Syllabus/Course Website: http://savethevowels.org/42/, Slides where applicable are linked below in the Course Schedule. Here’s an an alternate link.
Canvas: This course will be using Canvas for discussions, and to manage grades. Should you need any technical assistance with Canvas, please alert your instructor and send an email to canvas@ucsd.edu.
Discord: This course will use a Discord server for chat, discussion, in class sharing of memes, and the finding and interacting with study partners. The invite link is posted on Canvas.
WebClicker: This quarter, for getting instant feedback and measuring participation (‘clicking in’), we’re going to use https://webclicker.web.app/ via your own device. The course registration code is HTUVDA, please make a (free) account and register for this class using that code. Please make sure to accurately input your student ID, so we can match your scores to your self, even when students share names.
Zoom: We’ll be using Zoom for any online office hours and class sessions. For any class-related Zoom work, please follow Will’s Student Guidelines for Online Classes.
Course Textbook: The entire internet. Aside from that, there is no textbook.
Weeks are listed by the Monday they start on. Although all due-dates are fixed (barring extensive notice), given everything, expect things to change some. Please check this page regularly. Click an individual date to see that day’s slides (broken links indicate that slides are not yet posted).
Additionally, each week, you’re expected to do research on the world of memes and language online which are relevant to the week’s topic.
All assignments are due on Sundays following the class session at 11:59pm (so Week 1’s ‘Due Sunday’ assignment is due January 9th at 11:59pm).
Please see my complete listing of student resources for information on student support (e.g. counseling, crisis centers, resource centers), resources for learning (libraries, writing help, and more), resources for engaging with faculty (e.g. Coffee with a Prof, Letters of recommendation), and technical resources.
The internet is a wonderful new frontier of language use. In this course, we’ll use linguistic theory to analyze the many unique linguistic phenomena which have arisen there, ranging from the linguistic richness of memes, to cross-community differences in language use, to keysmashing, emoji, new words, and more. Ultimately, our goal will be to show that all language, no matter where it arises, is valid, fascinating, and worthy of study.
Yes, it’s true. In the before times, this class was ‘Linguistics of Memes’ (and thanks to the wonders of the registrar, it still is). ‘Meme’ as a concept is huge, and although many conceptualize it narrowly, thinking in terms of captioned images and videos, in practice, ‘meme’ could be used to refer to any cultural practice, including and up to language itself. But, after teaching the class twice, I’ve realized that what’s unique about the linguistics of memes is not necessarily about the memes themselves, but about the modality of communication in which they’ve emerged, namely, the internet.
Arguably, many internet-first linguistic expressions like keysmashing, language variants like SpOnGeBoB TeXt or 13375p34k or uwu are just as memetic traditional ‘internet memes’ or image macros, so this rebranding is simply working to broaden the perceived scope of what we can examine, consider, and think about as we do the sorts of linguistic analysis of unique communicative constructs on the internet. This also has the benefit of connecting with folks who’ve said things like “Well I’m not that into meme culture, even though I spend most of my life on tiktok”, which shows that the framing wasn’t quite what it needed to be.
So, we’ll be focusing on ‘meme’ very broadly on the internet, looking for ideas or behaviors, spread virally, within cultures, with meaning, and looking at those through a linguistic lens!
In summary, ‘New can, same great taste’. Except my sense of humor, which remains likely in poor taste.
Although any class is what you make of it, and interested learners will reap far more than I sow, at the very least, I hope students will leave this class with…
This course should be pretty straightforward if you’re putting in effort, and doing the requested research, but remember that you need to be proactive in your learning. So, attend classes, come to office hours when needed, start work for the class early (so questions can be answered as they come up), look carefully at the course schedule, and plan ahead. Perhaps most importantly, show effort! We will always go the extra mile to support students who are showing effort, and never be afraid to ask for help. And of course, practice effective self care, look after their physical and mental health, and take advantage of student resources.
Finally, remember that this course is a collaborative process, and we all share a goal. You want to learn the material and earn a good grade, and we want you to learn the material and earn a good grade. If you put in the effort, attend the class, and complete the assignments, we hope that earning a great grade will be easy for you, and know that if you’re working hard and still struggling, the instructional team is here to be a resource for you.
Your final grade is based on the below formula, and will be automatically calculated in Canvas:
| Item | % of Final Grade |
|---|---|
| Field Reports and Research time Logs | 75% |
| Final Report | 15% |
| Class Participation | 10% |
The grading scale used for this course is the UCSD standard scale, where A+ is 97% or more, A is 96.99% to 93%, A- is 92.99 to 90%, B+ is 89.99 to 87%, and so forth. Plus and Minus grades are not assigned below “C”, and no grade changes will be considered from A to A+. “Pass” is defined as a grade greater than 69.999% (Nice).
This class, as I’m planning it, is going to be a sort of ‘distributed fieldwork’ sort of class, and thus, fundamentally different from everything else I teach. As a result, I need to do things differently than I normally do.
Your goal this quarter is to explore, dive deep, research, and wade into the internet to identify interesting phenomena. Your curiosity, thought, and careful inareful investigation is the most important part, and a key component of this is simply putting in the work, looking around, examining phenomena you’re interested in, and explaining and describing it to your colleagues and to us. More importantly, if I’m not a part of the community you’re working to understand, there’s a good chance that I can’t actually say if you’re ‘right or wrong’, and even worse, it’s incredibly easy to fall into the trap of my questioning your knowledge about the linguistic world you live in, which is a really nasty thing to do in a class focused (in part) on language ideology and acceptance of the not-traditionally-linguistic.
When you’re doing this sort of thing, it makes much less sense to have ‘homework assignments’ which ask you to produce output in response to individual fixed questions each week. Although I’ll be giving you tools, advice, and offering suggestions for questions and topics, you (and your teammates, likely) will need to put in research time. You’ll need to dive deep, dig in, and really do the work to understand the linguistic world around you, and to do this class properly for you and your collaborators, you need to put in the time and effort.
As such, rather than being a traditional assignment-driven class, class is using a modified version of ‘Labor Based Contract Grading’, which aims to focus you on the process rather than the result, and aims to give you the power to study what’s interesting to you. There are also many excellent equity and social justice reasons to consider labor-based contract grading (many of which are summarized in Asao Inoue’s Sample Contract), but for this class, it’s really the only method that makes sense.
So, here’s how this class is going to work: You are expected to spend 3 hours per week outside of class meeting times doing research for this class, looking for examples, talking with friends and colleagues, and diving deep on some aspect of language use. You’ll log this time, describing what it was that you did each week.
That said, because silent research in isolation doesn’t teach us, and is hard to track, you’ll be asked to submit a field report with your research time log on Canvas every week, using the ‘Discussion Board’ section for both ease of tracking, and ease of interaction and discussion. The field report details what you’ve learned and/or what you studied during the week, and the timecard will be a detailed accounting of the time you spent on the course, and what you were doing during that time.
Each week, you’ll be expected to produce a 3 or so paragraph (alongside example quotes, images or screenshots) report, or perhaps a link to a short (~1 minute) video/tiktok/micropodcast (posted someplace publicly accessible). The goal here is simple: Tell us what you’ve discovered, or explain what you’re focused on researching right now.
I’ve prepared a sample field report, which gives an example of the kind of work one might do in characterizing language use in a community.
Although you’ll be offered ‘prompts’ each week based on the kind of thing we’ve done in class, and I encourage you to consider everything we’re talking about in the class as you do your research, this is self-directed work, and you get to choose the questions you’re asking. The weekly prompts are suggestions based on what we’ve been doing in class, not hard-and-fast requirements.
I do have a few guidelines, though:
Respect the humans who are teaching you: You must treat the language community you’re talking about with respect and care. These people are teaching you about their language, and should be treated with kindness, in a way that they’d appreciate if they read your report. Mockery, scorn, derisiveness, prescriptivist language attitudes, or insult to the community who is teaching you will result in a 0 for your report. If you cannot write respectfully about a community of language users, you should choose a different group to write about.
Respect Boundaries: When working in social communities, particularly private or insular ones, it’s important to remember that people have a right to confidentiality and boundaries. So, do not screenshot private conversations in private servers, deidentify posts (replacing usernames with A, B, C labels) if posting screenshots, do not report on sensitive conversations, or do so obliquely (e.g. ‘Immediately before, A had just revealed that they have a serious illness’). You are expected to ask for consent to repost or report on an interactions not occurring in public forums or sites. Again, these are humans with lives and emotions, and you need to respect that.
Respect our content policies: This goes without saying, but please attend to our community content policies, and when in doubt, link with a content warning.
Respect your classmates: You’re highly encouraged to interact with your classmates’ posts, but as you do, be kind, avoid attacks, abusive posts, trolling, or ALL CAPS, and be mindful to avoid the serious problems listed on my discussion post rubric.
Be curious: You are spending time on something, but that doesn’t guarantee it’ll make a good final project, or even prove interesting. That’s life, we all go down the occasional blind alley, and it’s OK. You will not be penalized for going down a path that turns out to be less interesting than you thought, and if some of your hours are ‘wasted’ on an idea that doesn’t pan out, there was no waste, you learned something. So look at things that interest you, even if it’s not immediately clear that there’s a future in this line of research. You might be surprised to find something incredible where you weren’t sure there was anything worth considering.
Look at many questions: You’re not required to spend all of your time each week on one question. Feel free to chase something down, but ultimately decide to write something else up for your field report. You can talk about everything you tried in your time log, but it doesn’t all need to be included if you’d rather spend more time on one topic.
Keep your final report in mind: As you find something that intrigues you, be thinking about whether it could be (a part of) your final report for the quarter. Not everything you do has to build towards your project, but you’re wise to use your field logs to narrow your focus some.
Although you’re welcome to go ‘lone wolf’, you are strongly encouraged to work jointly on your report with your group members, and although just one of you (chosen amongst yourselves) will post the final product, you’ll include the names of all group members who worked on it in the initial post, and each of you will submit your timesheets independently as replies, with the text ‘Please see the parent post for the full field report’. If you’re working on a group, your field reports will likely be longer and more effortful, as more folks are involved.
Your research time log is very simple. Below your report post (or as a reply to your group’s joint report), you’ll append a small log for each of your three hours spent in the format below:
date - starttime - duration - location - focus
So, a three hour week might look like:
2DEC2023 - 3pm - 1 hour - At home - Spent time on ytmnd.com investigating the memes of a bygone era, realized that these audio-visual memes are interesting, but probably not good for my planned experiment.
4DEC2023 - 4pm - 1 hour - In my car waiting for my wife - Looked up the history of advice animals, taking notes on this early form of meme, and collected 22 of them to show to people
5DEC2023 - 9:30pm - 30 mins - At home - Posted advice animals the class discord full of gen-z folks, observed their reactions and catalogued their responses for my field report
6DEC2023 - 8:30am - 30 mins - At the coffee cart - Wrote up this week’s field report on the comprehensibility of old memes to college level students with my group
Although you can submit 15 and 30 minute increments, let’s keep it to 15 minute granularity at the minimum. You’re also welcome to add more detailed discussion, if it’s interesting or you feel strong need to share!
So, each week we expect both a field report, and a research time log. Each week will get two points: One point for the field report, and one for the timelog. If you skip a week, you’ll miss the points. If you submit a time log with no field report, 1/2, and same grade if you submit a report without a time log.
I don’t want you to lie to me. This means that if there’s an occasional week where you fall a bit short, you can simply state “I only did 2 hours this week. Here’s why, and here’s three concrete steps I’m going to take to make sure it doesn’t happen next week”. But if you’ve done no work, you’ll get no credit, and this will be the week that you drop, because we’re dropping your lowest week.
Your final project for this class should be viewed as the culmination of your field reported research: In short, you’re expect to take the methods you’ve learned this quarter and apply them in greater depth to some aspect of language or meme use in a community online, teaching the world what you’ve learned in depth. This is your chance to ‘drill down’ into one particular area of our massive domain, and really engage in detail with your analysis. You can do this as an academic paper, as a website, or, if you’d prefer, as a YouTube-style video essay or series of TikToks.
Your week seven field report will be a project proposal. The precise desires for the proposal are discussed in the final project guide and rubric.
You are encouraged to work in groups of up to eight people from this class, although the assignment can be completed alone if you prefer. In group settings, provided everybody agrees that all members have participated equally, all members will receive the same grade. Please see the “group work” section of the syllabus for more details. You will grade your final project according to the final project guide and rubric.
No, that wasn’t a typo. You’re grading it, not me. I am in full pedagogical goblin mode here. You’ll write the project using the the final project guide and rubric, and submit your grade as a part of the coversheet. We’ll take a look at projects, offer feedback where desired, and adjust (up or down) if you’re way off, but you are choosing your own adventure.
I’ll take late projects, but to be fair to the people who worked to turn them in on time, you’ll be penalized at 30% per day. So, a 90%-quality project will get a 60% turned in one day late, a 30% if turned in two days late. Projects more than 3 days late will not be accepted.
Because so much of linguistic research is analysis rather than rote memorization or “learn these facts”, attending each week’s synchronous session, focused on this kind of analysis, is mandatory for this class. You will be awarded participation points when you are present and participating in class. Although the exact method of assigning participation points will vary class-by-class, to be counted as participating, be sure to…
You will be graded out of half of the possible participation points. This means that if you can’t make one of the sessions, make sure to check out the activity and review the recordings (when present), but there won’t be make-up assignments, so you can just drop it like it’s hot. If you must miss more than this for medical or good cause reasons (rather than a second class scheduled over it or a purposeful time zone conflict), contact Will to arrange alternative assignments.
Please note: I’m dropping half the points out of compassion for students who try to attend every session and can’t, not because you’ll be fine if you skip half the classes. Students who skip class regularly, even when it ‘doesn’t hurt their grade’, usually end up doing poorly in the class, and students who expect us to do extra work to support their skipping class (e.g. ‘excusing’ random days because they’ve skipped a lot of classes, or asking ‘can you calculate my current participation grade so I know how many more classes I can miss’) without extenuating circumstances leave an extremely poor impression.
There are no extra credit opportunities in this class, because you effectively get to choose your final grade with your time and effort. The grade you get is your choice, and it’s on you if you choose poorly.
Before asking for ‘additional extra credit’ or other course exceptions, please see my page on student requests to get a sense of what kinds of requests are welcome, and which are unlikely to be received well.
I’m happy to have you work in groups for the final projects for this class, and you’ll be doing a lot of work together. However, you will always need to disclose who you worked with and explain the contributions of each person in the group to the assignment.
For the final project, you may divide sections among yourselves, with one person working on Section A, the next on B, so long as you transparently discuss it. But remember, only one grade will be assigned, and when a paper is turned in with your name on it, you are responsible for all of the content, and any problems, in the final project.
If specific problems or asymmetries in the amount of work being done arise in your group which cannot be resolved by mature and conflict-deescalating discussion among group members, you’re welcome to reach out to the instructor, but this should be your last resort.
During this quarter, some synchronous class sessions which are mostly lecture-focused may be ‘podcasted’, but other sessions will not be (or, more accurately, the podcast won’t be useful). You are responsible for attending the sessions, and if you can’t, you’re expected to do the work on your own.
You are highly encouraged to join office hours or help sessions to ask content questions, ask for clarifications about assignments, to ask for more information on a subject that interests you, or to get help on homeworks. Helping you learn this material is quite literally our job, so having students in office hours is no inconvenience.
Do not email us course content or homework questions! If you have a question about course material, post it on Canvas, such that everybody can benefit from the answers (because chances are, they’re struggling in the same places). Adminstrative questions (or questions you’d like to discuss in private) should still be sent to the instructor via email.
If you feel that a grade has been assigned in error you should **submit a regrade request* in an e-mail to the Instructor (wstyler@ucsd.edu) cc’ing your TAs.
Check my Grade Change Guidelines before you submit your request, to make sure it’s a kind of grade change we can approve.
You must submit your request within seven days of that particular assignment being returned/released. All grades more than seven days old are final, erroneous or not.
This means that you’ll want to look over every assignment as soon as it’s given back, so that any possible errors can be addressed, and so that you’ll learn from any mistakes.
This is a collaborative class, but plagiarism and other academic integrity fouls are still a problem. Please, don’t be a cheater, for your sake and ours, and refer to the UCSD policy below for more information.
Examining language and languages inevitably leads to discussions of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, politics, nationality, etc. Opinions are welcome, but all students must be mindful and respectful of others in the class. Speak with others using respectful and kind language, just as you’d like them to do with you, and focus your discussion on the ideas, rather than individuals. Finally, remember that as we discuss and evaluate our conversations, the focus will be on the impact on an individual or group, not the intention or motivation of the actor.
Also, if you feel uncomfortable or hurt by a discussion, please do reach out to Will sooner rather than later, so we can talk things out and address the issue, or reduce the impact in the future.
All requests for special accommodations must be brought to the instructor in the first two weeks of class, ideally sooner. This includes things like religious holidays, university-sponsored events, athletic schedules, conflicts with exam dates, and disability services notes. Because running a big course is quite complex, if I don’t find out about it in the first two weeks, I may not be able to help.
It’s better to ask permission than forgiveness! If something’s gone wrong (whether it be in class, recitation, or life in general), let me know (even if just in general terms) ASAP by email or in office hours. There are many exceptions that I’m willing to authorize ahead of time to a student who’s trying that I won’t offer after the fact.
Effort Matters! We will always go the extra mile to help students who are clearly putting in effort, even if they’re struggling, and we want students making the effort to succeed. But on the other side, cutting corners, ‘blowing off’ the class, grade grubbing/lawyering, or turning in low-effort work is disrespectful, and won’t help your cause. Put in the effort for us, and we’ll put in effort for you.
Students talking among themselves in lecture must do so quietly and in a language spoken by less than 500 people.
We will gladly honor your request to be addressed using your preferred name or gender pronoun in cases where it differs from that on the course roster. Please let us know quickly, remind us often, and accept our apologies if we forget.
Although it will not affect the grading scale or process, for the purposes of this class, ‘P/NP’ will be held to stand for ‘Poggers/Non-Poggers’.
Will will unabashedly use as many really awful puns as possible given the course content. If you have a pun allergy, run. Flee. Escape. There is still time!
Information contained in the course syllabus, other than the grading policies, may be subject to change, as deemed appropriate by the instructor.
Thank you very much to the LIGN 87 ‘Linguistics of Memes’ Freshman Seminar students in Winter of 2021 who helped to blaze the trail for this course, as well as the first group in Winter of 2022 who helped me turn this into a real thing. Also, thanks to Asao Inoue for the comprehensive labor-based contract grading resources, and to my secret cabal of meme sharers, who know who they are. We also respectfully acknowledge that we live, learn, and work on the land of the Kumeyaay/Kumiai nation. Whose land are you on?
Students requesting accommodations for this course due to a disability must provide a current Authorization for Accommodation (AFA) letter issued by the Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD) which is located in University Center 202 behind Center Hall. Students are required to present their AFA letters to Faculty (please make arrangements to contact me privately) and to the OSD Liaison in the department in advance so that accommodations may be arranged.
Contact the OSD for further information - osd@ucsd.edu | 858.534.4382
Each student in this course is expected to abide by the UC San Diego Policy on Integrity of Scholarship and to excel with integrity. Any work submitted by a student in this course for academic credit will be the student’s own work.
Academic dishonesty (actions like cheating, plagiarism, aid of academic dishonesty, fabrication, lying, blackmail, bribery, and threatening behavior) will generally result in poor recall and learning of the material, and aren’t acceptable at UCSD. In cases of academic dishonesty, possible in-class academic sanctions can include anything from a zero on the assignment/test/project in question, to a blanket lowering of your final grade by X%, to an assigned and non-negotiable grade of “F” in the course. These sanctions are assigned at the sole discretion of the instructor, and as every case is unique, additional sanctions not listed above may apply. But again, remember that doing the assignments honestly is a part of the learning process, and failure to do so will hurt you more than anybody else.
It is the policy of the university to make reasonable efforts to accommodate students having bona fide religious conflicts with scheduled examinations by providing alternative times or methods to take such examinations. If a student anticipates that a scheduled examination will occur at a time at which his or her religious beliefs prohibit participation in the examination, the student must submit to the instructor a statement describing the nature of the religious conflict and specifying the days and times of conflict.
For final examinations, the statement must be submitted no later than the end of the second week of instruction of the quarter. For all other examinations, the statement must be submitted to the instructor as soon as possible after a particular examination date is scheduled.
If a conflict with the student’s religious beliefs does exist, the instructor will attempt to provide an alternative, equitable examination that does not create undue hardship for the instructor or for the other students in the class.
The University of California, in accordance with applicable federal and state laws and university policies, does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy (including pregnancy, childbirth, and medical conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth), physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, ancestry, marital status, age, sexual orientation, citizenship, or service in the uniformed services (including membership, application for membership, performance of service, application for service, or obligation for service in the uniformed services). The university also prohibits harassment based on these protected categories, including sexual harassment, as well as sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking. The nondiscrimination policy covers admission, access, and treatment in university programs and activities.
If students have questions about student-related nondiscrimination policies or concerns about possible discrimination or harassment, they should contact the Office for the Prevention of Harassment & Discrimination (OPHD) at (858) 534- 8298, ophd@ucsd.edu, or reportbias.ucsd.edu.
Campus policies provide for a prompt and effective response to student complaints. This response may include alternative resolution procedures or formal investigation. Students will be informed about complaint resolution options.
A student who chooses not to report may still contact CARE at the Sexual Assault Resource Center for more information, emotional support, individual and group counseling, and/or assistance with obtaining a medical exam. For off-campus support services, a student may contact the Center for Community Solutions. Other confidential resources on campus include Counseling and Psychological Services, Office of the Ombuds, and Student Health Services.
CARE at the Sexual Assault Resource Center - 858.534.5793 or sarc@ucsd.edu Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) - 858.534.3755