Carrie Gillon: Hi, and welcome to the Vocal Fries Podcast. The podcast about linguistic discrimination.
Megan Figueroa: I’m Megan Figueroa.
Carrie: And I’m Carrie Gillon.
Megan: So we went like a little bit viral.
Carrie: Mini viral.
Megan: Mini viral. I mean, that’s what I live for. Just want to be getting them viral. The hits. That sounds weird. I don’t know.
Carrie: Yes, it does.
Megan: But we wrote a little piece in response to a little piece in The Atlantic by John McWhorter, linguist, about a thing he calls Kids Speak.
Carrie: I am so disappointed in that article that he wrote. It is such bad linguistics.
Megan: It is, and I noticed, I went to his Twitter after I read it and he said that this is going to be the first time he’s in the print version of The Atlantic. So this is going to be read even more because it’s not even out yet. Well, maybe it is, but it’s the May version of the Atlantic. And more and more people are going to read it and they’re not going to have access to our article. Maybe they will, but not everyone will for sure.
Carrie: Most people won’t even know it exists.
Megan: Yeah, because they won’t look for it or even assume to, or question what a PhD in linguistics is saying about linguistics.
Carrie: Right, you would expect that he would know what he’s talking about or at least know to talk to people who know what they’re talking about. But clearly he didn’t and doesn’t.
Megan: Right. Yes, that’s the thing, he doesn’t ask anyone. And that’s the problem that a lot of us linguists have with him, is that you don’t speak for all of us kind of thing. Like you can ask us, you can quote us. There’s a great Michael Erard… I’m not sure if I’m saying that right. E-R-A-R-D. He writes about linguistics, so Michael Erard, I’m sorry if I’m saying your name wrong, but I talked to him via Twitter because he wrote a really good article in the Atlantic about children’s language, and he had quotes from a lot of big names in acquisition. That’s how you would do it if it’s not your particular area of expertise.
Carrie: Yeah, because it wasn’t specifically about acquisition, it was about, “Hey, look, adults are doing this playful thing.” That’s why I think he didn’t even think to do it. But the problem was he came up with this hypothesis that is clearly wrong and so easily falsifiable and falsified that he still should have talked to other people or he should have floated the idea around someone who knows anything about how kids actually speak.
Megan: Right. Yeah, good point. He probably didn’t even think to talk to anyone about that.
Carrie: No.
Megan: But when you make such a big claim in a big news magazine, I feel like… I don’t know. I don’t know.
Carrie: He should have asked. It would’ve saved him some embarrassment.
Megan: I don’t know. I don’t think he’s embarrassed.
Carrie: No, he doesn’t seem like the type, but he should be. He honestly really should be. It’s an embarrassing piece.
Megan: It is, and we’re not the only ones that think so.
Carrie: No. Well, we’re not. Yeah, we wrote a response because we had to because, OMG, I couldn’t believe that this was published. And mostly we got a good response and we’re going to post that again for people to read.
Megan: Yeah, we linked to his original, but remember the original is all garbage. Well, we say where he is right because there are some parts where he’s right. He makes good points about how women are usually the change makers in language and all of this, of course.
Carrie: Yeah, exactly. He also says that language change is good, which is also a good message, but the rest of it is just pig slop.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Anyway, so we’ll definitely post that.
Megan: We got a little tone policed by a man saying that we were… Did he say a little bit too annoyed or something to that effect?
Carrie: Okay, “The degree to which he is wrong doesn’t seem to me to justify the level of annoyance conveyed in this post.” Please do tell us, Dr. Famous white syntactician man, how annoyed we’re allowed to be?
Megan: Right. When did we crossover the line that you have created for women from the right amount of annoyed that is maybe cute to the bitchy amount of annoyed that is just shrill and you got to plug your ears and close your eyes because women out there again on the internet having opinions.
Carrie: Taking up space
Megan: Yep.
Carrie: Being uppity.
Megan: Yep. So disagree with people, of course, but don’t tell them how angry they’re allowed to be or how annoyed they’re allowed to be.
Carrie: I don’t know if I would’ve been more annoyed or less annoyed if he had used anger instead of annoyance. There’s something so demeaning about telling someone that they’re not allowed to be annoyed or not allowed to be annoyed to a certain amount. Somehow anger’s bad too, but I don’t know. There’s something that just like really picks at me that he used annoyed.
Megan: Maybe because it’s like infantizes it.
Carrie: Yeah, infantilizes.
Megan: Infantilizes. One of those words I never say out loud.
Carrie: We all have them.
Megan: Obviously.
Carrie: Yeah, we all have those words we don’t know how to pronounce. So it’s okay if you do 2, people.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: This syntactician also says that we don’t point out exactly what McWhorter gets fundamentally wrong, which I’m surprised by that complaint, and I would love to know what he meant by that. So if anybody knows, feel free to let us know.
Megan: Yeah. I have no idea what he means either. Anyway.
Carrie: Anyway.
Megan: Yes, let’s move on. We will definitely post that article. The article we wrote. Okay, so we have an email that I’m going to read.
Carrie: Yay.
Megan: Yes. Love emails. So this is from John, “First, I enjoy your show immensely. I found it before a long bus ride in Ecuador and I didn’t know it existed and really got into it. I don’t always agree with some points, but I’m always engaged. Also, the quality has really gone up as you guys have continued.” That is true.
Carrie: Well, yeah, obviously that’s true.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: It’s always going to be true.
Megan: “What I particularly like is that it’s a podcast that’s less abstract and more concrete. I have a master’s in linguistics, so I listen to most of the language related podcasts, but it’s nice to have one that I can share with people who don’t know what the genitive case or morpheme is.” Listen, I always forget what the genitive case is, and I do more post syntax or I deal with that stuff, so got you. Totally got you.
Carrie: I like talking about that stuff, like I’m a total nerd, but it’s just that’s not what this is about.
Megan: No, there’s only a really small subset of a small subset of people that want to talk about that.
Carrie: Right, and also if it were relevant to something we were talking about like if people were being judged for using the genitive case or something, which we don’t really have in English.
Megan: That sounds so nerdy.
Carrie: But if that were the case, we would talk about it. It’s just, at least in English, it’s not an issue.
Megan: “Secondly, are you guys looking for a transcriber?” Well, John, wait, hold on. “I’ve heard you mention it before and I have some experience doing it freelance. I also speak Spanish. So the random [foreign word] and Espanol that y’all randomly throw in wouldn’t be an issue.” Oh, I do, do that. “Okay, so anyway, I don’t normally write in, but you guys have such a unique affirming product that I had to just say thank you. Stay awesome.”
Carrie: Thank you.
Megan: Yes, thank you, John. We are definitely looking for a transcriber.
Carrie: However, we’re not there yet because we have to hit our first goal. So once we hit our first goal…
Megan: On Patreon.
Carrie: … on Patreon, which is $300 a month, then we’re going to be looking for transcribers and we might hit you up.
Megan: Yeah, definitely. But we do have some people to thank because we’ve got some new Patreons that are helping us get closer to get transcribers.
Carrie: Yes. So thank you so much everybody who supports us because every little bit helps. So I want to thank James S. and Army of Patron Bots, Mitchell Isaka, I hope I said that right, Stefan Rajkovich, same thing, I hope I said that right, and Accentricity, another link pod. So everyone should listen to Accentricity as well.
Megan: Oh, how nice. Thank you.
Carrie: When I wrote out the card to Accentricity podcast, they’re in Glasgow, which is where some of my relatives live, so I was like, “Oh.”
Megan: Oh, that’s awesome.
Carrie: It’s cool.
Megan: It warms my heart that people would throw a few bucks at us.
Carrie: Yes. We appreciate it.
Megan: We really do. Because we do this out of the just love in our hearts and also the hate in our hearts.
Carrie: It’s like 75% love, 25% saltiness.
Megan: Yes. Which is probably what my body composition is anyway.
Carrie: Yeah.
Megan: Big fan of salt. Big fan.
Carrie: That’s absolutely necessary, especially in the summer here. Oh my God, it is so hot already.
Megan: It is so hot, yes. Think of us everyone as we are here in the desert.
Carrie: I know it’s still snowing some places, but it ain’t snowing here.
Megan: Nope, things are melting.
Carrie: Things are boiling.
Megan: Boiling. Asphalts starting to stick to your shoes. So thank you everyone.
Carrie: Yeah, thank you.
Megan: And we’re really excited about the episode today.
Carrie: Yeah, it’s so fun.
Megan: Yeah, we hope you share it with your zombie loving friends.
Carrie: Zombie enthusiasts.
Megan: Zombie enthusiasts in your life because we talk zombies in Swahili today.
Carrie: Yeah. Enjoy.
Megan: We’re very excited today to have Dr. Jamie A. Thomas, who is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Swarthmore College. Currently, she is a visiting scholar of linguistics at UCSB. She has a forthcoming ethnography, Zombies Speak Swahili, and it’s all about the undead video games and why language matters. She is an anthropologist and sociocultural linguist with specialties in multi-country ethnography, inequality, intercultural communication, and stakeholder engagement. Currently, she has a co-edited volume out right now in body difference, divergent bodies, and public discourse. Thank you so much for being here, Jamie.
Carrie: Yeah, thank you.
Jamie Thomas: Thank you for having me, really.
Carrie: Of course.
Megan: We’re so excited to talk to you. It’s looking through your stuff, I wanted to talk to you about everything, but I realized we should probably have a common theme.
Jamie: Sure.
Megan: because I was like, “Oh my gosh, let’s talk about AfroLatinidad. Oh, wait, wait, no, no.” But we really wanted to have you here to talk about your work on zombies in Swahili, because I think [crosstalk] since we have this podcast, we have a lot of linguists, sure, but we also have so many people that aren’t linguists.
Jamie: Absolutely.
Megan: And I think it’ll really be interesting and resonate with people outside of the field. Thank you again, but before we get into that, can you start off by defining sociocultural linguistics for us?
Jamie: Great question, and you know what? Honestly, it’s not every day I get to talk about zombies, so I’m very excited to spend time with you guys today. But sociocultural linguistics, what is it? I come at it from the standpoint of somebody who has the background in anthropology and also second language studies or applied linguistics. And really, for me, sociocultural linguistics is about bringing in perspectives on culture and society to understandings of how do we deal with real world language? And how do we apply what we understand from linguistics in terms of our concepts and our theoretical principles to understanding real world problems and proposing solutions? So sociocultural linguistics is very cognizant of ongoing debates in thinking about race and gender sexuality and how those impact our uses of language and also our learning of language. I think it’s also an area of linguistics that’s very engaged with popular culture and politics, and it’s not afraid to take a strong stance in advocacy as well.
Megan: Yeah, and I’ve actually really admired your work from afar since we met briefly once, but I haven’t really talked to you since then. But I was just thinking about how I really love what you’ve done with linking your research in sociocultural linguistics to the arts, to politics, and to popular culture. Because that does resonate beyond the field, like I mentioned earlier, and it does bring in other people. And I think that’s really important that we do that as a field.
Carrie: Yeah, we need to do a better job.
Jamie: Yeah, we can do a better job, and I think it’s so fun for our students too, speaking as somebody who’s working with students in the college level, to show and demonstrate through our own work, but also show that in the classroom how we can connect linguistics to so many areas of study. I’m talking about cultural studies, I’m thinking about literature, discourse studies, and areas of history. I don’t think you can engage consciously in the present day without thinking about socio-histories of the very words that we’re using. So to me that’s so indispensable.
Carrie: Yeah, so another field that intersects and is also one of your fields is anthropology. So can you explain how anthropology and sociocultural linguistics overlap and how they’re different?
Jamie: Sure. I think one way that they come together is in method. What I’m specifically referring to are methods of ethnography, and so that idea of long distance observation is something that I think sociocultural linguists want to push back on because they feel that there’s so much more value to spending close time, close observation time, and participation experience with speakers and users of language. Maybe one area of difference, even though you’ll have sociocultural linguists sharing the room and sharing spaces of debate with linguistic anthropologists, publishing in some of those same spaces and using some of the same frameworks and terminology. Maybe one of the things that sets us apart is that we are thinking very firmly about language. We put language in the center of our thinking about culture. So maybe some other folks might look at behaviors first, but we want to look at language as a part of that behavior. I think too that we are open to thinking about linguistics and the study of language in terms of a coalition type of study. We’re open to bringing methods together, and for someone like me, that means that I’m bringing together sometimes multimodal studies of discourse with critical discourse analysis with perspectives and afro-pessimism. With thinking about zombie studies, and all of that can come together when I want to understand why folks are using archetypes like zombies to express their own experiences with racism and discrimination.
Carrie: What is afro-pessimism?
Megan: I was like, “We can’t let that go.”
Carrie: No, I’m like, “That’s fascinating.”
Jamie: Well, and it always sounds like something we shouldn’t be laughing about, right?
Carrie: Right.
Jamie: Why so serious? Afro-pessimism is one of these areas of study that I think takes a very strong theoretical avenue to understanding and interrogating long traditions and histories of violence. And, specifically, centering black bodies, but understanding that within Western culture, in the US, in particular, the black-white binary, racial binary, is something that these cultures are situated upon. In looking in that history of violence seeks to understand how is it that institutions such as slavery continue to reverberate throughout the way that we relate to one another in our present day? I think as a linguist coming to the discussions of Afro-pessimism, I’m particularly interested in understanding what Christina Sharpe has talked about as the wake. Which is the wake being the pathway of disturbance that’s left when a boat goes through the water, or the witnessing of death and destruction, this wake. What Saidiya Hartman has talked about as an afterlife of slavery. So this wake, these after lives, this gets us thinking about legacies of death and dying, but also that happening through patterns of violence. I think as somebody who pays attention to language, I want to understand how is it that our pathways of communication are involved in that or lend themselves to ways of pronouncing resistance to some of that. For Christina Sharpe, she articulates that as maybe what survives in that wake? The ways that different artists and other cultural producers are using language through poetry and visual arts to push back. I think that things like memes, for example, or works of literature can also be a part of that.
Carrie: Oh, fascinating.
Megan: That’s really interesting. So not from an art perspective, but I’m wondering if this is how maybe, as a culture, some of us to uphold white supremacy have used language like law and order to be violent against the black body. Is that related to what Afro-pessimism is and looking at that and responses to that?
Jamie: Yeah, absolutely. I think phrases like law and order, we want to understand why does that have the currency that it does? The implications of a phrase like bad hombres, for example, it implicates particular bodies. It does that on a continuum of mattering. These lives mattering. I think within the thinking of afro-pessimism, and we can go all the way back to maybe even a philosopher like Frantz Fanon, Martinique and philosopher, thinking about how do we come from the colonial into the post-colonial? And then what effect does that have on our psychology, on our interpersonal relationships, and on the valuing of ourselves? I think that within ourselves, we take on phrases within our embodiment to talk about ourselves. So the way that I go out there and I describe myself may communicate to others how I see myself mattering or I see myself connecting with society. You have people saying things that are, to them, resistance phrases or self-affirming phrases that pick up, I think, where we’ve been in different previous moments. Like, black is beautiful or black girl magic, and different phrases now that I think have been important to just people trying to self-affirm in the face of so much pessimism really. The pessimism comes from feeling like, and sensing and experiencing the totalizing, the total power of the state in determining whether lives matter and determining life outcomes for people. So I think language is an important way that we can follow up on that and we can see where the threads take us.
Megan: I think that’s a really beautiful foundation for us to go into this forthcoming book that you have. I think I was like, “Oh, wow. Okay, we’re ready to do this.”
Jamie: We’ve got the foundation now.
Megan: Yeah. So on your website, I noticed it’s a multi-country anthropological study, and the book is called Zombie Speaks Swahili, Race, Horror, and Sci-Fi from Mexico to Tanzania, and Get Out. First of all, what is a multi-country anthropological study?
Jamie: Yeah. Well, I happened into that because I was looking for a place to do my long-term ethnographic participant observation. So when you’re looking for these places, you’re at the behest of people who are willing to have you looking over their shoulder, willing to have you there. You want people happy to have you there. But then you’re also looking at political geopolitics, really. And right around the time when I was beginning to begin this research, I was very interested in looking at how Swahili was being taught in Libya. Also around that time, things were beginning to change in Libya, and so I was also curious about Swahili in Mexico, Swahili in Tanzania, and incorporating those sites into this work, along with my own observation data and Autoethnographic data from here in the US has helped to make this a multi-country study, but also I think something that is rich enough to pick up on Swahili as it’s spoken in different areas of the world by many different populations that helps us gather a perspective on global Swahili.
Megan: It sounds like that makes where Swahili is spoken and who speaks it complicated, but I wonder if you could possibly get into it a little bit?
Jamie: Sure, Well, I come at this as somebody who learned Swahili from a Kenyan professor here in the States and was in classes mostly with African American and white American students. I don’t think it was until some of my later research that I came across Chinese nationals that were speaking Swahili, and spoke Swahili to the extent that they wanted… When we had opportunity to do an interview, I said, “Well, I don’t speak Mandarin, but I can offer you English.” And they said, “No, I’d rather speak Swahili. Swahili is stronger for me than English.” This blew my mind because I had been surrounded by people of just a narrower scope, but it helped me to see that Swahili is beyond my own imagining, and it’s beyond East Africa. It is a language that has a sociopolitical profile that attaches it to Pan-Africanism, but also allows it to be spoken by a myriad other identities. Now, of course, the power and inequality and racial histories are all co-mingled in the identities of who speaks Swahili? But I think that is rather interesting. When it comes to Mexico, for example, I spent time with folks who were involved in African studies in Mexico and learning Swahili as part of their study. So to think about the language Swahili being taught through African studies programs, Africana studies programs, and in some cases African American studies programs here in the States, really has us thinking about how are we aligning language with culture, with geography in our studies of the world? We can expand that to thinking about how Russia and Russian may be offered for students who are thinking about Slavic studies as a whole. But maybe they don’t have access in their universities to maybe lesser commonly taught languages like Estonian or Romanian, but Russian is presented to them. So how does that color their perspective or later on provide them access and understanding of other communities that may also encompass that geography? I think we want to think about that when we’re approaching area studies, and specifically, African studies in our university context where languages are taught. So the project really encompasses language learning. It looks at identity, it looks at some of the politics of this, and also how it intersects with popular culture.
Carrie: Yeah, getting back to the popular culture section. So zombies are hot, and they have been hot for a while. Walking Dead, everyone, well not everyone, but a lot of people still watch that show. Why zombies? What is it about zombies that you wanted to study?
Jamie: Well, I think zombies are interesting in and of themselves because they just defy science. Neil deGrasse Tyson has been asked is it possible to have zombies? Can we reawaken brains? He’s like, “Actually, definitively no, okay?” But that aside, I became interested in the zombies because I was in the Mexico City context and in an African studies course, and I witnessed this conversation going on. This discussion between the professor and the students, and they were talking about representations of violence and how Africa’s representations in global media have been fairly skewed in this arena. The conversation jockeyed between the representation of Africa as a whole, but then also representations of Mexico when it comes to whatever perspectives are out there on the transnational war on drugs. This was at a particular time when many of the headlines were escalating about conflicts between drug trafficking organizations in Mexico and in the US and number of deaths were escalating. Thinking about this as an American, many people were skeptical when I was going over to Mexico. They were like, “Hey, is it safe?” We ask those same questions about areas of the United States, “Oh, you’re going to Baltimore. Is it safe? You’re going to Philly. Is it safe?” And really what we’re putting out there in terms of the way we’re speaking about it is we’re encoding within that specific thoughts about bodies and context. That, in some cases, we remain somewhat ignorant about. I will say that when I went to Mexico, I was ignorant. My scope of knowledge was limited to the communities of largely Spanish speaking Californians that I’d grown up with. Thinking about things and life ways as Mexican, but not knowing that those largely pertain to Northern Mexico. So by the time I got to Mexico City, which is in the central, but way towards the south compared to where Northern Mexico is, my mind was opened up to so much difference and so much variety. So when we’re in this classroom talking about representations of Mexico and representations of Africa, I’m thinking about it. It’s not a country continent equivalence, but it’s fascinating. And yet what really caught my ear, if you will, in that conversation, was how the students were talking about video games as also violent and contributing to our absorption and desensitization to violence on a daily basis. And news reports being a part of that, but then also a video game that involved zombies involved Swahili and was supposedly in an African context. So the professor replies then, and he’s like, “Do you guys play these video games? Like, what’s up with that? Wait, they’re speaking Swahili in this video game? I can’t believe it.” He pauses and the student comes back at him and says, “See, La Africana habla Swahili.” The African woman in this game is speaking Swahili, and so it becomes this point of talking about it, but also understanding that the African woman avatar in the game, which is Resident Evil 5, is there to assist her American counterpart with fighting zombies. And not only just fighting zombies in Africa, the game has its own specific mythology about how they are speaking Swahili, but also in this West African context. So the mismatch between this, because we understand that Swahili is largely spoken in Eastern Africa, and we think about this and we’re like, “Whoa,” in this classroom discussion, we’re like, “Wow, this seems like wilful ignorance. What’s going on here?” We know you Google this really quick, you’ll get that Swahili is largely spoken on the East side. So really that conversation opens up an entire discussion within the book about representation, about global media as it intersects with the language learning environment and the pursuit of African studies. I think what it does is it helps us think about classrooms and academics as not isolated from the rest of what’s happening in the world. Because it’s so easy to think of people with their books siloed in a room somewhere. But, at the same time, all of those chances to open those books and to be in conversation with those absentee authors, all of what you’re bringing to that conversation is everything you’re experiencing on TV, on the street, and that becomes a part of you taking on this new material. So I think that’s part of what I want to show with the book, is that these classrooms are not isolated. They’re part of global circuits of media and also of, in some ways, representation and discrimination.
Megan: I wonder did you end up playing Resident Evil 5 after you heard that? Did you do that for your research??
Jamie: Yes. Yeah, I did. Let me tell you, I’m terrible. I’m terrible. I actually played as the African woman avatar, and I’m really awful at the game. I’m awful at old games, basically, like Super Mario, I was never the best. I can never get all the mushrooms. But what I learned from playing the game is that as I’m playing the game, and I am playing as [inaudible], this avatar character, I’m taking on her embodiment, or I’m acquiescing to her embodiment, her representation in order to play the game. So it made me think about it because it’s like, “Okay, she’s represented as a somewhat subservient African woman with all these mismatches. She’s hypersexualized as well.”It’s like, “Okay, in real life, I definitely wouldn’t just walk out on the street in a bikini or anything with guns blazing.” But speaking or interpreting Swahili for the next guys right next to me. But I acquiesce to that in order to play the game, and so it makes me think about how these games buy our ascent, at least for the interim, and what that experience is like, particularly, as a Swahili speaker.
Megan: Right, and how is the Swahili in the game? Is it good?
Jamie: It’s weird. It’s surprising. It’s good. They got actual Kenyan voice actors, I believe, to do some of that. And that was part of the conversation in Mexico City was just circling the irony of this. That the representations have these mismatches within, but the Swahili is grammatical. So we’re like, “Whoa, what’s going on?”
Megan: Yeah, you did the research on that area.
Jamie: Online part, yeah. We’re like, “Should we be happy that Swahili is getting this global play?” But, at the same time, we’re critical because we’re like, “Is this the image of Swahili that we want out there?” With the zombies, are we okay with being associated with the undead? But I think with the book title and everything, my decision was just to go for broke. I just wanted to push the zombie all the way out there, because the more I looked into what zombies mean and signify across cultures and across time periods, what you find out is that zombies originate in African New World experience. In the Caribbean, in the profound horrors of enslavement, and the misunderstandings of bystander Europeans on African experience. I thought, “Well, wouldn’t it be interesting if I just took this zombie archetype as a metaphor for understanding representation, but also the challenges of learning a language that is so undervalued by folks outside of your speech community.” On campuses and out in the larger world. And to think about zombies, these invasion of sorts. But thinking of that as related to the global circuits of Swahili around the world and how it has, in some ways, invaded some of our thinking about what Africa means. Such that we are okay, some of us, with equating Swahili to Africa and vice versa. Even though Africa is a large geography that encompasses more than 2000 languages and many other regional lingua francas. So the zombie concept is invasive, it’s strong, and it’s undying. So it keeps giving up, and I think it’s the metaphor that keeps giving back.
Carrie: Yes, It’s really evocative metaphor, for sure.
Megan: It really is. The word invasion or invading, that’s also very it’s a visceral reaction that you have to that.
Jamie: Yeah.
Carrie: Why do you think that it’s Swahili that’s got associated with zombiism and not some other, say, African language?
Jamie: Well, I’ve meditated on that particularly when it pertains to this video game. Because I imagine they could have chosen other languages, but I think Swahili is the most studied African language outside of African learning context on the continent. And that profile derives from the visibility, it got when it was used as an organizing mechanism by East Africans to push back on colonialism. It’s also since then had this view, this perspective, this profile as a language local to East Africa that allows a greater number of people to participate in the Democratic process. Even as countries like Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda to some extent, Mozambique to some extent, Zambia, all of these locations where Swahili is spoken to some degree, they also involve many other languages. That’s the other thing is that Swahili has several hundred years as a language being used around the coastal areas of Eastern Africa, and taking on different flavors as you move down the coastline. From Somalia all the way down to Mozambique and involving folks from the Arab peninsula. So Swahili has this large encompassing profile and a phonology that I think is more or less accessible to folks who come as primary speakers of English. In Swahili, as opposed to other Bantu languages like Zulu or Xhosa, we don’t have cliques and we don’t have tones. While those aspects make these other languages very rich, I think the absence of those features in Swahili makes this a language where learners, for the most part, can feel like they’re making strong gains very early on. And to some learners it’s very encouraging. The other, I think, thing about Swahili too is it has been taught, there are folks teaching it in Japan, in European countries including the UK, Germany. These countries they have a legacy of colonialism in East Africa, Germany England, but also in the US because of the strong Pan-African visibility that the language got as a result of being used strategically by the first President of Tanzania who was Julius Nyerere. So folks here in the US have latched onto Swahili as a language that they feel represents their Pan-African identity in some ways. And you also have folks using that language, incorporating that language in their celebration of Kwanzaa, which was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga, an African American. So all of that snowballs into giving Swahili this visibility, but also this accessibility because of the range of learning materials and dictionaries and other things that are available in the language. So I think that’s why Swahili was jumped on appropriated by these video game producers. But in a way, they’re jumping on something that already was appropriated. Because you had Swahili in the Lion King, you had Swahili used by Michael Jackson when he had his hit song, Liberian Girl. He’s singing to her in that song in Swahili, which is it’s fascinating. Because in Liberia, which is also West Africa, Swahili is not typically spoken. So that’s an interesting mismatch. But, again, you have Swahili standing out as a representative language for the entire continent.
Megan: Just thinking about the video game and the people that were behind it, is this an American based game? Are these Americans that decided that they were going to have this American go to Africa and like they needed a translator or what?
Jamie: Well, it’s so easy to go there, to make that assumption, and I think that was what, the conversation I participated in Mexico City, that was how the conversation unfolded. Thinking about how Mexico has been subjugated by the US, and also how African representations have been subjugated as well. So the conversation in that classroom was like, “Well, we can totally see based on these other appropriations of Swahili in the US how an American gaming group would just do this.” When I did some research afterwards, I found out that it’s actually not an American production group. It is a Japanese group, Capcom, that is the originator of the Resident Evil franchise. When you think about that and you think about histories of Japan, America, and this symbiotic relationship, I think, between Japanese production of horror fandom, sorry, horror narratives and American fandom of some of those same narratives, it’s a circuit that I think connects with each other. In fact, they did some of the live action recording for the video game in Hollywood. So using African American stunt women and stuff like that. So it’s you could say, “Okay, this is Japan doing this.” But I think that’s too simple, and I think you really want to think about how languages around the world gather these representations through the hegemony of appropriating the language, teaching the language within universities around the world, and area studies programs. And the type of signals that gives to popular culture and artists such as these that use these languages to create further.
Megan: So could you play, I’m guessing, it’s a white American or you could play this African woman?
Jamie: Yeah, the primary avatar is Chris Redfield. He’s also in the movies, and he’s sort of a hulky white guy, white American guy.
Megan: Okay. So you can either choose between him or the African woman or no?
Jamie: Right, I think you can use the African woman avatar when you’re playing in a 2-person environment.
Megan: Okay, and so I wonder what you think the message is then that the person that is able to talk to the zombies is the black woman?
Jamie: Yeah, it’s really interesting because I was playing this game with a counterpart that was taking on the white American male avatar. You hear, as you’re playing the game, you hear the zombies shouting out directions either to themselves or something like that. Like, “Look out or there they go, there they go.” But it’s all in Swahili, so [foreign words]. Something like that. I think it’s fascinating that you have this interpreter avatar character for the white American male primary avatar because it signals that this is somebody who can come to the African context, doesn’t have to know the local language in order to pursue his mission, his goal. At the same time, what’s fascinating about her character is that I think it’s rare that you actually hear her say something in Swahili. Rather, she presents as what we might call a passive bilingual or receptive bilingual. Someone who hears the Swahili spoken by folks who are represented as darker in skin tone, more aggressive in demeanor, and she spits back out the English for her counterpart. So really what they’re showing is that Swahili is unintelligible, it goes without subtitles, is untranslated for the most part, and it is the zombie language. Swahili is for zombies. English is for heroes. So you get that hegemonic perspective just in the language, and I think for players of the game, for players of other games, because this is not the only game where you have language being included as part of the ambiance and part of the dynamic. But I think it’s fascinating to consider how very subtle cues are included as part of the ambiance, but are things that really go a long way to priming people on how to respond and think about languages and global languages around the world. So this game, for example, my conclusion is not that it uplifts Swahili to the extent that we might want it to but it keeps Swahili in its place. It’s not named as Swahili within the game, and so you leave that game, you didn’t learn any Swahili through the game necessarily, and you finish the game not really knowing that that particular language was there. It’s really a backdrop piece, and I think when I’m thinking about the study of Africa and whether African languages are required as part of training in that, it varies. It varies from program to program. But I think the message that’s being sent by this particular Mexico City program where Swahili is required, and no other African languages are able to be offered, but at least the very message is saying like, “You cannot study this area of the world without engaging with its language as well.” I think, on the very outside of that, it’s a very strong message to send that says, “These languages matter.”Megan: Yeah, definitely. I can see how the Resident Evil message with this white character, it’s like this metaphor for colonialism. He goes over there, it’s not his land, it’s not his culture or his language, but he doesn’t engage in any of that in any meaningful way.
Jamie: He just does what he needs to do.
Carrie: Yeah.
Jamie: That’s literally what he said. He says, “I’ve got a job and I’m going to see it through.” So it’s a very dramatic line.
Carrie: That’s amazing.
Megan: So we’ve talked a little bit about Mexico, but what about the other country mentioned in your title, Tanzania?
Jamie: Tanzania. I think when I was planning on going to Tanzania, I said, “Well, you know what, as the Civil War is going on in Libya, I think what I can do is I can follow these Libyan students on their study abroad, sojourn, to Tanzania, where they’re going to learn Swahili. And I can interview them, I can see what’s going on with them.” Having studied in Tanzania as a language learner of Swahili years ago, I expected there to be American students there. But what I didn’t expect was to encounter the Chinese nationals there, to encounter students also from Austria, from Sweden, from Ghana as well, thinking about south-south study abroad. Which is something we don’t often think about. We think about folks from the global north, maybe going to the global south for their study abroad, but I think very little of us, very little of that concept, do we think about south-south or maybe to say that the south can be a destination for other southerners, other global southerners. Now that really opened my mind because here I was engaging with folks who had a broad number of reasons for wanting to learn Swahili, and for wanting to spend time specifically in Tanzania. I think what it did is it challenged my own perspectives about what Swahili offers to speakers of other languages. And part of what I witnessed while I was there, or observed rather, is these students’ engagement with local speakers of Swahili. To some degree, these local speakers being very surprised that Chinese learners are using Swahili in their off time or are able to engage in a very proficient manner. I think it also surprised them to meet Ghanaians, black Ghanaians, who were not L1 speakers, home speakers, primary speakers of Swahili, but rather of Twi or English. And they looked at them and they just made these assumptions, and from their directions saying, “Well, you look like us, you should be speaking Swahili.” And these students are saying, Well, but I’m not from here. Oh, no, but I want to learn Swahili, but can you slow down? Don’t speak so fast.” So I think for study abroad can be such an eye-opening experience for both the learners who are traveling to the host country and staying there, and also local people who may have limited opportunity to see and experience their language being spoken by other people. But even just there, I put the possessive there, I said their language. I think this is probably one of the messages that I want this book to communicate, is that even as Swahili originates in Eastern Africa and has a very strong national character, particularly in Tanzania, there are many people around the world who take ownership of Swahili in their own way. And express themselves, their desires, their hopes and dreams, their interests through Swahili. And that we may do Swahili the greatest service by continuing to think of it in more expansive terms and on global terms, I think. So those are the Mexico and Tanzania pieces of the story.
Megan: Well, I was definitely doing Swahili disservice by being… I’m very shocked to hear about the Mexico City context. I’m really happy to hear it and I never would’ve thought that that was happening in Mexico City.
Jamie: Right.
Carrie: I never thought about it at all. It’s like I didn’t really have an opinion, but yeah.
Jamie: Absolutely, and I think that for me is what’s exciting about bringing these stories and amplifying these stories. Because earlier we talked about what is the sociocultural linguist? I think one of our roles is amplifying how people feel about language and trying to understand, from their perspective, their insider perspective, however we can, how do these languages make meaning for them? I think when I cycle back to… I take you through Mexico to Tanzania, and I come back to North America and I look at how Swahili is appropriated within Get Out, this horror film and this zombie journey for an African American male protagonist, and this film coming out in 2017 by Jordan Peele. When I’m thinking about that film and the surprise that came over my face in the theater when I’m listening to some of the principal soundtrack and hearing Swahili in that soundtrack, it absolutely blew my mind. [music playing] And for similar reasons, this was one of the places where I perhaps least expected Swahili to pop up, and yet here it was. So the book includes my interview with the composer for the film. In talking with him, what I learned was that he was seeking to create, in accordance with Jordan Peel’s vision, a sense of the other worldliness of African diaspora experience. And a way of doing that was through the resonance of these Swahili voices and chorus coming from the beyond, if you will. So it’s the spirits mingling with the zombies, mingling with these present day voices that I think hopefully makes this book meaningful, not only to Swahili speakers and zombie enthusiasts, but also to sociocultural linguists as well.
Megan: Absolutely.
Carrie: Absolutely. It definitely sounds like it.
Megan: Yeah, I can’t wait to read it. That’s so exciting that you were able to talk to the composer.
Carrie: Yeah, that’s really cool.
Megan: And I’m not surprised because just thinking about Get Out, it’s a very nuanced film and Jordan Peel’s a very thoughtful person. But it seems like they put much more thought into using Swahili than say Resident Evil did.
Jamie: Yeah, they did. But I really credit Michael Abels. He’s the composer for the film. I credit him with thinking back through even his own experiences to think about and consider how to bring this to an audience. Again, I think part of the reason why Swahili resonated with him, because he is not a Swahili speaker from what I understand, but it’s that Swahili had this visibility for him as an African language and as a potentially accessible African language because of all of this grand history we’ve talked about. So here it is again, Swahili popping up again in a place where it’s maybe least expected, but because it is in some ways expected. I think when we care about language, we’re always trying to understand why? Why is that popping up? Or why does this have meaning?I think what we learn is that maybe at first the meaning is not readily accessible to us or right there in the front. But when we dig a little deeper, we find out that there is a reason, and there is a reason why people feel this way about language. To me, when I find that out, when I have those moments, it takes me back actually to studying archeology back as an anthropology major. I was on a dig… I was on a dig, that sounds like an Indiana Jones movie. As a student, your professor invites you to join these things, and so I was digging in this pit. This was in a area of Illinois just below the Mississippi River, and so a Native American settlement. And I pulled out this piece of pottery that had to have been several, several hundreds of years old. Just the amount of wonder that I had, because nobody had seen this piece of pottery except for me. And that’s that feeling of discovery, or encountering, I think is a better word for it, is the joy that I get out of speaking with people and just endeavoring to understand why language matters to them. That’s the feeling you get because you say, “Well, here I am accessing their memories and their cultural nuances,” and trying to bring that out for a wider audience.
Carrie: Oh, that’s really cool.
Megan: That is.
Carrie: Yeah, I remember listening to that song and thinking, “What language is that?” I had to know. I had to know because didn’t recognize it. So when I read about it, I was like, “That is such a fascinating choice, and it’s a cool sounding song too.”
Jamie: it really is. It really is.
Megan: Yeah, beautiful.
Jamie: And it’s called Sikiliza Kwa Wahenga, which is listen to the ancestors.
Carrie: So beautiful.
Megan: Oh, that is beautiful.
Jamie: Yeah.
Carrie: So I have one last connection I want to make because I think it ties back to the beginning of the conversation as well. So this horror movie about zombie, well, yeah, it’s a zombie, right? They’re turned into zombies in Get Out?
Jamie: Sure.
Carrie: I was also thinking about the original, Night of the Living Dead. Do you remember that movie?
Jamie: Yes, it’s a classic. It’s a classic.
Carrie: It’s a classic. It’s a classic. So I was a teenager when I saw it, and so it made a huge impact on me. Megan, have you seen it?
Megan: I haven’t.
Jamie: Must see. It’s a must see.
Carrie: I don’t know if I should spoil it for you though.
Megan: No, it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. I deserve it. Just do it. Ruin it. Ruin it for me.
Carrie: So the protagonist is a black man, and so you’re rooting for him to survive all these zombies and he survives all these zombies only to be murdered by the cops.
Jamie: Yes.
Megan: Oh, so I can see how Get Out, how you…
Carrie: Yeah, they’re connected in at least 2 different ways. Like the ending in Get Out was supposed to be much darker.
Jamie: Totally.
Megan: Or at least that’s what you were anticipating, right?
Carrie: No, no, no, literally, it was supposed to be much darker. He was supposed to be caught by the cops, put in jail, for murdering this white family.
Jamie: Well, and you do get that in the alternative DVD ending, I think.
Carrie: Yes.
Megan: Yes. Oh, okay.
Carrie: Yeah, so it exists, you can watch the original ending. I don’t think I could’ve taken it. I am white and I still would’ve been so devastated because I said, “This is too dark for where we are, like 2017. Come on.”
Megan: Dark times. Yeah, dark times.
Carrie: We can have a whole nother conversation about Trump, etc., but we won’t. But, anyway, so that’s how I connect those 2 movies. Partially, the zombie thing, but also partially that the endings could have been much more alike.
Jamie: Absolutely, and I think also Jordan Peele picks up where the film with Sidney Poitier, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, leaves us off with that idea of the unexpected guests coming. And that film has been remade a few times. What was it? Are you really bringing him or is it really him? That was the film, but the idea of bringing that unexpected boyfriend/girlfriend type of thing, bringing them to your house, to your parents’ house, and then the parents, them being so radically different from you in some way that it throws the parents off, it throws everybody off. So you have that Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner together with Night of the Living Dead. But I think too that what you get out of that film is a novel mythology about why zombification is dangerous. Because it’s not just the typical contagion type of mythos where it’s an unknown contagion, but it just keeps spreading and we just have to just keep running. It hearkens back to Haitian ontologies with this conjurer type of scenario where the zombie is divined or conjured through a psychological or magical type of intervention. But at the same time, you have this being heavily racialized and you also have these elements of snarky dismissal of the protagonist suffering. You also have, within that film, black characters also participating in that. Because he calls, or his friend, his friend who’s looking out for him and super skeptical, his friend calls the authorities and ends up talking to a black woman police officer. And the police officer is like, “Yeah, right? Like, no way. This is not a problem. Your friend’s missing.” I think what’s shown there is just how we can also be a part of the pernicious cycle of these inequalities and how they relate to our own noticing of the problem. Because we also see in that film that certain people have been missing for a while, and yet nothing has really been done about it. So there’s so many levels, I think you can derive meaning from that film, but I think what it does for us is it reintroduces the zombie in a way that has immediate political significance for us. That’s the way that I want to leave off with this book, is to just say, yes, we have the deep pessimism of racial capitalism, but we also have these flows, these global flows of creation, production and resistance that continue pushing the story along. Such that we don’t know where this goes entirely, and we don’t know how it’ll all resolve. But to even say that it’ll resolve, I think, comes from the spirit of optimism that I think has been ever present in African and African American experiences here in the Americas. I think it’s something that we have shared, and I speak we, as an African-American person, but something we have shared with various social movements and other social identity groups here in the States as well. I’m in California right now, and so I’m very close to the legacies of Cesar Chavez. And here at UCSB, I learned that they actually have a Cesar Chavez Day that they take to do service and away from campus. So thinking about leaders such as that, such as him with those legacies and understanding that all of it is a part of these circuits of understanding issues and responding to them and trying to move forward with coalition building, I think maybe that’s a metaphor for why all of what’s at the heart of making sociocultural linguistics so viable and so rich and energizing is the bringing together of all these perspectives and trying to find a way to celebrate them in our analytical and activist work.
Carrie: That’s awesome.
Megan: We normally ask people to say what’s the takeaway? But you already just gave it to us.
Carrie: That was nice.
Megan: Yeah, I actually do have one more question, and it’s asking you if you have any advice? It sounds like I’ve learned so much and I feel like I have some takeaways that I can use. But I wonder if you have any advice on how we can be smart and responsible consumers of media?
Jamie: Whoa. Yeah, it’s a tall order because…
Megan: I know, I know, I know.
Jamie: … the field of media, it keeps moving.
Carrie: It’s huge.
Jamie: And I say that because new avenues of production continue to be founded. But I think, for me, and tell this to students too, it’s like I hope that linguistics and anthropology will ruin you the next time you try to watch a movie, okay?
Megan: Yes.
Carrie: Yes, it’s true.
Jamie: Because I want you to think critically and in real time about the words that are being communicated through these characters embodiments on screen, or if it’s a radio play that you’re thinking about that, or if it’s an internet meme, you’re thinking about how perhaps their embodiments are being manipulated visually for you to interpret the message there. I think it only takes split seconds for you to make connections, but it’s in those nanoseconds that we have to think about why? Why am I being told to think this way, or where is the disjuncture perhaps between what the author, what the creator is wanting me to think about or interpret this as, and maybe where I’m interpreting it as. So even with a film like Night of the Living Dead, for example, I had my students watch that, and it was interesting to see the responses to it. Because these are students who were born many years after this film came out in 1968. And so they’re not really responding to that representation of zombie as particularly horrific. But I said, “Okay, well and then get over that. it’s in black and white. Okay.” But I was saying like, “Think about the way this film is structured and the stuff that’s left up to your interpretation and why perhaps the meaning that you’re bringing to it now could be different from the meaning that was understood from it 40 years ago. I think that’s what makes this media so interesting and pertinent is that we continue to bring our current interpretations to it. So we’re talking about Get Out now, we’re talking about video game from before, but all of this stuff still resonates. And so for me my advice is keep bringing your current attitude to it, but understand that the junctures that you’re seeing between its creation and your interpretation could have right there, that could tell you right there why it is interesting and important.
Carrie: Interesting.
Megan: Thank you so much.
Carrie: Yeah, thank you.
Jamie: Yeah, thank you.
Megan: This has been fantastic, and yay.
Jamie: Yay.
Megan: Thank you so much for talking with us today, It’s very exciting. I got chills like 10 times. Every time I learn something, I get chills.
Jamie: Yeah. Well, and I just really appreciate your mission with this podcast to talk specifically about language and areas of discrimination and difference. Because I think that’s something that will continue to demand our attention for years to come.
Megan: I agree, because we’re just barely starting. Talk about it.
Jamie: I know.
Megan: Not just us, I mean like as a field.
Jamie: Absolutely. We’ve got a lot yet to do.
Carrie: We have a lot for us to do.
Megan: Demand that we still put attention to this five years to come. So we always leave our listeners with one final message, “Don’t be an asshole.”
Carrie: Don’t be an asshole. Is there a way to say that in Swahili?
Megan: Yeah, how would you say that in Swahili?
Jamie: One of my favorite sayings is [foreign words], which is Mountains may not meet, but people always do.
Carrie: Oh, that’s beautiful.
Megan: I love it. Thank you so much, Jamie.
Jamie: Thank you.
Carrie: The Vocal Fries Podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon, for Halftone Audio. Theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Vocal Fries Pod. You can email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com, and our website is vocalfriespod.com.[END]
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