Because in the Ontario curriculum, I realized and we were just talking, I think like Jack and I were just talking about academic rating, because Jack is a sociologist.
01:34:48 Speaker 1
Three majors and Finn was like, well, I know how to write, and then we were sort of talking about, like, scholarly writing.
01:34:54 Speaker 1
And it became clear that it’s like he has been taught how to.
01:34:58 Speaker 1
He’s like my teacher said. Compare and contrast is like the most important thing you’ll ever need to know.
01:35:03 Speaker 1
And I was like, huh?
01:35:06 Speaker 1
Like it’s like I don’t know about that.
01:35:09 Speaker 1
I was like, you know, I that is useful, but I think maybe in literature I don’t know, like I’ve no idea where that came from, if that was like the teacher.
01:35:18 Speaker 1
But I’m like that’s red.
01:35:20 Speaker 1
Really.
01:35:21 Speaker 1
Like, that’s not what we do and.
01:35:23 Speaker 1
It not at all.
01:35:23 Speaker 2
Occurred when you get a.
01:35:24 Speaker 2
Paper. And you’re like heart sinks.
01:35:26 Speaker 2
Cause they’re like in this paper I will compare and.
01:35:28 Speaker 1
Contrast, right and it’s like.
01:35:30 Speaker 1
But it’s also realizing like that teacher, like in high school, they’re not being taught like, you know, if they’re taking there is a high school like sociology, anthropology, psychology course that they take.
01:35:41
Hmm.
01:35:41 Speaker 1
That’s the social science, but they’re not learning how to write scholar how to do scholarly writing.
01:35:46 Speaker 1
They’re learning about like, you know what the various, you know, what is the impression management or, you know, they’re learning concepts.
01:35:53 Speaker 1
They’re not learning.
01:35:54 Speaker 1
How do you create the research like that?
01:35:55 Speaker 1
And to me, this is what we’re we are supposed to be teaching them this.
01:35:59 Speaker 1
In university, like in college, but.
01:36:01 Speaker 2
I mean I I think like so then to actually answer the question that you posed originally is what can we all do to sort of improve our writing?
01:36:10 Speaker 2
And I think that like, um, one understanding, you know that that believing that you’re writing always can be improved.
01:36:18 Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
01:36:18 Speaker 2
Um is one thing.
01:36:20 Speaker 2
But also, just like there are some basic.
01:36:24 Speaker 2
Moves that you should be making and if the end of this sentence is.
01:36:29 Speaker 2
Totally a world away.
01:36:31 Speaker 2
From the beginning of this next sentence, you’ve got a problem, you know.
01:36:33 Speaker 1
Oh my God.
01:36:33 Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah.
01:36:35 Speaker 2
And so I think that those are things that regardless of discipline that you can be like, what’s the point of this paragraph?
01:36:42 Speaker 2
I have students do a lot of reverse outlining.
01:36:45 Speaker 2
Where after they have a draft.
01:36:45 Speaker 3
Oh.
01:36:47 Speaker 3
They sort of pull out.
01:36:48 Speaker 2
What’s the what claim?
01:36:50 Speaker 2
So I talk a lot about claims more than topic sentences, but what?
01:36:54 Speaker 2
What claim it in the claim should be?
01:36:56 Speaker 2
Supporting the thesis, right?
01:36:57 Speaker 3
There’s a thesis.
01:36:58 Speaker 2
What claim is it making?
01:36:59 Speaker 2
How is it warranted or what evidence if they the students hate the term warranty?
01:37:03 Speaker 2
And um.
01:37:04 Speaker 1
So what the term?
01:37:04
What happened?
01:37:05 Speaker 2
What warranting like you have to warrant your claims like you have to support them.
01:37:05 Speaker 1
Warren.
01:37:10 Speaker 1
Right.
01:37:10 Speaker 1
Like, what is your evidence?
01:37:10 Speaker 2
Of what’s your evidence?
01:37:11 Speaker 1
This is why I drag you kids crazy because.
01:37:12 Speaker 2
So I just claim evidence analysis a lot and then sort of like the in the analysis section that you’re sort of showing, how did the evidence support the change, you know, so, so and and like, claim evidence analysis doesn’t work for like, every obviously genre of writing.
01:37:27 Speaker 2
But I think just sort of understanding like cohesion on a really basic level, just Google cohesion.
01:37:34 Speaker 2
Then and think about cohesion and ask yourself, how did I get to the beginning of this sentence?
01:37:40 Speaker 2
It is.
01:37:40 Speaker 2
Is it huge thing?
01:37:42 Speaker 2
So just like as a quick and dirty tip, understanding cohesion and understanding transitions.
01:37:46 Speaker 3
In.
01:37:48 Speaker 2
Which is part.
01:37:49 Speaker 2
Of it like.
01:37:49 Speaker 1
Yes.
01:37:50 Speaker 2
Between sentences, not just between paragraphs, between words, between sentences, between ideas.
01:37:55 Speaker 2
You know, between paragraphs between, you know, just like if you.
01:37:58 Speaker 1
Right.
01:37:59 Speaker 1
And that if you find yourself, I keep saying this message.
01:38:02 Speaker 1
If you find yourself saying, as previously mentioned or as I will talk about later, I’m.
01:38:07 Speaker 1
Take that bit that you’re going to talk about later.
01:38:10 Speaker 1
Like put it together like it’s the, you know, it’s like bouncing around like you’re going to this idea and then, like, you’re going to A and then B.
01:38:11 Speaker 3
There.
01:38:11 Speaker 2
But if you got, yeah, yeah.
01:38:16 Speaker 1
And now you’re to C, but oh, wait, now we’re back in a, and now we’re B up back at it.
01:38:20 Speaker 1
It’s like that bouncing around is, I mean I do it like my sister edited the first version of my book and really helped me because I think sometimes too it’s.
01:38:20 Speaker 2
Yeah.
01:38:31 Speaker 1
Like you have all of these ideas, you’ve read all this material.
01:38:34 Speaker 1
Like if you’re doing it right, it’s like you have all this stuff and you’re like, how do I make any sense of this?
01:38:40 Speaker 2
Hmm.
01:38:40 Speaker 1
And sometimes because editing is right or writing is editing, it’s like I’m going to throw it all on the page and then I realized, wait, these ideas are all like sometimes that editing is just being like, OK, wait, let me group my ideas together and it can be hard because it’s like it feels like, no, these are totally separate ideas.
01:38:49
Hmm.
01:38:58 Speaker 1
Like.
01:38:58 Speaker 1
No, no, no.
01:38:59 Speaker 1
That’s actually just the same thought.
01:39:00 Speaker 1
You know.
01:39:01 Speaker 2
Yeah.
01:39:02 Speaker 2
Yeah.
01:39:03 Speaker 2
And it’s because you read your ****.
01:39:04 Speaker 2
So I mean, people also like how do you get better, you have to read it like you really have to read it?
01:39:05 Speaker 3
Right.
01:39:10 Speaker 2
And I really encourage if and if students really, if they actually care, they’ll do this, like find a place and.
01:39:16 Speaker 2
Read it out loud.
01:39:17 Speaker 2
Like you, you should.
01:39:18 Speaker 1
Hmm. Yes.
01:39:19 Speaker 2
I try and write everything now and I learned this from giving presentations at conferences and I got better and better at it because I wrote everything to be read out loud.
01:39:27 Speaker 2
And now if I stumble over a.
01:39:29 Speaker 2
Sentence.
01:39:30 Speaker 2
I stopped and I edit it, you know.
01:39:32 Speaker 3
Nice.
01:39:33 Speaker 2
And you know, sort of being like there is something that’s causing you to trip on that sirens and.
01:39:39
Yeah.
01:39:40 Speaker 2
And so when you trip, when you’re reading it like, why am I tripping?
01:39:44 Speaker 2
You know, like could this be said better?
01:39:47 Speaker 2
Um and so many times students will be like I and I’m like, why did you say this?
01:39:47
Yeah.
01:39:51 Speaker 2
And I’m like, I don’t know.
01:39:51 Speaker 2
And I’m.
01:39:52 Speaker 2
Like OK.
01:39:53 Speaker 2
So, like being like, huh, you know?
01:39:55 Speaker 2
And which I do too.
01:39:56 Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:39:57 Speaker 2
Yeah, but then we have to solve that problem.
01:40:00 Speaker 1
Yeah, totally. Yeah.
01:40:00 Speaker 2
So reading your stuff, understanding cohesion.
01:40:04 Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:40:04 Speaker 2
And um, transitions and those are all like together.
01:40:07
Yeah.
01:40:08 Speaker 2
Those are like three ways that you can anybody can improve whatever kind of writing you know they’re doing, and then and then read in your discipline, you know, and then like also like, there’s so much stuff on the web.
01:40:13 Speaker 1
Yeah, totally, totally.
01:40:15 Speaker 1
I.
01:40:21 Speaker 2
Like just like sometime Phillips.
01:40:23 Speaker 2
Have you ever done like?
01:40:26 Speaker 2
Writing a social science article tutorial.
01:40:29 Speaker 2
Yeah.
01:40:29 Speaker 2
Yeah.
01:40:30 Speaker 2
So, like I’ll do that still, I’ll like look up tutorials for writing the humanities or writing lit review, you know.
01:40:31
Yeah.
01:40:34 Speaker 1
Oh, not too tutorial I’d like.
01:40:36 Speaker 1
I’ve looked like for websites that talk about different stuff.
01:40:39 Speaker 1
I’m trying to like how do I explain this?
01:40:40 Speaker 2
Like, yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of like online light online writing labs that will do this kind of stuff, different owls.
01:40:45 Speaker 1
OK.
01:40:49 Speaker 2
Purdue Owl is, like, overtaken by ads, so it’s kind of that’s the famous I really like the.
01:40:52 Speaker 1
OK. Yeah.
01:40:54 Speaker 2
It’s called the Excelsior.
01:40:56
Well.
01:40:56 Speaker 2
Um and it’s really clean.
01:40:59 Speaker 2
I like it a lot.
01:41:01 Speaker 2
Um, but yeah, just like Googling stuff and and like figuring out like reading what people say, just like teaching.
01:41:08 Speaker 2
It is like anything else, you have to learn and maybe teaching it as a form.
01:41:12 Speaker 3
Yeah.
01:41:14 Speaker 2
Writing as research you know, helps them get into that.
01:41:17 Speaker 2
Sort of like, yeah, framework, but it’s hard.
01:41:21 Speaker 2
Like I really have to push that.
01:41:22 Speaker 2
Writing is the thing.
01:41:24 Speaker 2
Well, because students in, especially in academia, think that writing they’re writing about the thing that there’s something different, that they’re trying to get to.
01:41:29 Speaker 3
Hmm.
01:41:34
Hmm.
01:41:34 Speaker 2
That the writing is just a.
01:41:36 Speaker 2
Vehicle for.
01:41:37 Speaker 1
Right, right.
01:41:38 Speaker 2
Does this make sense like they want writing to be a transparent medium?
01:41:41 Speaker 2
For what’s in their head as opposed to writing constructs, your argument right, writing doesn’t OK do you see what I’m saying?
01:41:41 Speaker 3
Hmm.
01:41:46 Speaker 3
Yes.
01:41:48 Speaker 1
Oh, totally.
01:41:48 Speaker 2
It’s like it’s not like you’re argument is folding formed in your head and it’s beautiful and you just need to find the right way to get it out.
01:41:54 Speaker 2
It’s like no.
01:41:55 Speaker 2
When you make choices, yeah, on the page about organization and and diction and all that stuff, you are formulating an argument in that moment.
01:42:03 Speaker 1
Yes, or.
01:42:05 Speaker 1
Yes, yes, and it towered Becker.
01:42:07 Speaker 1
Also, I’m I’ll I’ll put rough.
01:42:09 Speaker 1
I always try to put references on my website for this.
01:42:11 Speaker 1
I don’t know if it shows up on like Apple Podcasts, but you go to website doingsocialresearch.com under the podcasting section.
01:42:17 Speaker 1
They’ll be referenced everything but that I remember.
01:42:20 Speaker 1
I might forget things anyway, got it?
01:42:23 Speaker 1
But it is absolutely in the process, like he says very clearly.
01:42:27 Speaker 1
It’s like we’re not.
01:42:28 Speaker 1
And that’s again why the editing is what matters.
01:42:31 Speaker 1
It’s not the first thing, it’s because it’s when we’re writing that we figure out what the hell it is that we’re trying to say.
01:42:38 Speaker 1
And I think that so often too, sometimes that comes because I say.
01:42:41 Speaker 1
Something and like This is why I think citing is so important.
01:42:44 Speaker 1
It’s not just about giving credit to people.
01:42:46 Speaker 1
It’s not just about being like, not taking credit, but it’s I have to go back and be like, wait, did they really say that like?
01:42:53 Speaker 1
I have to go back and look at it and be like, oh ****, I’ve been saying, like this thing and it.
01:42:59 Speaker 1
I thought that was from that guy, but it was actually this other guy and he was saying all this other stuff like that.
01:43:03 Speaker 1
There really is this.
01:43:04 Speaker 1
Process like all of these things, that kind of feel like, oh, it’s just like, you know, why do I have to get my citations right?
01:43:11 Speaker 1
Or why do I need to do this or that?
01:43:12 Speaker 1
And then it’s like actually because that is clarifying and deepening our thinking and our understanding of these ideas.
01:43:20 Speaker 1
No, I love that.
01:43:20 Speaker 2
Yeah.
01:43:20 Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
01:43:22 Speaker 2
And like part of that is just like genre carrot, you know, genre like showing that that’s how you write in the genre is that you cite like according to that genre, you know.
01:43:32 Speaker 2
And I I try and tell my students.
01:43:33 Speaker 2
That that’s like.
01:43:36 Speaker 2
Always part of writing.
01:43:37 Speaker 2
It’s always.
01:43:37 Speaker 2
You’re always writing within constraint.
01:43:39 Speaker 2
You know some some way the some kind of constraints that are on you, um.
01:43:40 Speaker 1
Interesting, yeah.
01:43:45 Speaker 2
And so I’m not saying this is like MLA is the right way to do it.
01:43:51 Speaker 2
In my class, MLA is the right way to do it and if I give you an assignment sheet and it says to do this you it’s the same as you get any other assignment like.
01:43:54 Speaker 3
Yeah.
01:43:56 Speaker 1
Oh my God.
01:44:02 Speaker 2
The easiest thing for you to do.
01:44:04 Speaker 2
Is.
01:44:05 Speaker 2
Put one inch margins.
01:44:06 Speaker 2
And use the font I tell you that you’re, you know.
01:44:09 Speaker 1
I’m gonna find you.
01:44:09 Speaker 2
And so.
01:44:10 Speaker 1
And yet people don’t.
01:44:10 Speaker 2
And yet yes.
01:44:12 Speaker 2
And so I think like to go back to high school, I think if we really remember rhetorician, you know, so I think if we really pushed rhetorical approach about writing in certain situations and that those certain situations have constraints and have you know things that that need to be.
01:44:28 Speaker 2
Fine.
01:44:29 Speaker 2
And so every situation was approached first by let’s figure out the situation.
01:44:34
Hmm.
01:44:34 Speaker 2
Um, that we would go a long way in in communicating and I think it’s important because you know.
01:44:41 Speaker 2
We’re clearly a divided.
01:44:43 Speaker 2
People on this planet.
01:44:45 Speaker 2
So we could use more um understanding and and I think that’s another way to continue to force students force to them to write and not using AI.
01:44:55 Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
01:44:57 Speaker 1
We’ve been talking for so long and I no why are you sorry?
01:44:59 Speaker 2
I’m really sorry, yeah.
01:45:02 Speaker 1
I’m the one who’s supposed to be in charge of this, but so I I think we should wrap it up.
01:45:06 Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:45:06 Speaker 1
At least to like so I can do my outro um, and I’m just gonna.
01:45:12 Speaker 3
No.
01:45:12 Speaker 2
Oh no.
01:45:12 Speaker 2
Before you do anything, let me just I have one final thing that I wanna say.
01:45:17 Speaker 1
Yes.
01:45:17 Speaker 2
Yeah.
01:45:17 Speaker 2
Phyllis sent me an outline for the show, and it’s got a numbered list, and #4 says.
01:45:24 Speaker 2
We both ADHD and then under that it says number.
01:45:27 Speaker 2
4.
01:45:28 Speaker 2
There other things you want.
01:45:31 Speaker 2
And I’ve been looking at it the entire show, and I love it so much.
01:45:35 Speaker 3
Because it’s like.
01:45:36 Speaker 2
So it’s just is so illustrative of itself.
01:45:41 Speaker 2
It’s like the perfect marriage of Foreman content.
01:45:45 Speaker 1
It’s for me the 50 and then four again so bad.
01:45:49 Speaker 1
What I was gonna say, like I’m gonna probably this is going to be a heavily edited episode, I think.
01:45:55 Speaker 1
But if you want more understanding of why coherence matters, if you were feeling frustrated by the many tangents that the two of us went, that is why coherence matters all right.
01:46:10 Speaker 1
But you are amazing.
01:46:11 Speaker 1
This is so like I kept thinking like, Oh my God, I’ve got to stop it.
01:46:14 Speaker 1
But then I’m like, I wanna hear more.
01:46:15 Speaker 1
I wanna hear more and anyway, thank you so much, like especially on this writing stuff, it’s all just like again, it goes back to.
01:46:22 Speaker 1
What we’re starting with about portmanteau is it’s like these things that seem obvious that are just like, Oh yeah, I can write or I can do this where it’s like it’s when we start to deconstruct them or to tear them apart.
01:46:35 Speaker 1
Just ask like, why are we using this word?
01:46:36 Speaker 1
What is this that like so much?
01:46:39 Speaker 1
Richness comes out of this.
01:46:40 Speaker 1
So thank you.
01:46:42 Speaker 1
Thank you so much.
01:46:43 Speaker 1
This has been so much fun and thank you to our listeners.
01:46:49 Speaker 1
I thank you for all 8 of you.
01:46:51 Speaker 1
You’re the best.
01:46:52 Speaker 1
Thank you for listening to doing Social Research.
01:46:54 Speaker 1
If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment.
01:46:56 Speaker 1
Please take a moment to give us a.
01:47:00 Speaker 1
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01:47:02 Speaker 3
Repeater.
01:47:05 Speaker 1
And if you didn’t enjoy this episode, no one wants to.
01:47:07 Speaker 1
Hear about that.
01:47:08 Speaker 1
So, but sharing about it will help really help us to reach more listeners and make doing Social Research within the reach of everyone.
01:47:16 Speaker 1
I also would love to connect with you.
01:47:17 Speaker 1
You can follow me on Instagram or on X Twitter.
01:47:20
Now.
01:47:21 Speaker 1
I’m not there as much etc.
01:47:23 Speaker 1
Mama, you could join the doing Social Research Facebook group.
01:47:26 Speaker 1
There are four of us in there right now to keep the conversation going.
01:47:32 Speaker 1
Links to my social media references will be in the show notes.
01:47:35 Speaker 1
If you have a question about Social Research you’d like me to tackle on the podcast or questions that you have that you’d like a post, maybe on the website, send me a message, your social media or e-mail me at Phyllis Rippee at Uottawa CA.
01:47:47 Speaker 1
I would love to hear from you.
01:47:49 Speaker 1
So don’t forget to check out the website doingsocialresearch.com.
01:47:53 Speaker 1
It is still a work in progress, but it is a work of love.
01:47:57 Speaker 1
So special thanks to our sound editor Willow Rippy Young for making a sound amazing and waiting through all of our tangents.
01:48:04 Speaker 1
Jonathan Boyle wrote our theme music like a ******.
01:48:07 Speaker 1
That’s the name of this song.
01:48:08 Speaker 1
I don’t know him, so I don’t know if he’s the *** ***.
01:48:11 Speaker 1
Ah, that’s my joke I keep making.
01:48:14 Speaker 1
I’m Phyllis Rippy and this has been the doing Social Research podcast and always remember, don’t let the ******** get you down and keep doing Social Research. Bye.
01:48:20
And.
01:48:27 Speaker 3
No.