Into the COLAverse – Episode 13: Lars Hinrichs

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Into the Colaverse, a podcast that takes us on the unique journeys of faculty in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Join me your host, Frederick Luis Aldama as we learn of the many ways that our faculty and their cutting edge work is transforming the world today.

[00:00:24] Frederick: I am so excited to be here with Lars Hendricks in the English department who works on sociolinguistics. Welcome, Lars. Thank you,

[00:00:34] Lars: Frederick.

[00:00:35] Frederick: This is crazy. Like, I just wanna jump right in here and ask you, like, how, so what’s your journey? How did you get to a PhD studying English and Cray and online communication by Jamaicans at the University of Freberg?

[00:00:52] Frederick: Um, I mean, what’s, how, what, I mean it all seems so interesting to me. And then, and then how to you finally, you know, you’re at the University of Texas at.

[00:01:04] Lars: Yes. Uh, yeah. Yeah. I, I like that a lot about my story. Why is. Uh, where is a perfectly nice boy from Germany and Texas teaching Jamaican Creole? Um, um, how did I get there?

[00:01:18] Lars: Yeah. I was, uh, studying in Freberg. I grew up in Germany, right. And, um, I was, I got my ma. And, and wrote a thesis back then about a fairly dry topic, which was learning English as a foreign language, using computer computers as an instructional tool. And, um, I, um, my, my, my advisor, my professor, so to say, invited me to write a PhD thesis and he said, You could expand that topic into a PhD thesis.

[00:01:55] Lars: And I said, That’s such a boring topic. I like that it has computers, which was new at the time. We’re talking the year 2001, 2002. It was still something special to use, uh, to write about computers as a topic. But I, uh, I said, ev the, the other people here, do they, they do field work. We got one person that went to Nigeria, another that went to, to Jamaica, another that went to India.

[00:02:28] Lars: Um, can I do something with field work? And then he said, Well, let’s, let’s workshop this. What about why can’t, why don’t you do both? Um, using nonstandard languages like Jamaican Creole or pua. But in these, in these new, uh, new fangled media, email, um, or online chat, nobody’s done that. Interesting things are happening.

[00:02:56] Lars: Why don’t you do that? That’s how I got to that topic. I was not a reggae fan, although I am now. Um, I was not a weed smoker, , and I’m still not. Uh, so those were not, I wasn’t already a Jamaica fan, but I became one. I came to Jamaica through language. So studying the role of language in society is something that I learned about very practically, cuz I then went to Jamaica for a few months and learned about how people used this, this dialect, which, Very different from English, though English based and um, Nobody teaches you how to spell that.

[00:03:41] Lars: Uh, but these native speakers in Jamaica find ways of spelling it creatively, spontaneously, and they use it in rhetorically interesting ways. In code switching, which is the title of my thesis, and then the book that came out of the thesis code switching on the web. Um, and that’s, there’s a lot of similarities in the code switching behavior.

[00:04:05] Lars: With, uh, how people in other parts of the world code switch between, for example, English and Spanish, or standard English and Texas English, you know, the contrasting use of codes. So anyway, the large

[00:04:22] Frederick: out there. Mm-hmm. , let me ask you, what is an example of that? I, I, I’m curious, like Texas English, um, code switching.

[00:04:29] Frederick: Um, it’s just off the top of your head. I don’t

[00:04:32] Lars: know. . Um, it, it’s probably most frequent in speaking, but you’ll also find it on Twitter, and I’m thinking of instances such as, uh, uh, you’re telling the story and relatively standard English. Um, Like, I went to the football game this weekend, uh, but then some exclamation that’s, that’s in vernacular Texas.

[00:05:04] Lars: Sweet name, Jesus.

[00:05:06] Frederick: Oh, I see. I got it. Um, and what does this say, um, and forgive me if I’m taking you out of your kind of areas here, but what might this say about, uh, education ed? Um, our understanding of how English can be used and taught, for instance,

[00:05:25] Lars: um, uh, a good education, um, uh, strengthens people’s command of their standard language, but also.

[00:05:39] Lars: Uh, fosters pride in the local, in the vernacular language, in the nonstandard speech. So somebody who goes through a good nourishing educational, uh, stream comes out, uh, with the ability of embracing both standard English. and dialect forms or, or slang or whatever you want to call the non, the informal ways of speaking.

[00:06:08] Lars: Mm-hmm. , that’s what that has to do with, with, uh, with speaking. And then there’s some, the, the topics that we deal with a lot, uh, and that kind lots do with, with class and education, uh, are children that come from. Less privileged homes might come to schools speaking more, uh, in nonstandard forms of English.

[00:06:35] Lars: So I’m thinking of, for example, African American vernacular speech. Uh, kids cover school don’t have much access or command of standard English, uh, and get judged for that by the educational system. Uh, at least that is something that can happen. And that’s. Fundamentally not fair. It’s, it’s, mm-hmm.

[00:06:58] Lars: prejudging people based on their whole language and educational system. This is something that my field has been working on for the last 15 years, needs to take account off and, um, kind of, uh, that that’s how every now and then there’s flareups of these debates, whether. Uh, vernacular speech has a place in education.

[00:07:21] Lars: So should teachers, uh, use vernacular speech, the, the Ionics debate should ionics, which used to be a term that was used for African American vernacular speech, should that be, uh, recognized by the educational system? Should teachers ever use, uh, forms of ebonic? Trying to communicate with kids. Some linguists say it can be a really successful way of teaching the standard, teaching the standard.

[00:07:55] Lars: Through the use of the vernacular. But of course there’s stigma attached to that. Then you get these debates in the newspapers and on tv. Um, there’s an infamous video of, um, Oprah Winfrey from the 1990s where she’s a few man, uh, speaking out against African nacho speech saying that’s not English. That doesn’t help anybody, you know?

[00:08:22] Lars: Um, so.

[00:08:26] Frederick: Yes. No, those, that’s really interesting. And, you know, leads me to my next couple of questions. One is, you know, why an English department for you, you know, why is that a suitable, say, disciplined, uh, as opposed to, uh, linguistics department?

[00:08:46] Lars: Uh, I could be in a linguistics department. Uh, at least I say so.

[00:08:54] Lars: Um, so I wouldn’t be totally misplaced. But I come out of an English department back in Germany. I studied in English department and my specialty is, Varieties of English around the world. So with all these topics that linguists deal with language in society and grammar and all that, um, I focus on the subset of those that have to do with varieties of English.

[00:09:25] Lars: So, you know, I could work on varieties of friendships. I wanted to, and I really want to actually work on Spanish and English and contact in Texas. I just haven’t got to that yet. But for the most part, I focus on varieties of English, and that’s just something when I. I mean, my, my, uh, family’s completely German.

[00:09:50] Lars: Um, but English was always my favorite subject when I was going to school, and I’ve just never been interested in anything else. So that’s why I’ve been in English department.

[00:10:02] Frederick: Well, so tell me about a course like masterworks of Literature and you teach, uh, in this, in that, in this particular course. The sufferings of young Ver and also the death of Yvonne.

[00:10:18] Frederick: Um, how, tell us, tell us about masterworks of literature from the Lars perspective.

[00:10:26] Lars: Right? Yeah, so that is, uh, the course we’re talking about is E three 16. Um, our big service course that, Anyone who studies at ut well unless they uh, they bring in a credit that’s certain kinds of AP English, I think would qualify.

[00:10:47] Lars: But for the most part, every student at UT has to take this class as their humanities credit. And uh, so I teach that course cuz we need to teach it. And, uh, I have studied a lot, its literature. Along my path, even though it’s not my main focus in my research right now, but I’ve studied, uh, a lot of German and English literature and the course is, it’s overall purpose is to get people to read and to appreciate literature.

[00:11:19] Lars: So a big part of it is let’s just have fun. That’s why I put books on the syllabus that I’ve read and really enjoyed, and that cover. Um, geography and periods a little bit. That’s why I start with the suffering of Young Meto, which is from 1716. And, uh, uh, is, uh, is. The, like one of the prime examples of sentimentalism, it’s very emotional.

[00:11:50] Lars: It’s a counter reaction to enlightenment. And so this extremely, uh, feeling charged and then we move on to other periods where other things are important. Uh, have an that you mentioned. This semester will be, or this summer will be the first time I’m teaching that. But that’s realism, right? Russian realism.

[00:12:13] Lars: I love realism. I can’t even really describe why, but it’s so rich. Um, it’s not too ideologically charged. It’s, uh, long, fairly dramatic stories and it’s a great way to get to know a different. Place and period. And, um, well, like I said, I don’t specialize in literature. I don’t publish on literature, but I love reading this with the students, engaging in these texts, having these conversations, and really just bringing it to live for the duration of a semester course.

[00:12:54] Frederick: So it, there must be some elements here of understanding the evolution of literature in and through, uh, you know, a lens of, I don’t know, Let me try a couple of more technical terms, like syntactic variation, um, or sort of, I, you know, idiomatic expression.

[00:13:18] Lars: Oh yes. Uh, and what I did mention is there’s a bunch of Jamaican texts and, um, a theme that I like to explore is diaspora.

[00:13:27] Lars: So I start with some texts that are written in Jamaica by Safari and poets, and then. I also read, uh, Jamaican Poetry that’s written abroad by people who immigrate from Jamaica to English, Linton Kui Johnson, for example. Uh, Dub poet, right? And yes, since it’s my specialty, I give reductions to what makes. A dialect different from the standard dialect.

[00:14:00] Lars: So, uh, like what, what makes Jamaican Creole different? Uh, what are some of the, uh, you know, the pronoun system, Why is that so meaningful in, in Patua and then in the specific. Form of patua that is dread talk, the rest of foreign kind of Jamaican Creole. Um, and so yeah, we come back to that again, again with different things.

[00:14:26] Lars: Um, it makes the most sense for the works that were originally written in English, so not the Russian ones. I don’t how much about Russian tax and I also don’t wanna. Don’t wanna torture people with talking about Germans and texts, even though I probably could, but, uh, but for the texts that are originally English, we do

[00:14:46] Frederick: talk about those things.

[00:14:47] Frederick: Yes. So I don’t wanna sort of delve too deep or far into the kind of political, but. Um, we do have others, uh, as you well know, like George Layoff famously. Um, and well, it seems like you have a course as well on inaugural speeches of US presidents, but let me ask you, is there, is there something, um, that we can learn from your work that your students learn from your work to understand better?

[00:15:20] Frederick: Uh, I guess the sort of you. The rhetoric or the rhetorical persuasiveness of one speech next to another speech?

[00:15:32] Lars: Uh, yes. I mean, I don’t do political speeches in this course, but, um, what I like, uh, about the Master Works of Literature course, but also in general has learning close reading and, um, knowing, um, linguistic.

[00:15:48] Lars: Concepts and tools is really helpful. Uh, in doing close reading. It’s like the, the biggest, most important weapon we have up our sleeve as English scholars, right? Knowing how to approach text up close and like seeing. Going on technically in the text. There’s never just one Greg answer about that. But if you look at a speech or a poem, um, you can use very similar.

[00:16:23] Lars: Methods to analyze those texts. And, uh, metaphor, as you mentioned, George Lako. I do that in the Masterwork class. Um, the, uh, metaphors we live by there, there’s several ideas that are really important to students at that stage of their journey. You know, typically sophomores would take this class. So, uh, the fact that most language is full of metaphors, um, Most ways of speaking that we use draw on recurring, uh, source target domains and just the choice of domains is the, it’s really useful, uh, whether, whether you implicitly compare, compare something with a fight or a journey makes, can.

[00:17:14] Lars: Can make a big difference in how what you’re actually saying is comes across and it’s framed. So, um, yeah, so in that, in that way, uh, poetry and, uh, rap lyrics and political speeches, I have a lot in common and studying English. I mean, that’s how I see it, that we train people, at least for part of the time, train them to be experts at taking that part and, uh, and really making a good argument about what’s in a text.

[00:17:51] Frederick: Mm-hmm. LAIs Hendricks as a, it’s obviously you were a big, big reader as a kid growing up, um, but there’s something very detail oriented about your, your particular specialization. And I just wondered, is there something, were you, that kid that I don’t know, obsessed over? You know, the trail. Ants as they carried the crumbs to the, to their nest.

[00:18:21] Frederick: Uh, I, I’m just thinking here, the, the young Lars and this incredibly sort of statistically synt, tactically oriented, detailed mind here.

[00:18:32] Lars: Yes, . Um, uh, maybe I remember, uh, being really, uh, uh, yeah, I remember playing, I remember it being really happy when the nights, when you’re in flow playing with, uh, you know, building.

[00:18:54] Lars: Building things in the yard and, uh, building landscapes, uh, at home. Um, I did always read a lot and the analyzing part came later when I studied though, and the whole idea of the pursuing grad school and pursuing this as a career, that came entirely from my experiences of studying in the. States as if the visiting student, So when I was 16, I came to Alabama for one year.

[00:19:26] Lars: I had stayed with the host family and in Birmingham, Alabama, and, uh, started appreciating this American waves. Its more project based learning where you’re more on your own, I mean, You don’t always do that in the American context, but you can. There’s usually room for that. And then that was the big deal when I came back as a Fulbright student when I was 24, I went to the University of North Carolina for a year.

[00:19:56] Lars: Um, And I loved the courses there. Where, where like we had a class topic. Um, this was early days of, uh, digital humanities learning. I was already studying English, but we did like, let’s read, um, que and um, Uh, let’s make a website about it and, uh, every student take on a topic and produce part of that website.

[00:20:26] Lars: I love that we weren’t doing that very much in Germany. Um, you know, while university in Germany is very good and has a lot of strengths, and most of, most of all, it’s free to, to study at the public university in Germany. Um, Eh, they don’t have the bandwidth to do that much independent project based learning.

[00:20:49] Lars: And we did that, and I looked at, and that really made me really up to graduate school. Mm-hmm. .

[00:20:55] Frederick: Well, that’s a, that’s a wonderful, you know, advertisement really for our students here at ut, um, students in general in the US to get, get, get their passports and get on one of those, uh, you know, Uh, you know, study abroads because it’s not just, of course, what happens in the classroom, Lars says you well know it’s, uh, being exposed to something so radically different culturally, and for you, I’m sure the sounds, the different sounds of English and Alabama, um, etcetera.

[00:21:29] Frederick: Right?

[00:21:30] Lars: Yeah. I mean, yeah, up until my, the age of 16 when I went to Alabama, I had had English teachers who were either, who were either from England or had learned their English in England, so. That was a bit of the difference. I do remember finding out for myself that where’s like ham or cat or dance, uh, can be, the vows can be tr fond as you know, one, you want any more hanging?

[00:22:02] Lars: Everybody can. I like dance. I think I thought that’s a little different than what I learned back in Europe. . Mm-hmm. . And I was fascinated by that. And then you, you could talk to the speakers about it and you notice the information you get is usually incomplete or anecdotal. So most people have thoughts about language, but the thoughts are usually like little cartoonish and they have stories about how another person said something or, or they, they’ll say, You should hear so and so.

[00:22:40] Lars: Um, they sp speak really , they’re accent is really strong or mm-hmm. , you know, things like that. Um, But that the fact that there’s systematic regularities underlying things like dialect and accent, um, is something that really takes study to find out and, uh, yeah. Good. When I was,

[00:23:06] Frederick: Yeah, Lars, that’s really, really, uh, incredible.

[00:23:10] Frederick: You’ve taken us on such a wonderful journey right now. As we wrap this up, I have a one question for you, which is, For our listeners, our, you know, for the audiences in general, from for your students, when they ask you, um, as I’m sure they do, um, why, why does it matter? Why does this kind of very careful understanding of the layers, the, the vitality of language and its study in literature, but also in everyday practice?

[00:23:44] Frederick: Why does it matter?

[00:23:47] Lars: I think we were just there at a point that takes us to exactly that question. So, uh, I would put it this way, the things. That, uh, people notice in every day life about language and that the things that you, uh, recognize through careful study of the system, ethnicities in language can be quite different, especially since as a species we like to generalize and judge.

[00:24:21] Lars: But when our data’s incomplete and we judge based on. Uh, impressions. Then the, the judgements can be a little off, or there’s a lot of myths about language. Uh, there’s a lot of ideas about dialect and non-standard speech that are, that, that linguists, uh, are, are not excited about, and in fact, uh, want to steer people away from.

[00:24:49] Lars: So, uh, the main thing being, if you speak. Nonstandard language, that’s not because you are deficient. Um, in fact, the I and that idea is common, right? Speaking negatively about nonstandard speech, um, is kind of everywhere. As in, oh my God, I hate that accent or whatever. . Mm-hmm. , that’s just very common. And then it’s a, it’s a short step from saying, I hate that accent to.

[00:25:20] Lars: Uh, people who speak that accent are awful. And, um, privileges in society are distributed along those opinions more frequently than we realize. That’s why that matters.

[00:25:34] Frederick: Yeah, no, absolutely. So many times, uh, I can’t tell you how many times as a, first of all, as a, my, my first language being Spanish and having immigrated from Mexico as a kid being judged.

[00:25:49] Frederick: Um, in other words, the sense that the way we express our. Through language has a, somehow a direct link to our brain capacity, but the prejudice that inserts itself into that equation everywhere, it’s just, it’s, it’s just mind boggling. But we see it in the mainstream. We see it in the news constantly.

[00:26:14] Frederick: People judging others in and through the use of their language, whether it’s, uh, you know, a, an accent, a certain perhaps slowness in the rhythms and articulation or as you mentioned, the kinds of, uh, very natural, you know, code switchings that happen in many of our communities.

[00:26:36] Lars: Yeah, absolutely. Especially in the media, right?

[00:26:41] Lars: Mm-hmm. , it’s also how politicians are judged. This politician is good because mm. Right, right. There’s a, some of my colleagues publish to book about, um, Obama and how people, when he first came up and people were saying, Oh, he speaks so well, You know, he’s so articulate. In fact, Biden said that about Obama in the early dates.

[00:27:04] Lars: Oh, he’s so articulate. Um, that’s a, you know, that’s a positive. Um, the positive side of that coin, but should be clear how quickly that can be turned around to say that somebody doesn’t speak well and therefore isn’t worthy of such and such. You shouldn’t be a leader, or, you know, the arguments they’re making aren’t valid and things like that.

[00:27:30] Frederick: Yeah, Yeah. The weapon, the weaponizing of language, just as we saw. With, um, other things. Lars, this has been absolutely a delight. I wanna thank you so much for taking the time to share your, your knowledge, your journey, your expertise with us, and yeah, thank you Lars.

[00:27:47] Frederick: And I’m so grateful, uh, first that you talked to me and second that you’re doing this.

[00:27:51] Frederick: I think this is great, um, that you’re highlighting our work and I was very happy to be part of. Thank you, Frederick. Thank you, Lars.

[00:28:03] Outro: Into the Colaverse is produced by the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Liberal Arts Sound Engineering by the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services. You can find Into the Colaverse Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. Thanks for listening and see you next time.