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Kathryn Murata

YouTube - Monty Python - Argument Clinic - 1 views

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    Funny Monty Python video on argument not necessarily pertaining to logical fallacies. However, I challenge others to find at least one logical fallacy in this chaotic argument.
Lisa Stewart

The Enthymeme in Health Advertisements - 2 views

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    "It's what you've been craving. Peaceful sleep without a struggle. That's what Lunesta is all about: helping most people fall asleep quickly, and stay asleep all through the night. It is easy to see that this text presents an argument directed towards getting the readers of the ad to buy Lunesta. However, it may be a little harder at first to see what the premises are that are put forward to support this conclusion, and what the form of the argument is. The argument evidently has some sort of structure, but it may not be apparent what that structure is. We begin by making a so-called key list of the statements that make up the explicit premises and conclusion of the argument."
nataliekaku22

Hashtags may not be words, grammatically speaking, but they help spread a message - 0 views

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    This article talks about the different arguments for the linguistic status of hashtags. One of the arguments is that they are like compound words. Compound words are words that are a combination of two existing words which were formed into one word (ex. notebook, living room or long-term). Another suggestion is that hashtagging is a less formal and completely new process of forming words. It suggests that there are no rules in hashtagging other than that there can be no spaces in between the parts. The authors argue that their research goes against both arguments by saying that they shouldn't be considered as words at all, but that they are still very interesting linguistically because they function in many different roles in language use on social media.
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    This article argues that hashtags are artificial words based on their research of a collection of millions of New Zealand English tweets. Hashtags are a widespread feature of social media posts and used widely in search engines. Anything with the intent of attracting attention comes with a memorable hashtag like #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, and #COVID19. There are two main theories regarding the linguistic status of hashtags. One claims hashbrowns are like compound words. This is a way of making new words by gluing two or more words together. Another claims that hashtags are words that arise from a completely different process. Hashtagging is a much looser word-formation process with fewer restrictions. However, these researchers argue against both these conjectures. They suggest hashtags are written to look orthographically like words but their function is much broader and similar to keywords in a library catalogue or search engine. The researchers also created their own term, hybrid hashtags, meaning hashtags comprising one or more words from two distinct languages. Their example of hybrid hashtags included #kiaora4that and #letssharegoodtereostories which combined English and Maori, the indigenous language of New Zealand.
Ryan Catalani

Understanding Babble as a Key to Development - NYTimes.com - 1 views

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    The experimenters argue that a baby's vocalizations signal a state of focused attention, a readiness to learn language. When parents respond to babble by naming the object at hand, the argument goes, children are more likely to learn words. So if a baby looks at an apple and says, "Ba ba!" it's better to respond by naming the apple than by guessing, for example, "Do you want your bottle?"
Lisa Stewart

The 3 Basic Issues - Figures of Speech - 5 views

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    a simple scheme for identifying the underlying issue in an argument
duramoto19

The Backfire Effect: Why Facts Don't Win Arguments | Big Think - 0 views

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    The current political and social state is the most polarized its been in recent history. So, why does no one want to listen to those with opposing views? The answer is in the backfire effect. This effect is where a person strengthens their own points of view by denying the plausibility of the opposing view. Facts, opinions, nothing gets past the backfire effect. The only way to teach someone is if they want to learn.
Ryan Catalani

Hen: Sweden's new gender neutral pronoun causes controversy. - 0 views

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    "...for many Swedes, gender equality is not enough. Many are pushing for the Nordic nation to be not simply gender-equal but gender-neutral. ... Just days after International Women's Day a new pronoun, hen (pronounced like the bird in English), was added to the online version of the country's National Encyclopedia. ... critics believe it can be psychologically and socially damaging, especially for children ... toddlers cannot weigh arguments for and against linguistic interventions and they do not conceive of or analyze gender roles in the way that adults do ... One Swedish school got rid of its toy cars because boys 'gender-coded' them and ascribed the cars higher status than other toys."
Ryan Catalani

Arguing About Language - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    "The pure traditionalist and pure revisionist positions are both oblivious to what is at stake in arguments over language. The traditionalists claim they are just asking us to play by the rules of the game; revisionists say they are just asking us to accept the fact that language is always changing. But both sides ignore the profound consequences of how we speak."
Lara Cowell

8 Punctuation Marks That Are Now Extinct - 2 views

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    On the face of it, punctuation is not the most electrifying of subjects. A comma is a comma, a period is a period, and a semicolon is an argument waiting to happen. Look past squabbles over grammar, however, and punctuation's staid veneer peels back to reveal a seething, Darwinian struggle that has played out over two millennia of the written word.
Lisa Stewart

Figures of Rhetoric in Advertising Language - 9 views

  • the discipline of rhetoric was the primary repository of Western thinking about persuasion
  • The principal purpose of this paper is to contribute a richer and more systematic conceptual understanding of rhetorical structure in advertising language
  • Rhetoricians maintain that any proposition can be expressed in a variety of ways, and that in any given situation one of these ways will be the most effective in swaying an audience.
  • ...33 more annotations...
  • the manner in which a statement is expressed may be more important
  • a rhetorical figure occurs when an expression deviates from expectation
  • With respect to metaphor, for instance, listeners are aware of conventions with respect to the use of words, one of which might be formulated as, words are generally used to convey one of the lead meanings given in their dictionary entry. A metaphor violates that convention, as in this headline for Johnson & Johnson bandaids, "Say hello to your child's new bodyguards," accompanied by a picture of bandaids emblazoned with cartoon characters (from Table 2)
  • listeners know exactly what to do when a speaker violates a convention: they search for a context that will render the violation intelligible. If context permits an inference that the bandaid is particularly strong, or that the world inhabited by children is particularly threatening, then the consumer will achieve an understanding of the advertiser's statement.
  • every figure represents a gap. The figure both points to a translation (the impossibility in this context of translating "Say hello to your child's new petunias" is the key to its incomprehensibility), and denies the adequacy of that translation, thus encouraging further interpretation.
  • metaphors that have become frozen or conventional: e.g., the sports car that "hugs" the road.
  • an important function of rhetorical figures is to motivate the potential reader.
  • Berlyne (1971) found incongruity
  • (deviation) to be among those factors that call to and arrest attention.
  • "pleasure of the text"--the reward that comes from processing a clever arrangement of signs.
  • Berlyne's (1971) argument, based on his research in experimental aesthetics, that incongruity (deviation) can produce a pleasurable degree of arousal.
  • Familiar examples of schematic figures would include rhyme and alliteration, while metaphors and puns would be familiar examples of tropic figures.
  • Schemes can be understood as deviant combinations, as in the headline, "Now Stouffers makes a real fast real mean Lean Cuisine."
  • This headline is excessively regular because of its repetition of sounds and words. It violates the convention that sounds are generally irrelevant to the sense of an utterance, i.e., the expectation held by receivers that the distribution of sounds through an utterance will be essentially unordered except by the grammatical and semantic constraints required to make a well-formed sentence. Soundplay can be used to build up meaning in a wide variety of ways (Ross 1989; van Peer 1986).
  • Many tropes, particularly metaphors and puns effected in a single word, can be understood as deviant selections. Thus, in the Jergens skin care headline (Table 2), "Science you can touch," there is a figurative metaphor, because "touch" does not belong to the set of verbs which can take as their object an abstract collective endeavor such as Science.
  • For example, a rhyme forges extra phonemic links among the headline elements.
  • "Performax protects to the max," the consumer has several encoding possibilities available, including the propositional content, the phonemic equivalence (Performax = max), and the syllable node (other words endin
  • Because they are over-coded, schemes add internal redundancy to advertising messages. Repetition within a text can be expected to enhance recall just as repetition of the entire text does.
  • The memorability of tropes rests on a different mechanism. Because they are under-coded, tropes are incomplete in the sense of lacking closure. Tropes thus invite elaboration by the reader. For example, consider the Ford ad with the headline "Make fun of the road" (Table 2). "Road" is unexpected as a selection from the set of things to mock or belittle. Via
  • This level of the framework distinguishes simple from complex schemes and tropes to yield four rhetorical operations--repetition, reversal, substitution, destabilization.
  • s artful deviation, irregularity, and complexity that explain the effects of a headline such as "Say hello to your child's new bodyguards," and not its assignment to the category 'metaphor.'
  • The rhetorical operation of repetition combines multiple instances of some element of the expression without changing the meaning of that element. In advertising we find repetition applied to sounds so as to create the figures of rhyme, chime, and alliteration or assonance (Table 2). Repetition applied to words creates the figures known as anaphora (beginning words), epistrophe (ending words), epanalepsis (beginning and ending) and anadiplosis (ending and beginning). Repetition applied to phrase structure yields the figure of parison, as in K Mart's tagline: "The price you want. The quality you need." A limiting condition is that repeated words not shift their meaning with each repetition (such a shift would create the trope known as antanaclasis, as shown further down in Table 2).
  • the possibility for a second kind of schematic figure, which would be produced via an operation that we have named reversal. Th
  • rhetorical operation of reversal combines within an expression elements that are mirror images of one another.
  • The rhetorical operation of destabilization selects an expression such that the initial context renders its meaning indeterminate. By "indeterminate" we mean that multiple co-existing meanings are made available, no one of which is the final word. Whereas in a trope of substitution, one says something other than what is meant, and relies on the recipient to make the necessary correction, in a trope of destabilization one means more than is said, and relies on the recipient to develop the implications. Tropes of substitution make a switch while tropes of destabilization unsettle.
  • Stern, Barbara B. (1988), "How Does an Ad Mean? Language in Services Advertising," Journal of Advertising, 17 (Summer), 3-14.
  • "Pleasure and Persuasion in Advertising: Rhetorical Irony as a Humor Technique," Current Issues & Research in Advertising, 12, 25-42.
  • Tanaka, Keiko (1992), "The Pun in Advertising: A Pragmatic Approach," Lingua, 87, 91-102.
  • "The Bridge from Text to Mind: Adapting Reader Response Theory to Consumer Research," Journal of Consumer Research,
  • Gibbs, Raymond W. (1993), "Process and Products in Making Sense of Tropes," in Metaphor and Thought, 2nd ed
  • Grice, Herbert P. (1989), Studies in the Way of Words, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Leigh, James H. (1994), "The Use of Figures of Speech in Print Ad Headlines," Journal of Advertising, 23(June), 17-34.
  • Mitchell, Andrew A. (1983), "Cognitive Processes Initiated by Exposure to Advertising," in Information Processing Research in Advertising, ed. Richard J. Harris, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 13-42.
ipentland16

Could Bilingual Education Mold Kids' Brains to Better Resist Distraction? | MindShift - 2 views

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    For decades, psychologists cautioned against raising children bilingual. They warned parents and teachers that learning a second language as a child was bad for brain development. But recent studies have found exactly the opposite. Researchers now believe that when people learn another language, they develop cognitive advantages that improve their attention, self-control and ability to deal with conflicting information.
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    Raising bilingual children is actually good for them. They develop a better ability to concentrate and deal with conflicting information. This could indicate that nurturing a child's brain can increase their language capabilities.
ipentland16

Improve Your Baby's Language Skills Even Before He Says a Word - 4 views

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    Playing a series of sounds to infants can speed up the way they process language and can also predict which infants will have trouble with language as they develop. Researchers concluded that processing language sounds sets up the neural foundation in babies.
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    The way that babies react to certain sounds can indicate their learning patterns and language capabilities later in life.
Lara Cowell

Delinquent. Dropout. At-Risk. What's In A Name? - 0 views

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    Much of our recent reporting, especially from New Orleans, has focused on young people who are neither in school, nor working. There are an estimated five and a half million of them, ages 16 to 24, in the United States. But what do we call them? The nomenclature has fluctuated widely over the decades. And each generation's preferred term is packed with assumptions- economic, social, cultural, and educational - about the best way to frame the issue. Essentially, each name contains an argument about who's at fault, and where to find solutions.
Lara Cowell

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/44729/20150408/spotting-a-narcissist-is-tougher-than-... - 2 views

Some possible signs, according to various researchers cited in the article: 1. amount of bragging 2. efforts to elevate themselves by comparing down to others 3. efforts to draw attention to onesel...

Matt Perez

Half of us text our families - when we're all at home - 9 views

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    Is technology bringing us closer together or driving us farther apart? "Digital storage space is now 40% more likely to cause family arguments than hogging the landline (do people still have landlines?), with 50% of us admitting to accidentally deleting stuff and 25% losing photos or contacts."
Vittoria Capria

Sarah Palin - 5 views

shared by Vittoria Capria on 06 May 10 - Cached
Lisa Stewart liked it
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    She misses the point when she starts sentences but doesn't finish them. She just has a lot of statements but fails to actually argue her point. She also has a weak analogy between Russia and Alaska. Her ideas are based on their geographical proximity but not much else.
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    Her arguments would be more persuasive simply by being able to complete her sentences and stating her points more boldly and not in such a questioning tone. It also seems that she doesn't answer the questions, as her answers are always vague and extremely indirect.
Lisa Stewart

The Argument Against Headphones - NYTimes.com - 4 views

  • According to that report, headphone users who listen to music at high volumes for more than an hour a day risk permanent hearing loss after five years.
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    Be sure to read this--it could affect your ability to acquire the nuances of the English language!
Lara Cowell

Finding 'lost' languages in the brain: Far-reaching implications for unconscious role o... - 0 views

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    An infant's mother tongue creates neural patterns that the unconscious brain retains years later, even if the child totally stops using the language, (as can happen in cases of international adoption) according to a new joint study by scientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital. The study offers the first neural evidence that traces of the "lost" language remain in the brain and suggests that early-acquired information is not only maintained in the brain, but unconsciously influences brain processing for years, perhaps for life -- potentially indicating a special status for information acquired during optimal periods of development. This could counter arguments not only within the field of language acquisition, but across domains, that neural representations are overwritten or lost from the brain over time.
madisonmeister17

The case against e-readers: Why reading paper books is better for your mind. - 0 views

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    There are pros and cons to electronic readers and hard copies. E-readers have several pros, such as the ability to get almost any book the reader may want, it saves trees and it is also easy to carry around. However, more and more people are rejecting e-readers and returning to hear copies. The two leading arguments for hard-copy would be that they prevent you from getting distracted. It has also been shown that readers retain information better through hard-copy books.
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