Group items tagged

Some paraprosdokian humor, so listen and see if you can't hear it!

Dwight tries to logically reason his relationship with Jim: Jim is Dwight's enemy, but Jim is also his own worst enemy. Therefore the enemy of Dwight's enemy is his friend. So Jim is actually Dwight's friend. But Jim is also his own worst enemy, and the enemy of a friend is an enemy. So Jim is...what? It is fallacy in humor because though the logic makes some sense, it goes in circles and puts Dwight in the same spot but more confused than helped.

Sounds like two possible fallacies: arguing from ignorance (if he's not my friend, he must be my enemy), and/or false choices.

I believe it's a "languishing" verb, to use the lowest form of humor.

"Be concise, Be honest, Be an individual, Be coherent, Be accurate, Be vivid, Be likable, Be cautious in your use of humor, Be controversial, and Be smart" HOW?!?!?!?!?!?!? Quite a bit to take in and remember while working away on a concise paper which may or may not decide our future. Just a few small nuggets of gold (interpret as you please): "If you go over 700 words, you are straining their patience, which no one should want to do." "Not everyone has to be the star at everything." "The whole application is a series of snapshots of what you do. It is inevitably incomplete. The colleges expect this. Go along with them." "If you write about Nietzsche, spell his name right." "Subtlety is good." "Be funny only if you think you have to. Then think again." "It is fine to write about politics, religion, something serious, as long as you are balanced and thoughtful. Don't pretend you have the final truth." "Colleges are intellectual places, a fact they almost always keep a secret..." From this, I take: Be human. But be an awesome human.

4. Be coherent.  I thought that this website was really helpful because I am known to like to write a lot and sometimes want to write so much that I ramble a lot.  I don't want to sound busy but not scattered or superficial either.

I feel like by setting up some of these guidelines, it is kind of changing our experiences or ideas we want to write. We have to find something coherent to the question and on top of that be likeable. what if what you think is likeable isn't the same as what the college people want?

Mali, teacher and slam poet, delivering a humorous take on "uptalk".

Code-switching involves moving freely between two different languages or dialects of a single language. Many people of color, especially mixed-race and multi-cultural people naturally code-switch. This article shows us Sheena Cobb as an example because she uses both the American Sign Language (ASL) and Black ASL depending on who she is with. Elements of black culture appear in Black ASL such as religious practice, cooking, humor, music, hairstyles, words and phrases typically used in the black communities. People who use Black ASL tend to sign with two hands, in different positions, in a larger signing space and with more repetition than with regular ASL signs.

The father of modern American poetry, Walt Whitman, celebrates the importance of slang: "...perhaps Language is more like some vast living body, or perennial body of bodies. And slang...is afterward the start of fancy, imagination and humor, breathing into its nostrils the breath of life.

This website, five years in the making, documents humorous uses of Chinglish: spoken or written English that reflects L1= Chinese influence. Radtke's collection of signage has been documented in two books: _Chinglish: Found in Translation_ and _More Chinglish: Speaking in Tongues_. Thanks to Kayla LaRieu for sharing!

Censorship has been a long-standing issue in China, but its citizens continue to fight for self-expression through clever linguistic circumvention of Internet restrictions. Much of Chinese Internet lingo involves codewords, and the corpus of codewords is constantly changing to accommodate new topics and avoid smarter, stricter censors. It has reached the point where a simple understanding of Chinese vocabulary, syntax, and grammar is no longer enough to fully understand Chinese Internet discourse. On today's Chinese Internet, fully comprehending the language requires a thorough knowledge of current events, a deep respect for historical implications, an agile mastery of cultural conventions, and more often than not, a healthy appreciation of topical humor.

M. Thomas Gammarino, Punahou English Dept. teacher, meditates on the significance of the article "the." A humorous and thoughtful read.

Swearing expresses many different types of emotions. Kinda like when people use their car horns.

This article explores into depth the reason why and when we swear. One reason we swear is to insert a direct emotional component into the discussion to express frustration, anger or surprise. Swearing frees us of the feelings of anger or frustration we hold inside of us and provides an alternative from physical violence. The second use of swearing is in the form of jokes and humor, sex talk, story telling and social commentary. Our word choice is dependent on the people we are surrounded by, the relationship we have with that group of people and the setting of the situation. For example, people are less likely to use swear words in mixed company or in the work place. We are more likely to swear with people of the same gender or with our sexual partners. This article also describes the amount of swearing in our lives.

Why do people swear? Why does using a swear word make us feel better? How do we choose which word we use? Luckily for you, the Association of Psychological Science's Perspectives on Psychological Science just published an article that answers these important scientific questions in an article by Timothy Jay (2009).

This article discusses the meaning of the word ironic and goes into detail about how the meaning has changed or lost its meaning over the years. I found it interesting, since I use the internet a lot and much of the humor I look at is described as "ironic". That ironic is not what the article described, showing how the word has lost its meaning.

Many people have their own idea of what they find funny, but these scientists conducted an experiment to find the funniest words in the English language. The scientists found that funny words become universally funny depending on length, letters use, similarity to other words, and relation to emotions.

Patrick Cox, public radio journalist, is also a lover of language and podcasting. This interesting blog compiles those two passions, featuring stories about diverse aspects of language. Some recent posts: pro-Trump Internet trolling, Arabic in America, Who Says Humor Doesn't Translate.

This article talks about how coronavirus is changing our language. In this article, new lingo appropriate to the coronavirus. However, the new lingo takes more of a humorous tone that explores the new words as novelties rather than everyday slang. One funny exam was the word "covidiot" referring to someone who doesn't comply to coronavirus restrictions.

A humorous and satirical segment from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert highlighting the double-meaning of emojis. Refer to https://www.wsj.com/articles/sending-a-smiley-face-make-sure-you-know-what-youre-saying-11628522840 and https://www.scienceofpeople.com/emojis/

David Moser, of the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies and a L1= English speaker, reflects on his adult language learning struggles with Chinese, his L2. His takeaways as to why the language is so difficult, even for L1= Chinese speakers: 1. Because the writing system is ridiculous: need to recognize a whole lot of characters to be literate, specifically 7-8 years to recognize and write 3000 characters. 2. Because the language doesn't have the common sense to use an alphabet, which would make learning the components of words more simple. 3. Because the writing system just ain't very phonetic. 4. Because you can't cheat by using cognates. 5. Because even looking up a word in the dictionary is complicated. 6. Then there's classical Chinese (wenyanwen 文言文). 7. Because there are too many romanization methods and they all suck. 8. Because tonal languages are weird. 9. Because east is east and west is west, and the twain have only recently met. When you consider all the above-mentioned things a learner of Chinese has to acquire -- ability to use a dictionary, familiarity with two or three romanization methods, a grasp of principles involved in writing characters (both simplified and traditional) -- it adds up to an awful lot of down time while one is "learning to learn" Chinese.

An interesting scholarly sociolinguistic paper! Jane H. Hill, a University of Arizona linguist, examines the use of mock Spanish phrases In the southwestern United States. Hill wondered why English speakers of ``Anglo" ethnic affiliation make considerable use of Spanish in casual speech, in spite of the fact that the great majority of them are utterly monolingual in English under most definitions. However, these monolinguals both produce Spanish and consume it, especially in the form of Mock Spanish humor, and that use of Mock Spanish intensified during precisely the same period when opposition to the use of Spanish native speakers has grown, reaching its peak in the passage of ``Official English'' statutes in several states during the last decade. Hill argues that the use of Mock Spanish is, in fact, racist discourse.