Group items tagged

An article discusses the effect of text on communication, and why people tend to text others even when they are with others in person. It also talks about the future of texting and its possible effects on human connection.

This article talks about a few different endangered languages (Ainu, Shinnecock, Mustang, Irish, Hawaiian, and Zaza.) and what they are doing to revitalize them. They all share the different strategies that are working for them.

This article examines different ways that casual racism is seen in our daily lives. Due to certain stereotypes engrained in our society, racism is often unintentional, and people don't understand the weight of their words.

Emojis have now become the norm when it comes to online communication, however, it is now making its mark in health care. There is now interest in using emojis to help facilitate health literacy and engage patients with their own health data.

This is a super interesting article + podcast/interview about the last native speakers of Hawaiian. You learn about life and language on the Island of Niihau which is something we will never get to experience. It's 30 minutes and they discuss the tensions between second language speakers and native speakers of Hawaiian, evolution versus engineering of a language, the English influence over the Hawaiian accent, and more.

Kaitlyn Tiffany, the writer of this article from the Atlantic, examines the social media commentary surrounding Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "Milling," a sociological term, refers to the "agitated, aimless buzzing of the type of crowd that gathers in the aftermath of some bewildering catastrophe...We are all just chattering away in restless and confused excitement as we try to figure out how to think about what's happening. We want to understand which outcomes are most likely, and whether we might be obligated to help-by giving money or vowing not to share misinformation or learning the entire history of global conflict so as to avoid saying the wrong thing. We are milling." The word comes from the mid-20th-century American sociologist Herbert Blumer, who was interested in the process by which crowds converge, during moments of uncertainty and restlessness, on common attitudes and actions. As people mill about the public square, those nearby will be drawn into their behavior, Blumer wrote in 1939. "The primary effect of milling is to make the individuals more sensitive and responsive to one another, so that they become increasingly preoccupied with one another and decreasingly responsive to ordinary objects of stimulation." These days, we mill online. For a paper published in 2016, a team of researchers from the University of Washington looked at the spread of rumors and erratic chatter on Twitter about the Boston Marathon bombings in the hours after that event. They described this "milling" as "collective work to make sense of an uncertain space" by interpreting, speculating, theorizing, debating, or challenging presented information.

I thought was a really interesting and helpful website. The entries are short but you can request access to full articles as well. It has articles on LANGUAGE EFFECTS ON PERSONAL IDENTITY, PROFANITY AND MEDIA, PRAGMATISM OF CURSE WORDS, YOUTH SLANG EXPRESSION AROUND THE WORLD, IMPACTS OF "BAD" ENGLISH, UNCONVENTIONAL PHRASES AND AFRICAN RACE.

Beginning with Gangnam Style, followed by the success of K-pop groups such as BTS, interest in Korean popular culture has skyrocketed in the past decade. One way this has manifested is through a steep rise in individuals learning the Korean language. According to a study conducted by the Modern Language Association, U.S. college student enrollment in Korean language classes has risen 78% from 2009 to 2016, reaching 15,000, while total enrollment in language classes has plateaued in recent years. The only other widely learned language with significant growth in the span was American Sign Language, which increased enrollments by 37%. Despite this trend, East Asian Studies departments have struggled to accommodate the increasing demand for Korean classes. This is because Korean language classes have been historically limited and under-resourced due to the fact that language programs in East Asian Studies have traditionally focused on Mandarin and Japanese. Experts say that K-pop is the main reason for this trend, coupled with the success of several Korean TV shows and films such as Parasite and Squid Game. The current growing trend of interest in the Korean language and culture has also been an opportunity for South Korea to engage Americans in a variety of other sectors relating to the country including business, politics, economics, and history.

The Irish language, like its people, has suffered. Listen to the Story. It has been used and abused by many: British colonialists, by the Catholic Church, and by Irish revolutionaries. The first two discouraged its use, associating it with poverty and primitive wildness.

There's evidence deaf Hawaiians had been communicating with a homegrown sign language for generations, predating the arrival of missionaries, sugar plantations and the Americans who would overthrow the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893. But linguists didn't officially document the language until 2013, when research by the University of Hawaii found HSL to be a language isolate: born and bred on the Hawaiian Islands with no outside influence. More than 80 percent of its vocabulary bears no similarity to ASL. The findings launched a three-year project to document what remained of HSL, led by Lambrecht and linguistics professor James "Woody" Woodward, who has spent the last 30 years studying and documenting sign languages throughout Asia. By 2016, the team had built a video archive and developed a manuscript for an introductory HSL handbook and dictionary, featuring illustrations of Lambrecht demonstrating signs.

This article shares how the perceptions people have that teen slang and texting shortcuts are "ruining" the English language may not be true. It discusses a study that indicates language changes over the course of a lifetime rather than just during teenage years. Language evolves to fit the needs of each generation.