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ryansasser17

11 Weird Words You Should Be Using - 1 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...weird-phrases_b_4018105.html

words strange underused why language english word

shared by ryansasser17 on 24 May 16 - No Cached
  • ryansasser17 on 24 May 16
     
    The dictionary is filled with strange and wonderful words that are scandalously underused. Open at any page and you're likely to find a gem glistening in the corner, whether it's gongoozle (to stare idly at a watercourse and do nothing) or zwodder (a feeling of drowsiness).
Lara Cowell

The Glossary of Happiness - The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...the-glossary-of-happiness

happiness words lexicon culture psychology

shared by Lara Cowell on 15 May 16 - No Cached
  • Lara Cowell on 15 May 16
     
    Could understanding other cultures' concepts of joy and well-being help us reshape our own? The Positive Lexicography Project aims to catalogue foreign terms for happiness that have no direct English translation. The brainchild of Tim Lomas, a lecturer in applied positive psychology at the University of East London, the first edition included two hundred and sixteen expressions from forty-nine languages, published in January. Lomas used online dictionaries and academic papers to define each word and place it into one of three overarching categories, doing his best to capture its cultural nuances. The glossary can be found here: http://www.drtimlomas.com/#!alphabetical-lexicography/b5ojm
Ryan Catalani

"Not to Put Too Fine a Point Upon It": How Dickens Helped Shape the Lexicon : Word Rout... - 1 views

www.visualthesaurus.com/...3120

dickens new words lexicon vocabulary slang

shared by Ryan Catalani on 05 Feb 12 - No Cached
Lara Cowell liked it
  • Ryan Catalani on 05 Feb 12
     
    "Of the Dickens citations in the OED, 258 citations are the earliest recorded by the dictionary for a particular word, and 1,586 are the earliest for a particular sense of a word. Dickens was certainly an innovative writer, but these examples are not necessarily his own coinages. ... Very often the words that Dickens ushered in were from the earthy slang associated with the working class, the theatre, or the criminal underworld, and Dickens did much to make these once "vulgar" words mainstream. Dickens's very first novel, The Pickwick Papers from 1837, introduced such slang terms as butter-fingers ("a clumsy person"), flummox ("bewilder"), sawbones ("surgeon"), and whizz-bang ("sound of a gunshot"). ... One way that Dickens devised new words was by adding suffixes to old ones. He made good use of the -y suffix to make adjectives (mildewy, bulgy, swishy, soupy, waxy, trembly) and -iness to make nouns (messiness, cheesiness, fluffiness, seediness). ... Finally, no discussion of Dickensian language would be complete without mentioning the richly evocative names of his characters."
Lisa Stewart

Bombs Away - Lingua Franca - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 8 views

chronicle.com/...bombs-away

euphemism f-bomb profanity

shared by Lisa Stewart on 20 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Word came last week that Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary will from this moment on include the phrase f-bomb (along with such other newcomers as sexting, flexitarian, energy drink, aha moment, earworm, man cave, brain cramp, and life coach).
Kayla Tilton

Southern Appalachian English - 1 views

artsandsciences.sc.edu/...dictionary

shared by Kayla Tilton on 19 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Kayla Tilton on 19 Mar 14
     
    I included a couple of paragraphs about Appalachian English in my research paper!
Lisa Stewart

Figures of Rhetoric in Advertising Language - 9 views

business.scu.edu/...rhetjcr.htm

wordsrus advertising

shared by Lisa Stewart on 18 Nov 09 - Cached
  • 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.
rtakaki16

Sipster, Dready, Bitemize - One Writer Says These Should All Be Words - 2 views

www.wpr.org/e-skurnick-that-should-be-word

language new_words

shared by rtakaki16 on 08 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • rtakaki16 on 08 Oct 15
     
    Dready, sipster, boudwar, bitemize - none of these are words that you'll find in any official dictionary. But in Lizzie Skurnick's mind, they deserve some recognition in their own right.
Lisa Stewart

Save The Words - 0 views

www.savethewords.org

lexicon dictionary orthography endangered_languages

shared by Lisa Stewart on 01 Nov 10 - Cached
  • Lisa Stewart on 01 Nov 10
     
    fun
Ryan Catalani

Interview: Seven questions for K. David Harrison | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...interview

extinction endangered language

shared by Ryan Catalani on 24 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • A language hotspot is a contiguous region which has, first of all, a very high level of language diversity. Secondly, it has high levels of language endangerment. Thirdly, it has relatively low levels of scientific documentation (recordings, dictionaries, grammars, etc.). We've identified two dozen hotspots to date
  • The hotspots model allows us to visualise the complex global distribution of language diversity, to focus research on ares of greatest urgency, and also to predict where we might encounter languages not yet known to science.
  • The human knowledge base is eroding as we lose languages, exacerbated by the fact that most of them have never been written down or recorded
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Each language is a unique expression of human creativity.
  • there are no exact matches for words or expressions across languages.
  • In Tuvan, in order to say "go" you must first know the direction of the current in the nearby river and your own trajectory relative to it. Tuvan "go" verbs therefore index the landscape in a way that cannot survive displacement or translation.
  • People of all ages, but especially children, can easily be bilingual. New research shows bilingualism strengthens the brain, by building up what psychologists call the cognitive reserve.
  • I and many fellow linguists would estimate that we only have a detailed scientific description of something like 10% to 15% of the world's languages, and for 85% we have no real documentation at all. Thus it seems premature to begin constructing grand theories of universal grammar. If we want to understand universals, we must first know the particulars.
  • Their knowledge of ice, their words for it, and the hunting skills and lifeways are all receding in tandem with the Yupik language itself.
  • If we can learn to value the intellectual diversity that is fostered by linguistic variety, we can all help to ensure its survival.
  • I'll close with the inspiring example of Matukar, a language spoken in a small village in Papua New Guinea. Down to about 600 speakers (out of a tribal group of 900+), Matukar is under immense pressure from the national language Tok Pisin and from English.
  • Working with me under the National Geographic Enduring Voices Project, he devised a written form for what had been until 2010 a purely oral language. Rudolf and his mother Kadagoi Raward patiently recorded thousands of words in their language.
  • Ryan Catalani on 24 Nov 10
     
    "The human knowledge base is eroding as we lose languages, exacerbated by the fact that most of them have never been written down or recorded... Each language is a unique expression of human creativity... it seems premature to begin constructing grand theories of universal grammar...If we can learn to value the intellectual diversity that is fostered by linguistic variety, we can all help to ensure its survival."
Ryan Catalani

Lexicalist.com - a demographic dictionary of modern American English - 1 views

www.lexicalist.com

research language

shared by Ryan Catalani on 10 Jan 11 - Cached
  • Ryan Catalani on 10 Jan 11
     
    "Lexicalist uses artificial intelligence to analyze the web and figure out who's talking about what. The result is a demographic picture of language in actual use today."
Ryan Catalani

Words Without Words - 3 views

www.verohecko.com/wowiwo.html

shared by Ryan Catalani on 23 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Ryan Catalani on 23 Mar 11
     
    "A visual dictionary of words with abstract, complex, or underused meanings" - very nice illustrations.
Ryan Catalani

People Who Became Nouns: The Music Video - 0 views

www.brainpickings.org/...people-who-became-nouns

shared by Ryan Catalani on 16 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Ryan Catalani on 16 Oct 11
     
    Fun video. "Finding your name in the dictionary as a noun is a sure-fire litmus test for having made a impact on culture and history. Just look at OED-approved fine folks like Charles Boycott, Samuel Maverick, Joseph-Ignace Guillotine, Henry Shrapnel, and Lord Cardigan. But there are unsuspected downsides to being reduced to a noun - just ask suffragette and women's rights pioneer Amelia Bloomer, now equated with a baggy pair of women's underpants."
Lara Cowell

Neuroscience Reveals 3 Secrets That Make You Emotionally Intelligent | Observer - 1 views

observer.com/...ligent-happiness-relationships

brain neuroscience emotional intelligence emotions words emotional granularity psychology

shared by Lara Cowell on 06 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • Lara Cowell on 06 Sep 17
     
    Here's how to be more emotionally intelligent: 1. Emotions are concepts: They're not hardwired or universal. They're learned. 2. Emotional intelligence starts with emotional granularity: If your doctor came back with a diagnosis of "you're sick", you'd sue the quack for malpractice. Doctors need to be able to distinguish between "chancre" and "cancer." And you need to know the difference between "sad" and "lonely." 3. Emotional intelligence is in the dictionary: You can't feel Fremdschämen if you don't know what it is. So learn new emotion words so you can feel new emotions and increase your emotional granularity, that is, the ability to distinguish the emotions you feel and recognize them as distinct and different. 4. Create new emotions: We could all use a little more "passion-o-rama" in our lives. Name those unnamed feelings you have and share them with others to make them real. In sum, finding specific words to describe the particularities of what you're feeling can lead to greater mental health. The article also discusses the differences that cultures/languages have in re: feelings and emotions we might've previously assumed were universal.
jennareformina18

BBC - Future - Languages: Why we must save dying tongues - 1 views

www.bbc.com/...y-we-must-save-dying-languages

language words

shared by jennareformina18 on 09 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • jennareformina18 on 09 Mar 18
     
    Linguist are trying to document and record quickly dying languages. They try writing down and making dictionaries of these endangered languages. Documentation can be the key to revitalization. But if no one is interested in revitalization then there it is just like keeping museum artifacts.
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