How do you pronounce rooibos? The name of this tea comes from the Afrikaans words rooi bos, meaning “red bush.” Rooibos is pronounced ROY-boss, but it’s also called bush tea, red tea, or redbush tea. http://waywordradio.org

1665-Caller-Matt-Rooibos

Meg in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, gets why the state highway department encourages drivers to use their blinkers when changing lanes, but placing a digital sign at the Sagamore Bridge that reads Use Ya Blinkah is, well, a lexical bridge too far. Meg’s annoyed by the sign, contending that it makes fun of the way locals talk. Rendering speech this way is known as eye dialect, and in the case of these kinds of digital signs, they do get the point across. http://waywordradio.org

1665-Caller-Meg-Use-Your-Blinkah

Ophelia in Johnson City, Tennessee, wonders about the exclamation her great-grandmother often used when something surprised her: Cat bristle! That may be her own version of a minced oath, although it fits with the idea of how a cat’s tail might look when its surprised. http://waywordradio.org

1665-Caller-Ophelia-Cat-Bristle

In 1968, students at Cheyenne High School in Cheyenne, Wyoming, compiled a collection of their own slang, including the word Clyde, used to refer to one’s head, as in Use your Clyde! http://waywordradio.org

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Words of wisdom from G.K. Chesterton: The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder. http://waywordradio.org

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The word preppy has undergone a considerable evolution since Boomers first used it to describe attire that reflects a conservative, polished, East-coast prep school look. For middle-schoolers today, preppy connotes an entirely different aesthetic: girly clothing that’s frilly, often Barbie-pink or decorated with animal prints. In his new book, Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language (Bookshop|Amazon) linguist Adam Aleksic shows the role social media algorithms played in the development of an entirely new sense of the word. http://waywordradio.org

1665-Lex-Bag-Preppy

When does late at night change to early in the morning? 2:30 a.m.? 3:00 a.m.? Another time? http://waywordradio.org

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Besides the Use Ya Blinkah roadside sign seen in Massachusetts, seasonal messages on digital highway signs have included the Halloween-themed Hocus Pocus--Drive with Focus and the Fourth of July admonition Don’t Drive Star-Spangled Hammered. The U.S. federal government now discourages the use of such highway punnery, declaring that they are too distracting and unclear. http://waywordradio.org

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A listener has a suggestion for a word “a state of dread” or “not wanting something to happen,” and that word is unticipation. http://waywordradio.org

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Quiz Guy John Chaneski has been pondering the -ly often found at the of adverbs, and that inspired him to craft a puzzle about  words that seem to be adverbs, but aren’t. For example, what fake adverb is suggested by this clue: Like a sudden charge against an enemy, it does it like actor Mineo or baseballer Bando. http://waywordradio.org

1665-Word-Quiz-Fake-Adverbs

On Whiteness
Héloïse Charital (Design Curating & Writing, MA) and Baiba Soma (Well Being, BA) in conversation with Liesbeth Fit and Arif Kornweitz

Whiteness is a construct that maintains credence in contemporary society. From the illusion that white products are newer, safer, more hygienic, and somehow more “pure”, to the false assertion that Ancient Greek sculptures were and are supposed to be white, whiteness is a myth that not only promotes throw-away consumerism, but also erases history, fuels white supremacy, and incites racist violence. 
In different ways, Héloïse Charital with her project When is White, White Enough? and Baiba Soma with her project Expired White problematise the signification of whiteness. By staging a re-enactment of the infamous “cleaning” of the Parthenon sculptures by the British Museum at the late 1930s, Héloïse Charital brings the subtle violence enacted through the Museum’s maintenance activities to the fore. By salvaging discarded white consumer goods, and transforming them into “new” products, Baiba Soma challenges the prevailing mentality that perpetuates throw-away consumerism. They speak of their sources, their understandings of research and materialisation, and their publics. Two contrasting examples of “digging into whiteness”, the conversation points to the necessity of gaining greater literacy and awareness of how whiteness continues to perpetuate the unequal distribution of power through myth formation and its institutionalisation.

DAE Design Research Podcast - Baiba Soma and Héloïse Charital on Whiteness

A selection of Bachelor and Master students from Design Academy Eindhoven talk about their final graduation projects. They share the world behind their ideas and talk about their motivation, design-process and the research that led to their work. More info: www.designacademy.nl

DAE Design Research Podcast - Baiba Soma and Héloïse Charital on Whiteness

Design Research Podcast

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