Thread 3: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of linguistic transphobia on Mumsnet

And when did anyone on FWR say that trans people don't deserve the same human rights as everyone else anyway? It's the extra rights they want, which rely on the denial of women's rights, that we object to.

It's just an inane thought terminating cliche. Women's rights are human rights as well, we're not less important.

The giant trans flag was the TwiX equivalent of my 12 year old shouting that she's not going to her bedroom... while angrily stomping to her bedroom.

Not the behaviour of someone demanding academic respect.

The trans flag tells us about her values but not about the quality of her supervision.

Or equally, could be six of one and half a dozen of the other. Student not taking advice and supervisor not being sufficiently on the ball or strict with her.

I very much doubt it given the massive trans flag on Nicci's X page

Hmm while I agree up to a point about the supervisor appearing to leave the student to carry the can, we don’t actually know what has gone on in the supervisor-student relationship here.
Sometimes students ignore advice. Sometimes they produce shoddy work. Sometimes they fail to do what they have assured the supervisor they will. The supervisor only has so much power; the university has processes to keep the student on track (an annual review usually, which will not have happened yet) and for all we know the supervisor might have been saying to the student for months, ‘Look, your research question doesn’t measure up, you need to rethink it radically or you won’t pass your annual review’ and thinking to herself, ‘bloody hell, she never takes any notice of me, maybe getting pulled to pieces at a seminar will make her sit up.’
While I still think the student should absolutely not be presenting publicly at this stage, and Aston/the supervisor has allowed that, we don’t know if it is taking place in a spirit of ‘yay, this is great work, she’s really going to put Aston on the map!’ or ‘hmm, I’m not really happy with this but it might be better for her to have the experience of presenting so let’s let her go ahead.’

Thankyou

I interpret that banner change as a deliberate and targeted fuck you directed towards us tbh.

I like that research. Aston Villa contracted them to do it, gave them explicit access for the forums etc. and the students presented their results back to Aston Villa.

Well-specified, ethical research. Senior staff have something to learn from whomever supervised those Masters students.

Meanwhile, today Aston Linguistics Institute released a promotional video.

If you're referring to the 2019 presentation Manchester Uni hosted the round table.

Please can I ask and apologies if it's already been explained on the previous threads but why do the slides have the University of Manchester on them ?

That's good to hear, @JustineMumsnet - hopefully Aston will play ball without having to get the lawyers involved.

Thank you for the update Justine.

I reckon these incidents are key in bringing the use of scraping tools to a wider audience. Data holders (like Reddit and MN) are having a 'hang on a minute' moment, followed by a robust asserting of their property. Universities and other bodies have probably been quietly doing this and getting away with it for a while. Once there's a push back and maybe the odd court case/settlement reputable organisations will come to their senses.

Excellent update @JustineMumsnet . Thank you all.

Yes, this would have been an ideal story for the Guardian.

Oh.... 🙄

Thanks @JustineMumsnet I wonder if this should be on the site stuff thread too?

Thanks for the update Justine, looking forward to the next one.

Thank you @JustineMumsnet

Looking at the wider picture between this, and what is going on with the NY Times and Reddit with scraping why is this not being picked up on a larger scale?

Thanks for the update.
It's really quite extraordinary that Aston thought they had any leverage here when it goes against their own guidelines and MN terms. I would imagine they are between a rock and a hard place now as that data is a big part of their research grant resources.

Yes, I rather think there's more going on at Aston than meets the eye. Because the MN forums are sufficiently 'open' (you don't need a password to see them) a lot of researchers see this kind of material as fair game. A good deal of forensic linguistics, as I understand it, has wrestled with the issue of authorship attribution, so it's hard to imagine that it would never have crossed anyone's mind. Particularly amongst those interested in 'transphobic hate crime', whatever that is. It's like talking to a child - 'No I wasn't doing that! - when the evidence is still in their hands.