This week I’ve been enjoying time with family, so just a quick post today. It is Boxing Day, after all. Depending on where you’re from, you might be celebrating by going shopping, giving to charity, or boxing up gifts (and leftovers!) for your servants.

• Just the facts, ma’am: from timeanddate.com
• A bit more fun about Boxing Day from mentalfloss.com

Or if you’re from the US, announcing Boxing Day brings a big “Huh?”

If you tell a 10-year-old it’s Boxing Day, I learned today, he starts doing shadow-boxing.
 
If you tell his mother, she guesses boxing up gifts to return.
 
Search YouTube for Boxing Day and you get non-US ads for Boxing Day sales. And an occasional funny video

​So I’ll leave you with a Boxing Day wish:
May you enjoy time with friends and family today, with no need for boxing matches or gift returns. And if the day does leave you feeling empty, may you ease the pain by giving gifts to your servants.  Or a laugh to yourself.

Ah, the many genres that help make Christmas what it is.
 
‘Tis the season for holidays and all the genres that go along with them—like Christmas cards and Hannukah blessings—and the associated language—like writing “’Tis” and singing “fa la la.” I’m a sucker for all things Christmas, from Christmas music to Christmas movies, but I can admit the season has its down sides, too.
 
In honor of the season, I’ve written my own version of the Christmas carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas”--“The Twelve Genres of Christmas,” with many liberties taken.

If you can make it to the end of this repetitive song, you’ll find my second, even more Scrooge-like variation on the lyrics. I almost included my own badly sung audio version, in the spirit of the season—a time for doing things for others and making a fool of yourself in public. But after listening to a test run I decided to delete it as my gift to you.  If any of you would like to send me your own recording of my lyrics, I'll happily add it to this post.
 
For more professional—and funnier—versions of this traditional Christmas carol, check out the links in a column in The Atlantic from last year, including a Muppets version and a classic drunk version by Fay McKay. Or watch one of my favorite parodies (love the genre) by the old Canadian characters Bob and Doug, animated version:

Note that many versions of the lyrics have the gifts “sent,” but I grew up singing “gave,” so “gave” it is.
 
Without further ado, I give you
 
The Twelve Genres of Christmas
 as interpreted by Amy Devitt

In the first genre of Christmas,
The season gave to me
A shopping list eleven pages long
 
In the second genre of Christmas,
The season gave to me
Two flight reservations
And a shopping list eleven pages long
 
In the third genre of Christmas,
The season gave to me
Three Santa letters
Two flight reservations
And a shopping list eleven pages long
 
In the fourth genre of Christmas,
The season gave to me
Four light displays
Three Santa letters
Two flight reservations
And a shopping list eleven pages long
 
In the fifth genre of Christmas,
The season gave to me
Five to-do lists!
Four light displays
Three Santa letters
Two flight reservations
And a shopping list eleven pages long
 
In the sixth genre of Christmas,
The season gave to me
Sixteen checkout lines
Five to-do lists!
Four light displays
Three Santa letters
Two flight reservations
And a shopping list eleven pages long
 
In the seventh genre of Christmas,
The season gave to me
Seventy online orders
Sixteen checkout lines
Five to-do lists!
Four light displays
Three Santa letters
Two flight reservations
And a shopping list eleven pages long
 
In the eighth genre of Christmas,
The season gave to me
Eighty cards unwritten
Seventy online orders
Sixteen checkout lines
Five to-do lists!
Four light displays
Three Santa letters
Two flight reservations
And a shopping list eleven pages long
 
In the ninth genre of Christmas,
The season gave to me
Ninety Hallmark movies
Eighty cards unwritten
Seventy online orders
Sixteen checkout lines
Five to-do lists!
Four light displays
Three Santa letters
Two flight reservations
And a shopping list eleven pages long
 
In the tenth genre of Christmas,
The season gave to me
Ten holiday parties
Ninety Hallmark movies
Eighty cards unwritten
Seventy online orders
Sixteen checkout lines
Five to-do lists!
Four light displays
Three Santa letters
Two flight reservations
And a shopping list eleven pages long
 
In the eleventh genre of Christmas,
The season gave to me
Eleven drunken toastings
Ten holiday parties
Ninety Hallmark movies
Eighty cards unwritten
Seventy online orders
Sixteen checkout lines
Five to-do lists!
Four light displays
Three Santa letters
Two flight reservations
And a shopping list eleven pages long
 
In the twelfth genre of Christmas,
The season gave to me
Twelve Christmas carols
Eleven drunken toastings
Ten holiday parties
Ninety Hallmark movies
Eighty cards unwritten
Seventy online orders
Sixteen checkout lines
Five to-do lists!
Four light displays
Three Santa letters
Two flight reservations
And a shopping list eleven pages long

And now for one last, most cynical, revised version of the last verse, to be sung after the holidays are over:
 
In the twelve genres of Christmas, the season gave to me
Twelve forgotten lyrics
Eleven awkward conversations
Ten family fights
Nine sappy endings
Eight bragging letters
Seven missing packages
Six busted budgets
Five billion to-do lists!
$400 electric bills
Three bad mall Santas
Two cancelled flights
And a credit card bill eleven pages long
 
Happy holidays, everyone!

Why do Siri and buddies so often seem so stupid? They just don't get human language.

For six weeks, I’ve been depending on voice recognition software and dictating all of my text messages, emails, blog posts, any and all documents. I’ve mentioned before that I had shoulder surgery and had to wear a bulky shoulder sling, so I couldn’t type except one-handed. Thank goodness for Siri on my phone and dictation on all my computers. I've become quite adept at speaking in voice hyphen text comma though not as stuck as the character in Hilary Price's funny Rhymes with Orange strip comma I hope exclamation point
 
A few days ago, my surgeon gave me permission to burn the sling. (see before and after photos, below.) In honor of being sling-free, I’m dictating this paragraph and this blog post About the mistakes Voice recognition software makes in Trying to transcribe human speech (don't worry--this won't go on much longer). Wednesday nine [One thing mine] does all the time you just saw– It capitalizes words apparently at random. It also substitutes bizarre phrases and words in place of the perfectly reasonable phrases and words I say. Like writing out ”Wednesday nine” instead of  “one thing mine,” as adjusted [“it just did”]. My favorite so far in this post Was in the first paragraph. Instead of ”had to wear a bulky” shoulder sling, it wrote “how do I wear a bogey.”  I think I would’ve much preferred to wear a bogey. 

Well, I won’t keep preserving the dictation mistakes and drive us all crazy. From here on I'll correct what my dictation assistant gets wrong. Fortunately, I’ve been keeping a list of some of my favorite voice recognition errors. So let’s join Ellen DeGeneres and have fun playing with the ways computers just don’t get human language. Mostly because they just don’t get context.  

​And now for some of my own examples [some of these are NSFW, because dictation assistants apparently have dirty minds. But I will safety them up for you with strategically placed asterisks.]
 
Voice recognition software doesn’t recognize context

A little bit of context would go a long way in helping these dictators (as I started calling my dictation assistants) to figure out which words I probably meant, even if I mumbled.

In the middle of a sentence, I said the phrase “over a” and Siri substituted “Oprah.” Now I’m not a personal friend of Oprah’s [or “operas” as it wanted to say this time]. I wasn’t writing about talk shows. Or even TV. I just needed the much more common phrase ”over a.” No human would make that mistake.  Both the grammar of the sentence and the meaning from the context wouldn’t work with Oprah. But Siri decided I should be talking about Oprah. So be it. [or Soviet,  as Siri just said. Was I talking about recent Russian misdeeds?].
 
I dictated ”no human would mishear” and got back ”no human witness here.” For most human listeners, knowing that the words come in the context of a post about voice recognition software would mean they would more easily call up related words like “hear” and “mishear” rather than the unrelated “witness.” But Soviet and witness--maybe Siri has a top secret background we don't know about.
 
Humans do a lot of their hearing and understanding by interpreting the most likely meaning in a given context. Interpreting meaning is not the strength of machines.

Context would clear up a lot of the mistakes made with homonyms, too.  My dictator actually corrected above “mishear” to “miss here.” Understandable. And I can understand and even forgive its confusing “assistants” with “assistance.” But it never chooses the correct version of “your” or “you’re,” and it usually guesses wrong for “it’s” versus “its.” Humans get those wrong, too, but the context clears up some. And they would never make the other common dictator homonym mistake of using “two” for “to.”
 
Homonyms can cause spelling problems for everyone. But only voice recognition software and other machines will know the difference between the homonyms, spell each one correctly, and still use the wrong one in the wrong context.
 
Voice recognition software doesn’t recognize dialect variations

My dictation assistant doesn’t do well when two different words sound the same, as in homonyms, but it also doesn’t do well when one word can sound in two different ways. So when I get sloppy and pronounce “thing” as “thang,” my dictator knows only to write down “thank.” On the other hand, it frequently changed “sling” to “slang.” And the dialect specialist in my house found it completely reasonable that voice recognition software would hear my “bulky” as “bogey.” Apparently, my dialect is funny to some humans as well as confusing to some machines.
 
My dictator has made me aware of how much Kansas seems to have influenced my original Northern Colorado dialect. I’m embarrassed to say how often it not only hears my ”thang” but also reads my “then” as “than” and my ”and” as ”in.” It really never knows which one I’m saying, and I can’t blame it.
 
I do blame it for not being able to distinguish negative from positive verbs.  I’ve been close to trouble many times in the last six weeks from my dictator changing “do” to “don’t” and “won’t” to “will.”  I was texting a new friend about her cookie business, placing an order to show my support, and Siri changed my “Christmas tree designs for the first dozen sound good” to “Christmas tree designs for the first doesn’t sound good.” Now that would’ve shown her what I thought of her business. In fact, Siri did it again just now as I repeated the story. And by the way, every “to” in that last paragraph came out first as ”two.”
 
Like I said, computers just don’t get how context tells us humans which word is which (or is that witch is witch? Siri misses my northern pronunciation distinction between “hwich” and “witch,” too—or is that “two”?)
 
Voice recognition software doesn’t recognize appropriateness
 
These nasty little dictators have dirty mouths, too. They don’t seem to understand appropriateness—as in, that language is not appropriate here. Or “Watch your language, young lady.”
 
Instead of “talk shows” in the paragraph about Oprah above, my dictator wrote ”talk sh*t.”
 
I drafted an email to my students about bringing snacks to a class workshop. Fortunately, I caught the mistake before I sent it, so I managed to warn my students about a classmate’s allergy with the words ”no peanuts” instead of Siri’s near-rhyming caution ”no p*nis.”
 
My dictator often shortens “assistant” to its first three letters. Just for fun, I figure.
 
I bragged to my brother in a text message at Thanksgiving that my kind family was doing all the cooking so “I didn’t cook a thing.” But Siri told him that “I didn’t f*ck a  thing.” What could Siri have been thinking? Obviously not about my family’s version of Thanksgiving dinner.

Those were probably the worst examples. Similar problems pop up with auto correct, too, even without the voice recognition complication. Online you can find lots of examples of the worst auto correct mistakes. Auto correct too seems to like to embarrass us. But perhaps I’m attributing too much maliciousness to machines.
 
Sometimes, of course, I could understand why the dictator made the mistake. I’ve been known to mumble. Or so I’ve been told.
 
But other times it just seems stupid.

Voice recognition software doesn’t recognize me

I know this software is supposed to learn and get better at recognizing my voice over time. I’m sure that has happened here and there. But how then do you explain the way Siri keeps changing my name? After weeks of my signing off as Amy Devitt, thanks to Siri I signed off an email as Amy Done.
 
Even my first name has given it trouble. I can tell Siri what to call me, and it obeys my instruction. But when I’m signing off an email, it forgets everything I’ve taught it. About half the time it signs my emails as Any. It has also signed me off as Dwayne. But my personal favorite –and apparently one of Siri’s favorites too since it uses the signature so often–is when it signs me off as Baby.
 
This is just some of the fun I’ve had dictating all my texts over the last six weeks. It’s been almost as fun as wearing a big pokey shoulder sling. . . .  
 
Yes, my dictator decided this time that Bohlke was pokey. . . .
 
And yes, this last time, it chose Bohlke for bulky.  As the red squiggly line of spell checker signalled, even the dictator didn’t know who Bohlke was. But that unknown proper name still seemed more sensible to the dictator then (than) the way I pronounced bulky.
 
So maybe I really do pronounce things funny. Maybe the voice recognition software knows more than I think it does.

Nah. It still doesn’t understand context or meaning,  so it still doesn’t understand human language.
 
Until next week, signing off,
 
Baby Done. That’s me

What does "alt-right" really mean?
Who gets to say?

One of my daily newspapers, the Kansas City Star, had an article this week on the alt-right. Among other things, it included some discussion of what the term means. The New York Times had an article this week on “News outlets rethink usage of the term ‘Alt-Right.’” So the moment seems ripe (kairos, anyone?) for talking about the meanings and power of words.
 
What does any word really mean?
Who gets to say?

The debate over the term ”alt-right” is the same debate people have over other words that can define and potentially shape us. As I discussed in an earlier blog post, words have power. They influence what we think and how we view the world. It matters what we call things. 

So the Highway Patrol and Traffic Safety Administration want people to say ”crash” not “accident.”  “Accident” downplays the deliberate risky behavior that causes most crashes.
 
And some people with disabilities don’t want to be referred to as ”disabled” since it reduces them to a condition, while some autistic people prefer to be called “autistic” rather than “person with autism” because it identifies them as inherently different from others without denial or shame.

And “pro-family" supporters don’t want to be referred to as “anti-gay.” If you heard about the BuzzFeed article on the pastor to the church that Chip and Joanna Gaines (HGTV Fixer Upper house renovation stars) attend, you might have read that the church is against same-sex marriage and that the pastor believes in conversion therapy for ”homosexuals.” Many news sites headlined that the Gaines’s church was” anti-gay.” In an interview, the pastor himself denies it

​So ”pro-helping,” not” anti-gay.”

And now we have “alt-right,” another contentious term that some people are arguing we shouldn't use.

Is "alt-right" an inaccurate term, like “accident,” that softens what it refers to?  Or a misleading term, like “pro-helping,” that reframes what most people would say defines it? Or, like ”person with disability” or “autistic person,” does the alt-right group get to say what the term means and what they’re called?

It’s tricky. It has to do with what gives words meaning.
 
So what does ”alt-right” really mean? How do we know what any word means?
Spoiler: None of these is right by itself.

• Words mean what they refer to

 
If "alt-right" means just what it says, then I have two questions
 
Alt to what?

Right of what? 
​
From the parts of the word themselves, the alt-right would seem to be a place on the scale from progressive to conservative, or from the far left to the far right. At least some people describe the group as an alternative to the existing conservative or existing far right movement. So alt to the dominant movements on the political right. And right not just of center but right of the far right. 

But according to news sources and style sheets, the alt-right is not really a group who define themselves by conservative politics. While far right, the group seems most distinctly defined as a white nationalist movement. One of the leaders of the alt-right movement, Paul Ramsey, described alt-right as being "more about racial and national identity."  "If we don't have a border, we don't have nation." Ramsey also defined the group by its policies. "The alt-right, he said, supports racial and national identity, protected borders, regulated trade, traditional gender roles and restrained foreign policy. The movement also is pro-government, he said, and skeptical of democracy." Not much in their own definitions about alternative or right.

​Dictionaries are all about what words refer to, but those definitions come from the way the words are used, what they seem to refer to in actual use. "Alt-right" is a new enough term that most dictionaries haven't defined it yet. Thanks to Mike Licht, I discovered the Oxford University press definition of alt-right

So at least one dictionary maker has found that "alt-right" does refer to extreme conservative viewpoints, if not politics. Notice that these dictionary makers found trolling on online media as an essential part of what it refers to. That meaning isn't visible in the term "alt-right."

Maybe the origin of the word can tell me more about what the word first referred to.​ I tried to find the word’s first use–and the reasoning for labeling itself as alt to something and right of something. The KCStar credits Richard Spencer with coining the term. His website AlternativeRight.com is now associated with the journal Radix. In fact, I couldn’t find any definition of alt-right on the originator’s website. Instead, its About page attaches itself to the National Policy Institute, which, it says, is “dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of European people in the United States, and around the world.” No mention of alternatives, And no mention of right politics. Whatever its original meaning might have been, like all words the meaning has changed over time.

What the word refers to today seems to have little to do with its literal meaning of "alternative" and "right." That lack of transparent reference is one of the reasons opponents of the alt-right object to using the term. One commenter on a Washington Post article complained,  “STOP CALLING THEM ‘ALT-RIGHT.’ THEY ARE RACISTS, WHITE SUPREMICISTS, NAZIS.”
 
From that perspective, the invisible reference makes the term “alt-right” like “accident” rather than “crash"–an inaccurate term that softens and even hides what it refers to. Not a conservative political group but a white nationalist movement. From the perspective of members of the movement and even some of its opponents, no other term captures the full ideology, and so we should keep using it until its fuller meaning is well known and becomes the term's primary reference.
 
The National Policy Institute, in case you missed it, is the group Spencer was addressing when he raised his glass and proclaimed, “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” To which some in his audience responded with a Nazi Sieg Heil salute.  Which takes me to the next way of looking at what word means

• Words mean through their association with particular contexts

 
Much of a word's meaning comes from our association of it with other words in particular contexts. The word "text" might mean many things, including textbooks and documents, but today most people seeing the word "text" would think first of text messages because it's so commonly used in that context.
​
The little alt- prefix might be associated with alternative musical genres, like grunge or noise-rock, as Lorna Shaddick points out in her blog for oxforddictionaries.com.  The leader Spencer may have associated the alt-right with alienated teenagers and rock musicians when he described them as people who were “‘deeply alienated, intellectually, even emotionally and spiritually, from American conservatism’.” That association of alt- with music genres sticks for other people too. One commenter on the Washington Post article complained 

The prefix may associate the term with a musical genre, but most people don't place "alt-right" in the context of music of any kind. The alt-right has been most visible during the recent US election, associated with some of Donald Trump’s platforms. So its supporters praise Trump’s proposal to build a wall on the Mexican border. They support stopping immigration and sending immigrants already here to other countries. In the context of Trump's victory, Spencer points out new associations: "the Alt-Right is more deeply connected to Trumpian populism than the conservative movement. We’re the establishment now."

As the OUP dictionary definition shows, the most common context for the alt-right has been online media, where they "disseminate deliberately controversial content." In that context, the movement has become associated with  the extreme positions it's associated with more than conservative politics or alienated rock music.

And there have been more particular associations, too. A young man from Kansas and exemplary member of the alt-right chalks a sidewalk with “Make Lindsborg white again” and the outline of a dead body. The story makes the national news. Another association.

And then some members give the Nazi salute to their leader. In public. With photos to record it. Another association. This event has established an association with neo-Nazism that will likely define it from here on out.

In the context of online media and the US election, “alt-right” has become associated with these extreme events and controversial postings. For its opponents, that means the term is associated with racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and sexist statements, policies, and proposals. For those people in those contexts,
“alt-right,” like “pro-helping” rather than “anti-gay,” has become a misleading term that denies the meanings that most would associate with it. ​

• Words mean different things in different contexts

 
But what a term refers to and what association it calls up differs in different contexts, so people using the same term may mean different things. The style guidelines laid out by the Washington Post and the Associated Press apply to journalists reporting the news. In that context, terms need to be as transparent and objective as possible, to remove as much bias as possible.  In news reporting, using the term "alt-right" would allow its potentially misleading reference and hide its association with controversial positions. The AP guidelines tell journalists always to define the term to make its beliefs clearer to readers, and NPR says to explain the term. The New York Times article referred to the movement as “so-called alt-right.” “So-called” because that’s what the group members call themselves in their own contexts.

But, like “people with disabilities” and “autistic people,” does the alt-right get to decide what they call themselves? And do the rest of us have to go along with it, to allow this group to define how it wants to be identified?
 
My answer is yes to the first question, but no to the second, because different contexts give words different meanings. 

Members of the alt-right movement are themselves debating whether to continue calling themselves "alt-right" because of its recent associations. Spencer calls "alt-right" ”a household name” that has “power and resonance” and so shouldn’t be given up. “You don’t rebrand when you’re making a huge impact everywhere.” Another leader, Ramsey, says the term has been tainted too much by its association with the Nazi salute. Nazism, he says, is ”just a brand that doesn’t translate well. It scares people.” So Ramsey would change the label to something that “translates” better, now that its associations have become so tainted.
​
Notice that the leaders of the alt-right movement themselves make clear they're not trying for the most accurate descriptive term. Spencer and Ramsey both refer to the term as a brand. They use the term not to describe their identity transparently and accurately but, as the AP usage guidelines say, “as a public relations device to make its supporters’ actual beliefs less clear and more acceptable to a broader audience.” 

Unlike ”person with disability” or ”autistic person,” ”alt-right” is less a self-descriptor and more a PR strategy, a term meant to hide its scarier associations behind a less scary brand. So journalists and others have no ethical obligation to refer to members of the movement by its branding term. 
 
So what does alt-right really mean?

Whether in its reference or its associations, whether in the context of news reporting or trolling on social media, whether defined by supporters or opponents, "alt-right" has changed in meaning over time and will continue to change. Since meaning comes from the ways people use the term in particular contexts, continued use of "alt-right" in its most common contexts will continue to define and refine what it really means. I suspect that the the dictionaries of the future, when they finally include an entry for alt-right, will define it differently from the Oxford Dictionary's current definition.

On the other hand, Oxford dictionaries just announced their word of the year for 2016. It's "post-truth – an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief." As we move into a post-truth world, perhaps discussions of word meanings will become irrelevant. Words will simply mean whatever we feel and believe personally they should mean.  As if communicating about controversial terms isn't already difficult enough.