Talk:Penelope Eckert

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment in Fall 2017. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jrinscoe.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:13, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 14 January 2019 and 7 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Fs0244a, Baker0990. Peer reviewers: Jc1058b.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:13, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Tone

User:Shalor (Wiki Ed) recently added a tag suggesting that the tone or style of this article is not appropriate. I think it is helpful when adding such tags to also note on the article's Talk page what specific issues the editor sees in the article. That way, all interested Wikipedians (whether or not they are members of a particular project) can contribute to solutions.

Personally, I don't see any issues that I would call "tone" problems. I do, however, think that the section "Work" has too many subsections. It looks like editors have added stand-alone subsections, rather than attempting to synthesize these into useful description of Professor Eckert's overall body of work.

Also, the references should cite more secondary sources that are about Eckert's work, as opposed to mainly citing primary sources written by Eckert. Textbooks, for example, may be good secondary sources. The book review by Stegen is also a good example of a secondary source. Cnilep (talk) 00:37, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

• The works section was what concerned me - I thought that the content was a bit too specific and gave too much undue weight. It felt a little like an essay in a few places as well. Thanks for this - I'll make sure to add explanations on the talk page for things like this! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:58, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
  • I wasn't too concerned by the previous list of works but the recent edit by Baker0990 added a long list of publications that I think may be too much. The list should be reduced to the most important works (perhaps measured by citation count) and ideally should be relevant to the article prose. I also agree with Cnilep above that the structure of the article could use some work, and style guide on sections may help in that. I would prefer not to make substantial changes as I have worked with Professor Eckert and may have a conflict of interest. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 18:30, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Val Gal

The section on Val Gal speek seems to be oddly worded. E.g. "California is one of the newer states as well as an ethnically diverse state" (I changed "alongside" to "as well as"--it's unclear what "alongside" would mean in this context, maybe that California neighbored an ethnically diverse state--presumably Nevada or Oregon, but I don't think that's what was intended). But in what sense is California a newer state? It joined the Union before the American Civil War, making it the 31st state. Also, the discussion of uptalk is confusing, e.g. "California men are known for their pitch rising throughout their sentences following a plateau." It can't be rising *throughout* and also start with a plateau--those descriptions are contradictory. But in this case, I don't know which is correct (there's a plateau, followed by rising intonation; or it's rising throughout), so I can't fix it.

Further down, "linguistic and paralinguistic features that articulate vowels 'o' and 'u', pronounced, 'eeuw'". First, features don't articulate vowels, people do. Ok, maybe that's a little nit picky; but is only 'u' pronounced 'eeuw', or both 'o' and 'u'? The latter would make them homophones, but that seems unlikely (it would be a phoneme merger, and if so, that fact should be made explicit). But if it's the former--only 'u' has this 'eeuw' pronunciation--then what's going on with 'o' that it should be remarked on here? Finally, if this is a linguistic description, then what's with the highly informal description? If we're talking about orthographic 'o' and 'u', then which of their "standard" pronunciations: the "o" in 'home', or the one in 'soon'? And the 'u' in 'push' or in 'lute'? (or the one in 'but', or...) If otoh we're taking about the phonemes /o/ and /u/ (the so-called long 'o' and long 'u'), then say so. And what's with the 'eeuw' description? IPA is a thing, let's use it!

"Californians view their dialect as similar and identifiable to most states, [excluding states with distinct accents: Chicago and New York]." Weird. First, I'm not sure it matters what Californians think, as opposed to other people or to linguists. But what does "identifiable" mean? That it can be identified as distinct, or identified as the same? And lots of states have distinct accents (all people have an accent, but I'm assuming what is intended here is "states with more or less unique accents"). But Chicago is not a state, and I don't think New York state as a whole has a single distinct accent (although people who grew up in certain parts of New York City often have recognizable accents).

"Eckert notes that pitch is in relation to gender when referring to women and their tonality." Huh? Yes, in general women's pitch is higher than men's (with exceptions), but I'm sure Eckert was not the first to notice this. And what does "referring to women and their tonality" mean? Women's pitch is generally higher whether we [men?] are referring to them or not, I don't understand what this is saying.

"The California vernacular distinction between vowels are either merged or form a diphthong." I can't figure out what this is supposed to mean. Is the "California vernacular distinction" the name of a dialect, or what? And "distinctions" don't merge or form diphthongs, although particular vowels (which ones?) might. "Diphthong is the combination sound of two vowels in one syllable. Words like "coin" and "loud" are examples of a diphthong." This is the wrong place to define "diphthong", use a link instead. Etc. etc. Mcswell (talk) 01:34, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Aargh, gotta add another one (higher up on the page): "her focus on this demographic in much of her research, specifically the creation of adolescence in the United States": Who or what is creating adolescence? Haven't there always been adolescents? Not sure what this is saying... 01:37, 12 April 2021 (UTC)