Month: February 2023

Introduction/Background

K-pop has piqued our interest because the industry itself intentionally encourages fans to develop a parasocial relationship with celebrities. They succeed in this by publishing large amounts of content in the form of live broadcasts, vlogs, Instagram posts, collectible trading cards of idols included in albums, fansigns, etc. that all fabricate a sense of closeness and personal connection with the members of the group. (Ardhiyansyah et al., 2021) Fans pride themselves on knowing as much as they possibly can about members of their favorite groups, and it is common to make “guide” videos for new fans to get familiar with their faves. An example is YouTube user JinHit’s video “who is BTS? (un)helpful guide to BTS” (2021) that catalogs each BTS member’s quirks and habits for fans to memorize. Fans have also developed a K-pop-specific vocabulary that utilizes Korean loanwords to refer to different practices in the fan community, and there are entire guides on this as well, such as kpoptrash’s “a beginner’s guide to kpop vocabulary” (2020). We focused on English-speaking fans because we are interested in the explosion of K-pop’s popularity in America and the global West, and how their borderline obsessive behavior affects how they interact with real life Asian populations.

We focused on positive politeness strategies (PPS) used by K-pop fans on social media towards their favorite celebrities. According to Brown & Levinson (1987), PPS is typically reserved for use between interlocutors that have a close relationship. It includes specific linguistic features such as compliments, inside jokes, and nicknames, as it represents a language that is more personal, authentic, and used in informal situations between family and friends. When it is misused, PPS becomes a negative face threatening act that does not respect the interlocutor’s personal agency. In our case, PPS is being misused by fans towards celebrities with whom they have a one-sided relationship. They do not have a realistic chance of getting a response from these celebrities, but interact with them in a parasocial way as if they did. This particular use of PPS contributes to the fetishization of Korean celebrities, setting a precedent of inappropriate interactions that bleed into real life and how K-pop fans interact with average Asian American men. We expect to see that more PPS will be directed at men than women, and that the rise of K-pop fan communities and fan specific interactions has correlated to a rise in fetishization of East Asian men.

Methods

For this study, we decided to analyze the responses to 7 BTS and 7 Blackpink tweets from their official Twitter accounts, @BTS_twt and @BLACKPINK. We chose BTS and Blackpink because in terms of sales they are the biggest K-pop boy and girl groups in the West (McIntyre 2022), and we believe that analyzing fan interactions with these groups provides a baseline for how Western fans would interact with other K-pop groups as well. We picked the first 25 users’ replies in English under each chosen tweet. From our data pool, we omitted any tweets that either consisted of one-word phrases or were in mixed English and another language in order to make sure that our data was consistent. In total, we collected 350 users’ replies to these 14 tweets. The specific criteria that we looked for in the data were instances of fans using nicknames versus using the artists’ real names; any use of intimate language such as terms of endearment or diminutives or intimate verbs like “to love”; use of possessive language such as “my” or “our” in reference to these celebrities; and any direct 2^nd person statements in the replies.

In regard to our target population, we decided not to narrow down our subjects by any specific age, gender, or location due to the anonymous nature of Twitter as a social media platform. Anonymity plays a big role in how people talk to each other online, as a prominent feature of social media is the comfort of not being able to see the person that you are sending the message or reply to. Because of this, we decided that age, gender, and location would not have a very strong impact on how people online would interact, and would be difficult for us as researchers to confirm based on looking at each Twitter user’s profile alone. However, we expect that the average English-speaking K-pop fan would probably be a female teenager located in the United States.

Data Analysis

Initially, we found that there were about 1.3 instances of PPS per BTS reply versus 0.5 instances of PPS per Blackpink reply. The average word count of a reply to BTS was 9.7 words, and the average word count of a reply to Blackpink was 4.1 words. This difference in word count means that the average response to Blackpink reads something like “Jennie is such a queen”, while the average reply to BTS looks more like this:

The most commonly used word overall in BTS’s replies was “you”, which co-occurred the most with verbs “love” and “miss”. BTS members were more likely to be referred to by their real names or nicknames chosen by fans rather than their stage names as well. The second-person reply containing “you” was by far the most commonly used instance of PPS, followed by intimate verbs.

There was a similar pattern in Blackpink’s replies: the most commonly used word was “you”, but it was more often referring to YG, Blackpink’s management company, rather than Blackpink themselves. The most common co-occurrence with “you” was still “love”, although miss did not appear in the sample at all. The most used PPS category once again was the 2nd person reply followed by possessives “my” and “our” and then intimate verbs.

The higher word count in BTS’s replies correlated with more personal messages, where fans would overshare in a reply thread about their hardships, especially to do with their lack of an IRL social life. Although it doesn’t fit into the specific PPS criteria defined earlier, it qualitatively shows the one-sided relationship between BTS and their fans and what the fans feel comfortable saying online. Higher word average word count could also explain why there are more PPS usages per tweet in the BTS sample.

More cute, romantic terms of endearment were used to describe BTS in their replies, while Blackpink fans were more likely to use terms of endearment to praise their performance and talent. The most common term for BTS was “baby” while, in comparison, the most common for Blackpink was “queen”. BTS’s fans were also more likely to make up their own nicknames for the members, while Blackpink fans stayed consistent with each other. For example, Blackpink’s rapper Lisa was called only Lisa or Lalisa, while BTS’s V was called a whole group of different names, including but not limited to Taehyung, Tae, Taetae, Taebear, and Jubbly. No one in the sample referred to him solely as V, the name he performs under. BTS fans were also more likely to refer to the artist as “boyfriend” or “bf” than Blackpink fans were to call the artists their “girlfriend” or “gf”.

There is a difference between the way BTS and Blackpink’s Twitter accounts are presented which could partially account for the difference in fan interactions: @BTS_twt is made to seem like the members themselves are posting, while @BLACKPINK is clearly run by their management and is more promotional than personal in nature. BTS’s posting style on Twitter, which gives a closer (although still heavily stylized and manufactured) look at the artists’ lives, could incentivize posting more personal replies if it seems like BTS could potentially see or even interact with them. This is what leads to fans feeling comfortable utilizing PPS in one-sided interactions with BTS, while Blackpink’s style of social media posts keeps their fans at a distance and makes sure that they know they are celebrities rather than their friends. Blackpink has also had consistent issues with their management underpromoting them and leaving out certain members in promotional material, so fans who know this and know that Blackpink’s company is running the account will not feel as comfortable being intimate with a corporation that is causing issues for their idols.

Discussion and Social Implications

Overall, we found that there was 2.6 times as much PPS usage per reply to BTS than per reply to Blackpink. The word choice in BTS’s replies was also more diminutive and focused on their cuteness rather than attractiveness or talent, and contained suggestions of a one-sided relationship that was not present in Blackpink’s replies. So what does this mean, and how does it affect Western society?

Historically, in the Western world, women tended to be infantilized while men were not. For example, newborn baby girls have been described as “sweet” four times as often as little boys, and many advertisements targeted towards women often depicted them as incompetent and child-like (Huot 2013).

Our data goes against this Western gender norm as we see evidence of the male group being more infantilized and diminutized than the female group. And it doesn’t stop at celebrities: the obsessive desire for a relationship with these idols has leaked into reality and now affects the Asian American male population. Previously in America, Asian men in the dating pool were stereotyped as effeminate and asexual (Kao 2018) but there has been a shift in how American women view Asian men as romantic or sexual objects because of the popularity of K-pop.

 For example, from Stewart (2021):

Some Asian American men even think the K-pop phenomenon, which is often heralded as a boon for Asian male representation, is causing a fetishization of certain types of Asian men that complicates their love lives. [One] says he recently matched with a girl on Tinder who wrote in her bio that she was ‘looking for her K-pop boyfriend.’ He says her bio made him feel uncomfortable, and he didn’t meet up with her, since he wants to be seen for who he is, not as an embodiment of a stereotype.

This phenomenon has also begun to affect the K-pop industry itself: as the popularity of boy groups increase in the West, they lean into the audience’s desires and develop softer, more subversive (from a Western perspective) personas. According to Lee et at. (2020), many Westerners are drawn to Asian masculinity and find it “refreshing” and project this desire onto male celebrities as well as Asian men they encounter in real life. This produces a positive feedback loop of online fans infantilizing BTS, and then BTS increasing their cuter concepts in their promotional materials to cater to those fan desires, which then affect real life interactions.

K-pop fans have also begun to apply the same “stanning” techniques to Korean celebrities outside of the idol industry, such as breakout star of the 2022 World Cup Cho Gue-sung, a player on the South Korean national team. Tweets have surfaced from K-pop fans comparing him to idols purely because of his ethnicity and using PPS in tweets about him they would typically use for K-pop stars. (Youn, 2022) Even though as an athlete Cho already fits into a more stereotypically Western masculine archetype, he is not free of the soft, cute stereotypes that have already been applied to Korean idols before him.

Conclusion

Some may say that it is a positive thing, or a compliment to these celebrities and Asian men, that they are now the ones being sexualized after decades of asexual stereotypes and low romantic desire in the Western world (Stewart 2021). However, this is not the “equality” we should strive for. Fetishization is a form of discrimination and racism that affects real people and communities, not just the far away idols on social media in a different continent. We should not be infantilizing or fetishizing women, Asian men, or anyone. We should also question how social media allows these internet communities to encourage this behavior. The internet is a valuable tool for bringing people together, but it also houses insidious communities that can easily and accessibly indoctrinate users into harmful mindsets.

 

References

Ardhiyansyah, A., Maharani, D., Permata, S. S., & Mansur, U. (2021). K-pop marketing tactics that build fanatical behavior. Nusantara Science and Technology Proceedings, 66–70. http://nstproceeding.com/index.php/nuscientech/article/download/396/381

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press.

JinHit. (2021, May 25.) Who is BTS? (un)helpful guide to BTS (2021) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkSGKGJYe4k

Kao, G., Balistreri, K. S., & Joyner, K. (2018). Asian American men in romantic dating markets. Contexts, 17(4), 48–53. https://doi.org/10.1177/1536504218812869

Kim, M., & Kim, J. (2020). How does a celebrity make fans happy? Interaction between celebrities and fans in the social media context. Computers in Human Behavior, 111,106419. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106419

Kpoptrash. (2020, February 11.) A beginner’s guide to kpop vocabulary [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvigAv2mW5c

Lee J.J., Lee, R., & Park, J. (2020). Unpacking k-pop in America: The subversive potential of male k-pop idols’ soft masculinity. International Journal of Communication, 14, 20. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/13514

Stewart, J. Y. (2021, August 5.) How America tells me and other Asian American men we’re not attractive. The Seattle Times. https://www.seattletimes.com/life/i-grew-up-thinking-being-asian-detracted-from-my-masculinity-heres-how-america-tells-me-and-other-asia n-american-men-theyre-not-attractive/

McIntyre, H. (2022). Blackpink ties Twice for the most bestselling albums in the U.S. among women in k-pop. Forbes Hollywood & Entertainment. https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2022/09/30/blackpink-ties-twice-for-the-most-bestselling-albums-in-the-us-among-women-in-k-pop/?sh=752b00107909

Youn, S. (2022, December 7.) How Cho Gue-sung became the breakout thirst trap of the World Cup. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/cho-gue-sung-became-breakout-thirst-trap-world-cup-rcna60525

Introduction

There is no doubt that texting is the dominant form of written communication of our age. Depending on who you ask, by comparison, emailing and letter-writing seem formal at best, and antiquated at worst. Young adults between 18 and 24 are estimated to send about 110 texts per day (Smith, 2019), which is reflected in endless pop culture references to mobile phones and SMS. For instance, Lana Del Rey in “Take Me to Paris” sings, “Text me when you get home safely,” summarizing one of many social rituals that have arisen from text communication. Texting is a key daily ritual in most communities all over the world.

However, unlike face-to-face communication, texting achieves something unique: documentation. The recipient of a text can take a screenshot and collect ‘receipts’ at any moment, so it is more important than ever that the social face a text communicates is exactly as intended. Another example of this in the music industry is presented by Drake in “H.Y.F.R:” “…That’s when I text (sic.) her and told her I love her, then right after texted and told her I’m faded,” demonstrating how accountability in texting can be circumvented by claiming lack of sobriety and other means. So, texting conveys many layers of nuance and social significance that might not be apparent at first glance. However, texts are shot back and forth so quickly that a problem often arises: typos. They can usually be quickly remedied by retyping the offending word with an asterisk appended, but even the act of correcting a typo holds implications. For instance, leaving a typo can be perceived as comedic or aloof, while retyping it might convey earnestness or carefulness. This led us to question if certain people are more likely to correct or leave typos depending on their individual traits. Specifically, we targeted the groups that are thought to text each other most frequently: couples.

When discussing romantic dynamics, gender is often a key focus of previous research. In the past, it has been shown that in text messages, females tend to emphasize visibility while males emphasize utility (Ilie et al., 2002). This indicated that women are inclined to organize their messages in such a way that their meaning and intentions are best conveyed. Another research study found that women have been seen to use texts as a means of promoting and maintaining social relationships at a higher level than men (Aning & Yaa, 2022). If it is true that women tend to place more emotional and social importance on texting than men, this may be a reason for them to take errors more seriously and cause them to retype. Thus, we hypothesized that women are more likely to retype or correct mistakes than men when they make a typographical error in a text message.

However, we found it important to explore possibilities outside of gendered explanations as well. Our alternative hypothesis is that as the level of intimacy within a relationship increases over time, both partners correct less frequently. We predict this may be the case as over time, couples might have a better understanding of each other’s texting style, leading to a higher threshold for typos needing clarification. Also, as the relationship progresses, couples have had time to adjust and feel more comfortable within the relationship. Thus, we approached addressing these two hypotheses with a specific question in mind: Is gender a good predictor of typo correction in texts between couples?

Methods

To investigate those hypotheses, we targeted a population consisting of men and women in their early 20s who are in a romantic relationship. Another criterion was that they text their partners in Standard American English every day; however, it was not a requirement that English be their first language. We specified the age as 20s and the language as Standard American English to narrow our population to Generation Z and Millenials, as these are the groups that have had the most exposure to digital communication in their lifetimes. Additionally, this research study chose to target heterosexual, gender-conforming couples. This limitation might have been a source of selection bias; thus, we recognize that the patterns we find within these pairings may not translate when extrapolated to couples outside of this binary. Exploring outside of this subpopulation with regard to romantic texting trends may be an interesting candidate for future research.

We recruited the participants by posting the survey on the UCLA Linguistics Discord server, Instagram stories, and Slack chats with students at UCLA. The way of gathering responses on listed social media is considered to be the most effective since our targeted population is the young generation. For the data collection, we utilized a multi-faceted strategy similar to that which is employed by Wagner et al. (2022). The total data set we collected included 22 responses: 10 from males and 12 from females. First, participants were given a survey that collected information about the length and nature of the relationship, as well as open-ended questions about their reactions to their typos. Next, they were asked to submit one or more screenshots where they made a non-grammatical spelling mistake, corrected or otherwise, as shown in Fig 1. We defined a typo in this research as an unintentional misspelled word, not a grammatical typo. Intentional errors for the sake of showing cuteness or aloofness towards their partner were also excluded. It is possible that the nature of the messages could have affected the content of our data. That is, participants might have excluded typos that were particularly embarrassing, which might lead to biased data; however, for the purposes of this study, we considered this to be potentially beneficial for targeting the social aspect of typo correction instead of the practicality aspect.

Particularly embarrassing typos may include big spelling mistakes that are incomprehensible and thus must be corrected for the message to be understood. If these sorts of typos are less likely to occur, we speculated that the collected data might be of better quality. Thus, the omission of embarrassing responses was not mitigated in the data collection process.

Results & Analysis

From our 22 participants, we collected a total of 25 screenshots: 14 from women and 11 from men. Two excerpts of these screenshots from our data are shown in Figures 2.1 and 2.2.

 

In addition, since all respondents indicated they are texting in standard English, all responses are included in the analysis. The participant responses to each question varied widely, suggesting a diverse range of intimacy and familiarity levels within our participant pool. Participants ranged from 11 to 96 months of knowing their partner, 6 to 96 months of dating, and 3 to 96 months of texting.

First, to test our first hypothesis that women are more likely to retype or correct errors than men, we began by analyzing the responses of each gender.

Figure 3 above shows the percentages of responses to the question about whether or not to correct the typos in the survey for males and females, respectively. As the figure shows, 58% of women correct typographical errors, while 40% of men do so, suggesting that women are more likely to correct typographical errors and seemingly supporting our hypothesis. However, given that the difference between the gender is only 18% and that more than 40% of women leave misspelled words as is, it may not be sufficient to conclude that it is a strong predictor. Thus, we decided to test whether intimacy level is a good predictor, as predicted by our second hypothesis.

To test whether the more intimate one feels, the less likely one is to correct a typo in a message; we obtained correlation coefficients. Because the period of knowing each other, dating, or texting may be more strongly correlated with typo correction than the intimacy with the partner, they were also included as variables in addition to intimacy. The correlation coefficient between gender and typo correction is also calculated. For the analysis of the correlation values, a positive value signifies that an increase in one variable increases the other variable, and if the value is negative, an increase in one variable decreases the other variable. Furthermore, the closer a value is to positive or negative 1, the stronger the correlation is.

Figure 4 summarizes the correlation coefficients of each variable to typographical correction. First, a moderate negative correlation with a coefficient of -0.4 was identified between self-reported intimacy levels and the likelihood of correcting typographical errors. In other words, as intimacy increases, the likelihood of correcting typos decreases or vice versa, which supports our second hypothesis. Now, our remaining question, whether gender is a valid predictor of the likelihood of correcting typos, turned out to be largely uncorrelated since the coefficient is -0.18, although these two are indeed negatively correlated and better predictors than the length of the relationship, period of texting, and how long it’s been since they met each other.

Discussion and conclusions

After finding the correlation coefficients for our variables, we saw that gender was not actually a very good predictor of the likelihood of correcting typos. While it was a stronger predictor than the length of the relationship and how long it has been since they met each other, it is still very weak.

So, we concluded that our second hypothesis, that intimacy would be a better predictor of typo correction likelihood, was better supported. We found a moderate negative correlation between self-reported intimacy levels and the likelihood of correcting typos. That is, the more intimate a partner rated their relationship, the less likely they were to correct a typo. This finding makes sense in the context of prior research, which has shown that as romantic relationships develop, linguistic behaviors become more similar between couples. So, this could suggest that time allows for an increased understanding of language between partners and conversations that reflect a common outlook (Brinberg & Ram, 2021). The relationship between self-reported intimacy and the correction observed in our study suggests that the need for clarification over typos may have decreased as a result of an increased understanding of each other’s language.

Furthermore, these findings show us that the subtleties and subconscious behaviors we exhibit around our romantic partners are not static. The way we text in a relationship likely has much more to do with the person we are texting and how comfortable we are than any one personality trait. Also, thinking back to the findings of previous studies, our results suggest that the “rules of texting” that Wagner et al. proposed (2022) might not apply accurately to longer-term couples, as our findings imply that the implicit social behaviors that Wagner et al.’s rules define might change as intimacy levels grow.

 

References

Aning, E., & Bediako, Y. A. (2022). Gender differences in Short Message Service texts among Sandwich students: a Sociolinguistic Analysis. IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science, 27(1), 48–56.

Brinberg, M., & Ram, N. (2021). Do new romantic couples use more similar language over time? Evidence from intensive longitudinal text messages. Journal of Communication, 71(3), 454–477. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqab012

Ilie, V., Van Slyke, C., Green, G., & Lou, H. (2005). Gender differences in perceptions and use of communication technologies. Information Resources Management Journal, 18(3), 13–31. https://doi.org/10.4018/irmj.2005070102

Smith, A. (2019). How americans use text messaging. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2011/09/19 /how-americans-use-text-messaging/

Wagner, T., Punyanunt-Carter, N., & McCarthy, E. (2022). Rules, reciprocity, and emojis: An exploratory study on flirtatious texting with romantic partners. Southern Communication Journal, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/1041794x.2022.2108889

Introduction & Background

In recent years, the topic of gender neutrality within the Spanish Language has been a major point of contention as well as the terms used to describe Latin American communities. Spanish is a gendered language currently with a masculine default, but some individuals have proposed alternatives such as replacing the masculine suffix -o for neutral terms with an -x or -e. Proponents of such a change argue it would help promote inclusivity and challenge embedded patriarchal norms while opponents suggest it is unnecessary or even harmful to the preservation of Spanish as a whole. This topic has been the focus of much controversy to the point where gender-neutral Spanish was entirely banned by the government of Argentina (Lankes, 2022). This podcast from Vocal Fries elaborates on the history of gender neutral Spanish in Argentina and its recent controversy: (Gillon & Figueroa, 2018). The goal of this study was to investigate individual attitudes towards gender-neutral Spanish as well as gather input on the actual use of gender-neutral Spanish. This was achieved through a survey of 122 individuals of varying backgrounds and an analysis of Spanish meme accounts in social media. We hypothesized that older individuals and individuals on the right of the political spectrum would be more likely to have negative attitudes towards gender-neutral Spanish and its use. In the following section, we will take a deep dive into the two methodologies that served as the backbone of this research project.

Methodology

Survey

We created a survey using Google Forms, consisting of four separate sections. The first section consisted of collecting background information on the respondents such as their age, education level, gender identity, political ideology, social media usage, etc. The second section inquired about their language background and familiarity with Spanish and gender-neutral Spanish. The third section used the likert scale to assess different opinions on gender-neutral Spanish. In this section, respondents were provided with five different statements and were then asked to state whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement on a 1-5 scale. Finally, the respondents were provided with a text-entry box with no limit and were encouraged to share their thoughts on gender-neutral Spanish. This was done in order to collect more detailed opinions on this nuanced matter in order to ensure that opinions outside the scope of the survey questions would be accounted for. The survey we created and utilized for this study can be found in Appendix A of this paper.

This survey was distributed across two different social media platforms: Instagram and Reddit. The majority of the respondents came from Reddit where this survey managed to gain some traction. Additionally, less than 5% of the respondents were friends and family members whom the survey was distributed to as well. In total, we collected 122 responses to our survey.

Memes

We set about finding memes relevant to our survey respondents as well as within the online Spanish community as a whole. As such, we looked for Spanish language meme accounts on these platforms which had at least 10,000 followers, were active within the last month, and were Latin American based. This last parameter helped limit the scope of Spanish varieties we encountered and reflected the background of our survey respondents more closely. We ultimately found 20 accounts across the aforementioned platforms which met our criteria. Then for each of these accounts, we analyzed the first 20 posts of theirs that contained nouns or pronouns which referred to individuals of an unspecified gender. These are the types of words which would be traditionally gendered as masculine that proponents of “Lenguaje Inclusivo” (or Inclusive Language in English) argue should be altered to include a gender-neutral suffix. We then took note of the appearance of gendered or neutral suffixes in these select posts for each account. We classified loan words that fit the same use case within a separate category as well. Qualitatively, we also took notes on the general content of the accounts to help with later comparisons in relation to their rates of gender-neutral suffix usage.

Results & Analysis

Survey

The overall response to the survey was overwhelmingly negative with respondents being quite upset that this survey was even being conducted in the first place. This resulted in our respondents being very vocal in stating their opinions and many even left very detailed thoughts on the matter in the text-entry section. The data we collected was analyzed in two different ways: firstly, Google Forms provides statistics for each question; it generates graphs and charts for each question and provides a percentage breakdown for the responses to each question. Secondly, we downloaded and exported all of the responses into an excel spreadsheet, which we then filtered for various different factors in order to find correlations in the data. In the following few sections, the results will be broken down and discussed section by section:

Section 1: Background Information

64.8 % of our respondents were aged 19-29. This was followed by 30-39 year-olds who comprised 14.8% of respondents. Following closely behind this age group, were 1-18 year-olds who made up 13.9% of respondents. 40 and up respondents were in the minority. 57.4% of our respondents were male, while 33.6% were female. The rest were comprised of non-binary individuals and those that preferred not to answer. The education levels were varied, but the majority of respondents had a higher education background of some sort. When it came to political ideology, almost 50% of respondents identified as either left or far left, while 26.4% self-identified as centrists/moderates. We had initially predicted that right-leaning individuals would be more likely to oppose gender-neutral Spanish, while left-leaning individuals would be more in favor of it. This turned out to not be the case at all; our data analysis revealed that out of 68 left-leaning respondents, 40 respondents had a strongly negative or negative opinion towards gender-neutral Spanish – a staggering 58.8%. In comparison, exactly 50% of individuals who self-identified as right-leaning had a strongly negative or negative opinion towards gender-neutral Spanish. In other words, left-leaning individuals were actually 8.8% more likely to be in opposition to gender-neutral Spanish, completely in contrast to what we had originally hypothesized. This will be discussed further in later sections.

Section 2: Language Background & Familiarity with Gender-Neutral Spanish & Terminology

A total of 91.8% of our respondents were Spanish speakers with more than 75% identifying as intermediate and up in fluency. 25.4% of these speakers self-identified as being native Spanish speakers. However, given that only 27.9% of the respondents said that Spanish was their first language growing up, approximately 6 of these respondents were most likely heritage speakers. When it came to having heard of gender-neutral Spanish, 73% of respondents said they’d heard of the term and 82% said they’d heard of the term “Latinx”. 12.3% had heard of gender-neutral Spanish and 9% “Latinx”, but weren’t sure what these terms meant. Out of all of our respondents, only 23% said they’d used gender-neutral Spanish, while 77% claimed to never have used it. Those that did use it, primarily used it on social media. Finally, 50% of all respondents said they had a strongly negative opinion of gender-neutral Spanish, while only 9.8% said they had a strongly positive opinion.

Section 3: Statement Assessment

In this section, respondents were provided with 5 different statements relating to gender-neutral Spanish and its usage and were then asked to assess whether they strongly disagreed with the statement (a rating of 1), or strongly agreed with it (a rating of 5). A rating of 2 was “disagree”, 3 was “neutral”, and 4 was “agree”. 73.8% of respondents expressed that they did not believe that regular gendered Spanish promotes harmful stereotypes that favor one gender over the other. 54.1% of respondents actually felt that gender-neutral Spanish is degrading to the original language and culture. 69.7% disagreed with the sentiment that it’s easy to make the switch to using gender-neutral Spanish. 69.6% of respondents expressed that they would not prefer to speak a gender-neutral version of Spanish over gendered Spanish.

The sentiments expressed in the fourth section of the survey will be discussed in the discussion section.

Memes

Our data for the meme pages largely lined up with that of our survey responses discussed above but with some key divergence. Only three out of the 20 accounts we looked at, or 15%, ever used gender neutral suffixes in their posts. Of these three accounts, two used exclusively gender neutral suffixes and the last one used the gender neutral terms twice as often as gendered forms. This suggests individuals will generally commit to using the neutral form almost exclusively if they use it at all with the large majority of individuals never doing so.

Interestingly, the two accounts which used gender neutral loanwords from English never used a neutral suffixed Spanish.

While we could not collect substantial demographic information about the administrators of the social media accounts themselves due to their predominantly anonymous nature. However, we could look at the content of their posts to see if certain subject matter correlated with a greater likelihood to use gender neutral suffixes. We found that two of the accounts which used gender neutral suffixes engaged in political discussions supporting left politics within their meme posts such as @pelaeldiente on Instagram. While our survey suggests that the political left holds even worse opinions of gender neutral suffixes than the right, the meme accounts suggest they are more likely to include it in their language.

Discussion

Today, the US recognizes people who are non-binary as an official gender option on a federal level. Inclusivity is a term that can be difficult to define, but Díaz et al. (2022) define an inclusive language as, “’Inclusive’ of many (disenfranchised) communities across the intersections of gender-orientation, race, ethnicity, ability, religion, age, social class, etc. For this reason, many scholars have committed to advocacy of gender nonconforming communities, particularly, trans and non-binary subjects, prefer the use of the term “non-binary” (lenguaje no binario) or “gender neutral” language…” (p. 4). However, Real Academia Española does not acknowledge more than two genders in the language. The adoption of gender neutral Spanish would need the support of a large swath of Spanish speakers at all levels of society to take hold and our data suggests this coalition remains a distant possibility at the moment. Additionally, ethical concerns regarding this topic remain as well with Salinas (2020) writing “Latinx might be unpronounceable for some people of Latin American descent” (p. 153). Perhaps there is a way to become more inclusive, but Salinas argues to take into consideration whether the people of that region can even pronounce Latinx, as it does not follow morphological or phonemic rules of the language.

In the fourth section of the survey, respondents were given the opportunity to express their thoughts on gender-neutral Spanish and the pervading sentiment was that gender-neutral Spanish is “a push by white academics onto a culture who doesn’t want it,” and that it is nothing but another attempt at linguistic imperialism. One respondent said, “As a latino, I find latinx to be one of the worst things to come out of academia and is a barrier to having the broader latino community embrace progressive ideas.” Yet another respondent said, “‘Latinx’ is a colonialist, classist solution dreamt up by white people speaking on behalf of minorities.” Many respondents also questioned why there’s so much focus on incorporating gender-neutrality into Spanish when the same is not true for other gendered languages such as French. Proponents of gender-neutral Spanish expressed concerns over the suffix “x” and expressed a need for better alternatives that make more phonological sense for Spanish speakers.  You can watch this tik-tok to hear more opinions on this divisive subject.

Examining the responses of non-binary individuals to the survey reveals that even this community remains divided on the subject. Of the 6 non-binary respondents to the survey, they were evenly divided in holding positive or negative views of gender-neutral Spanish and most do not use it in their everyday lives. This spread of opinions does not provide a clear mandate in favor of gender-neutral Spanish but also shows a higher level of support than among the general population. Some scholars such as Bonnin and Coronel (2021) argue, “The use of gender-neutral forms, and even of languages with less gendered grammar, helps women to overcome stereotyped gender roles and develop as active agents in institutions” (p.1). However, this sentiment only holds true if the change itself is received well by the populations it attempts to support and not as a performative intrusion. Further research into the role gendered language plays in gender roles and stereotypes within society remains necessary, especially to assess how these opinions continue to shift over time.

Conclusion

Overall, the question of whether the Spanish language, and perhaps other gendered languages, may function, or merely be accepted, as a more gender-inclusive language remains inconclusive. As the data from our surveys demonstrates, attitudes towards changing the Spanish language to be gender-neutral remain resistant and largely skeptical of whether it is even necessary. Surprisingly, negative attitudes towards the topic arose regardless of demographic, contrary to our hypothesis that individuals with political ideologies that are more left-leaning would be more likely to gravitate towards gender-inclusive language which would seemingly aid in neutralizing harmful gender stereotypes. It seems that other concerns were voiced by survey participants that justified moving away from changing the language in its entirety, from concerns that terms like “Latinx” could be viewed as a form of linguistic imperialism and thoughts that for the language to change the culture must change first. Our research done in social media reflects similar perspectives with gender-neutral Spanish suffixes being utilized by only three of the social media accounts we studied. So although the world seems to be progressing towards being more gender-inclusive, feelings towards language change are passionate and as of now, at least in the Spanish language, the majority of speakers are not inclined to change the language, especially if they aren’t the ones deciding the changes.

References

Bonnin, J. E., & Coronel, A. A. (2021). Attitudes toward gender-neutral Spanish: Acceptability and adoptability. Frontiers in Sociology, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.629616

Diaz, A. R., Mejía, G., & Villamizar, A. G. (2022). Gender neutral and non-binary language practices in the Spanish language classroom: Tensions between disciplinary and societal changes. L2 Journal, 14(3). https://doi.org/10.5070/l214356302

Ehrlich, S., & King, R. (1992). Gender-based language reform and the social construction of meaning. Discourse & Society, 3(2), 151–166. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42887784

Galvez, A. (2022). The Journey to a Consensus of Gender-Neutral Language in Spanish: Does -x

Really Mark the Spot? . Journal of the Student Personnel Association at Indiana University,

48–56. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/jiuspa/article/view/34412

Gillon, K. & Figueroa, M. (1 October 2018) “TODOS/TODAS/TODES ADDENDUM” In Vocal Fries. https://vocalfriespod.com/2018/10/01/episode-30-todos-todas-todes-addendum/.

Gong, Y. (2016). Online discourse of masculinities in transnational football fandom: Chinese Arsenal fans’ talk around ‘gaofushuai’ and ‘diaosi.’ Discourse & Society, 27(1), 20–37. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26376413

Higa, J., & Dunham, M. (n.d.). Can linguistic innovations bridge the gender divide?: Inclusive language in contemporary Spanish social media. UVM ScholarWorks. Retrieved October 28, 2022, from https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/src/2019/program/153/

Tavits, M. & Pérez, E. O. (2019). Language influences mass opinion toward gender and LGBT equality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116(34): 16781-16786. Salinas, C. (2020). The complexity of the “X” in latinx: How latinx/A/O students relate to, identify with, and understand the term latinx. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 19 (2),

149–168. From https://doi.org/10.1080/15348431.2017.1390464

Lankes, A. (2022, July 20). In Argentina, one of the world’s first bans on gender-neutral language. The New York Times. Retrieved December 9, 2022, from

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/20/world/americas/argentina-gender-neutral-spanish.html

Introduction/Background

Our group proposes to do research on the effects of villainization in children’s shows, which has possible long-term implications on people’s perceptions of membership in their ingroup. This membership perception can be encapsulated by the phenomenon of othering. Othering is a process in which a more powerful and/or influential group reinforces differences and authority over another (Williams & Korn, 2017). Hence, our project aims to look at whether adoption of othering by children’s shows’ producers for villainous characters influences the audience’s perceptions of who is “good” (ingroup) and who is “bad” (outgroup).

Previous studies conducted by sociolinguists Calvin Gidney and Julie Dobrow (1998) indicated most foreign accented villains in children’s shows were exclusively European such as German, British, and Russian. These accents in particular are often characterized with high arrogance, intelligence, and socioeconomic status while low on friendliness, pleasantness, and honesty (Shah, 2019). These sentiments towards European accents may be reflective of World War II, Revolutionary War, and Cold War hostilities that dominated media/propaganda during the time.

We choose to look at the children’s show Phineas and Ferb, where the main antagonist, Dr. Doofenshmirtz, is portrayed with an exaggerated foreign accent. Heroes typically speak in the standard dialect and embody idealistic standards (Dobrow & Gidney, 1998), which holds true for the show’s protagonists, Phineas and Ferb. Through these differences in speech patterns, nonstandard accents become associated with “otherness” and antagonism (Constable, 2021).

Specifically, we will examine the phonetic production of vowels by accented English-speaking villains. When villains “mispronounce” English vowels, it is an obvious symbol of their communicative differences. That said, Dr. Doofenshmirtz is a great character to analyze as he does not speak the standard variety like most viewers. In addition, we plan to explore another linguistic variable that distinguishes Doofenshmirtz’s speech from the American standard.

Survey

To supplement the studies we will be citing, we also found it important to explore the existence of accented villains within the media we consumed as children and the types of accents they adopt. To do this, we constructed a preliminary survey prompting college-aged students (aged 18 to 24) to name “the most memorable villain from the movies/shows [they] watched as a child (age 2-10).” In the second iteration of the survey, participants were asked if they distinctly recall the villain expressing an accent coupled with any overall impressions they had of the villain. The survey was shared amongst UCLA students and other college friends, as long as all participants fell within the age range.

The results of the survey demonstrated a strong prevalence of foreign accents in the villains chosen, evidenced by Figure 1. Out of 38 total responses, 23 responses were accented villains. Not only was a clear statistical significance demonstrated of the trend, but actually a majority of the villain choices were associated with foreign accents. Given the breadth of types of respondents coming from California to Uganda to Singapore accompanied by the complete autonomy of selection of the villain, the survey results highlight the abundance of accented villains in popular media.

In addition, the values from Figure 2 present an interesting observation regarding the variety and uniqueness of villain selections. In total there were only 24 unique villains chosen. Of those 24 villains, only 10 were actually accented. The disparity between the number of accented villains and number of accented responses is explained by the incredibly high number of repeat selections of villains that are accented. For instance, Ursula (who adopts a condescending British accent) from The Little Mermaid was listed five times and Dr. Doofenshmirtz was repeated four times. In fact, of the 14 duplicate responses, 12 contained accented villains. This informs on the consolidation of popular children’s media; most children consume much of the same television shows and movies (Disney).

Another interesting note revolves around the traits that stand out or make the villain memorable. The comments on the impressions of the villain fell into two camps: “scary”/“intimidating” or “cool”/“respectable”. Not a single comment mentioned how the villain sounds or their voice. The “othering” of the villains through accented speech takes an implicit or passive effect on the viewer rather than being the focal point. The viewer then subconsciously categorizes the character in the out group. These observations and key takeaways from the survey helped propel the main research portion of the study and guided the choice of Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz as the character to analyze. 

Methods

Our main goal in collecting data was to show that Doofenshmirtz follows German pronunciation patterns when speaking English. His nonstandard speech is meant to “other” him from the protagonists, determining his characterization as “bad.” Therefore, our data took a two-pronged approach: first, we used the spectrogram software Praat to analyze sound files of subjects speaking. This way, we could look at Doofenshmirtz’s articulatory properties and point to which features distinguish him as German-sounding. Then, we sent speakers of English to watch an episode of the show and comment on which non-standard features they heard him using. Between these two methods, we gained an understanding of both how Doofenshmirtz speaks and how English-speakers perceive his speech.

When researching in Praat, we looked at the vowels /i/ and /æ/. /i/ exists in both English and German, so we expected no statistical difference in the articulation of a German versus English speaker. On the other hand, the /æ/ sound exists in English but not German. In English, German-speakers tend to replace this sound with the higher vowel /ɛ/, which is easier to produce based on its presence in the German language.

We used samples from four subjects in Praat, two German-accented speakers and two “standard” American speakers. Our “baseline” German accent came from a 50-year-old native speaker who grew up in Düsseldorf but now lives in California. We were particularly interested to see how his speech compared to the German-accented Doofenshmirtz (who, intriguingly enough, was voiced by an American actor). We also took a sample from an 18-year-old native Californian, who we determined to have “standard” vowel production. Finally, we compared her speech to the pronunciation of the show’s protagonist, Phinneas (who was also voiced by an American actor, but was intended to have “standard” production).  We wanted to ensure that our samples were comparable, so our first three subjects all produced Doofenshmirtz’s catchphrase: “Curse you, Perry the Platypus!” (/i/ is found in the word /ˈperi /, while /æ/ is prominent in /ˈplætəpəs/). Although no samples existed of Phinneas saying this sentence, we located a similar sentence where he still said both words in proximity.

Our other group of data came from observing Doofenshmirtz’s speech throughout an episode. Inherently, the sounds of the German language differ from those of English. Some sounds feel tricky or unnatural to non-native speakers. Speakers often replace an English sound with a similar foreign counterpart they know how to produce, just as how a German speaker might replace /æ/ with the /ɛ/ sound of their native language. Often, it is this sound substitution that creates the phenomenon of an accent. For our project, we wanted to see how American individuals perceived Doofenshmirtz’s so-called accent. We asked two college-aged subjects to watch Season 1, Episode 26 – “Out of Toon / Hail Doofania” and explain how his speech compares to the substitutions we’d expect of a German-speaker.

Results/Analysis

Praat

In Praat, we used the “View & Edit” feature to analyze something called formants (lines on a spectrogram that indicate a concentration of energy). For this project, we were mainly concerned with the first formant (F1), which shows vowel height. We found that all of our subjects had similar F1 formants for the vowel /i/. Since this sound exists in both languages, non-native speakers made no substitutions when speaking English. Our Hz values ranged from 376.7 to 460, meaning there was less than a 100-Hz difference between how the two most differently accented speakers produced the vowel. Therefore, the data showed no trends in production variations for Germans and Americans in /i/.

On the other hand, the data showed interesting patterns when it came to /æ/. We predicted that German speakers would have a lower F1 value than English-speakers (due to the fact that /ɛ/ has a lower F1 than /æ/). Overall, we found this to be true. Our authentic German subject had the lowest F1 of the group at 714.1. Likewise, our highest formant value came from “standard” speaker Phineas at 1239. Interestingly, the dubbed voices had a much higher average F1 formant, which we hypothesized had something to do with the nature of the audio files. If we separate our samples by this type of audio file (real speakers vs dubbed speakers), we find that German speakers’ formants are 100-150 Hz lower than those of American speakers. This indicates that they do, in fact, produce ash more similar to /ɛ/.

Sound Analysis

We paid attention to foreign-sounding allophones, compared to a Californian English speaker’s pronunciation, in Hail Doofania. We only analyzed Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s speech and ignored any pronunciation deviations in his song.

In his speech, we identified 6 sounds that were pronounced differently from how a Californian English speaker would pronounce the sounds. The most frequently occurring deviations were his pronunciation of the alveolar approximant ([ɹ]) and voiced postalveolar affricate ([dʒ]). 23 of the 34 deviations were [ɹ] and 6 deviations were [dʒ]. We identified pronunciation deviations just from hearing and our personal judgments given the time and resource constraints of this project.

We looked at the German International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) sounds to see if the allophones used by Dr. Doofenshmirtz were from the German sound repository. We proposed that his mispronunciation of English allophones was because he was borrowing German sounds to pronounce English sounds. But, the sounds that Dr. Doofenshmirtz used were actually not found in the German IPA

As the allophones used by German speakers for the different analyzed sounds were not what Dr. Doofenshmirtz used, we came up with 2 possible explanations to account for Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s different pronunciations.

First, we suggest that the producers might have wanted to distance Dr. Doofenshmirtz from a German identity. Perhaps they wanted Dr. Doofenshmirtz to have some accent aspects which alluded to a German identity but not have the character be too strongly associated with a German identity. Podesva (2011) posits that the creation of an identity or a “persona” utilizes several linguistic features, and different components of a linguistic feature are adopted depending on the context the speaker is in. This suggests that a bricolage of linguistic features are used to construct an identity. For Dr. Doofenshmirtz, this means that his identity as an individual from Drusselstein (a fictional East European country) was not solely reliant on his accent but on other features too. Hence, it is possible that the show’s producers did not use the German allophones to pronounce the different Californian English sounds to index Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s heritage, but utilized other linguistic and non-linguistic features to do so.

Second, it could be because Dr. Doofenshmirtz is voiced by Dan Povenmire, a native Californian English speaker. Thus, Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s mispronunciation could stem from how a Californian English speaker perceives a German accent to sound like and not how an actual German accent sounds like.

Interestingly, we found that our German speaker pronounced the sounds we studied, in the same way that Californian English speakers do. We attribute this to his exposure to the Californian English accent and was able to distinguish the different allophones and use them according to the context he was in.

Discussion and Conclusions

We looked at the amount of time Dr. Doofenshmirtz spoke in Hail Doofania to gauge the significance of his accent’s contribution to his identity. Dr. Doofenshmirtz had 112 seconds of speech time in the 9 minute and 11 second episode (551 seconds). This equates to about 20% of the episode. As such, Doofenshmirtz has only 20% of the episode to leave an impression on the audience, making it crucial for the producers to adopt several indices to create Doofenshmirtz’s character as an “evil scientist”. The identified indices were: his accent, his clothing (lab coat), the content of his speech (his plans to take over the Tri-state Area) and actions (fighting with Perry the Platypus).

We felt that some younger audience members might be too young to comprehend the sinister nature of Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s plans and might instead rely on auditory and visual cues (his accent and attire & fight scenes, respectively) to index Dr. Doofenshmirtz as a villain. By extension, we think that it is possible for these auditory and visual cues to lay the groundwork for associations that these child audiences make with someone who is “bad” and in an outgroup.

Given that it is more likely for children to come across speakers of different accents than people dressed in lab coats in their everyday lives, we believe that it is possible for them to consequently (because of cartoon villains having accents) associate people with accents as members of an outgroup. This demonstrates how accented villains are part of the phenomenon of othering and can influence children’s perception of “good” and “bad”.

We believe that the results we obtained through Praat were very useful. They supported our findings and proved that accented speakers sound different from the standard. We wish we had more time to obtain and analyze more data. On the other hand, the survey results were not very helpful. We were not able to come to any conclusions through the survey results, but we definitely feel that the survey pushed us in the right direction.

One of the most important takeaways that we believe show producers should know is that they must be mindful of the stereotypes they create or reinforce in their audience. These shows have long term implications that heavily influence individuals.

 

 

References

Constable, E. (2021, March 17). Dear Disney, stop teaching kids that foreign accents are evil. LHS Epic. https://lhsepic.com/9602/opinion/dear-disney-stop-teaching-kids-that-foreign-accents-are-evil/

Dobrow, J. R., & Gidney, C. L. (1998). The Good, the Bad, and the Foreign: The Use of Dialect in Children’s Animated Television. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 557, 105-119. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1049446

Flege, J. E., Bohn, O.-S., & Jang, S. (1997). Effects of experience on non-native speakers’ production and perception of English vowels. Journal of Phonetics, 24(4), 437-470. ScienceDirect. https://doi.org/10.1006/jpho.1997.0052

Paquette-Smith, M., Buckler, H., White, K. S., Choi, J., & Johnson, E. K. (2019). The Effect of Accent Exposure on Children’s Sociolinguistic Evaluation of Peers. Developmental Psychology, 5(4), 809-822. American Psychological Association. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/dev0000659

Phineas and Ferb Wiki. (n.d.). Drusselstein | Phineas and Ferb Wiki | Fandom. Phineas and Ferb Wiki. https://phineasandferb.fandom.com/wiki/Drusselstein

Shah, A. P. (2019). Why are Certain Accents Judged the Way they are? Decoding Qualitative Patterns of Accent Bias. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 10(3), 128-139. Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.10n.3p.128

Sharma, M. (2016). CHAPTER SEVEN: Disney and the Ethnic Other: A Semiotic Analysis of American Identity. In Teaching with Disney (pp. 95-107). Peter Lang AG. Williams, M. G., & Korn, J. (2017). Othering and Fear: Cultural Values and Hiro’s Race in Thomas & Friends’ Hero of the Rails. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 41(1), 22-41. SAGE. 10.1177/0196859916656836