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Novelist Kurt Vonnegut once opined, "There is no reason why the simple shapes of stories can't be fed into computers. They are beautiful shapes." Thanks to new text-mining techniques, this has now been done. Researchers at the University of Vermont's Computational Story Lab have analysed over 1,700 English novels to reveal six basic story types - you could call them archetypes - that form the building blocks for more complex stories. They are: 1. Rags to riches - a steady rise from bad to good fortune 2. Riches to rags - a fall from good to bad, a tragedy 3. Icarus - a rise then a fall in fortune 4. Oedipus - a fall, a rise then a fall again 5. Cinderella - rise, fall, rise 6. Man in a hole - fall, rise The researchers used sentiment analysis to get the data - a statistical technique often used by marketeers to analyse social media posts in which each word is allocated a particular 'sentiment score', based on crowdsourced data. Depending on the lexicon chosen, a word can be categorised as positive (happy) or negative (sad), or it can be associated with one or more of eight more subtle emotions, including fear, joy, surprise and anticipation. For example, the word 'happy' is positive, and associated with joy, trust and anticipation. The word 'abolish' is negative and associated with anger. Do sentiment analysis on all the words in a novel, poem or play and plot the results against time, and it's possible to see how the mood changes over the course of the text, revealing a kind of emotional narrative. While not a perfect tool - it looks at words in isolation, ignoring context - it can be surprisingly insightful when applied to larger chunks of text

Both metaphor and grammar influence how people think about political candidates and elections. voters' attitudes can be influenced by a number of factors, including which information the media chooses to emphasize and how it is slanted. Framing, how a message is worded to encourage particular interpretations and inferences, can influence the perception of political candidates. Negative framing is often used to make opposing candidates seem weak, immoral and incompetent. It is persuasive because it captures attention and creates anxiety about future consequences. Grammar, though seemingly innocuous, also encodes meaning and is linked to mental experience and physical interactions with the world. Information framed with past progressive caused people to reflect more on the action details in a given time period than did information framed with simple past. Using grammatical aspect to frame campaign information, positive or negative, appears to be an effective tool for influencing how people perceive candidates' past actions. It may also be tweaked to invite inferences about what candidates will do in the future because it influences inferences about how events transpire.

This article gives a general definition for self-talk and how it affects mental health. It also gives tips in regards to stoping negative self-talk.

This article explains Trinidad Creole English, or TCE, from the perspective of a native TCE speaker. Karel Mc Intosh demonstrates her passion for TCE along with the challenges that come with it. TCE speakers love their "broken English." It is a part of their culture and identity. Although it is a comfortable way of conversing with each other, TCE speakers are looked down upon by those who do not understand it and are not used to it. This causes many TCE speakers to code switch, which means speaking with an accent in relaxed settings and speaking proper English in more formal settings. Intosh describes her experiences as a TCE speaker and states her opinion on the negative perception that follows it.

In this article, the author explains that on top of body language, some language cues can also detect a liar. It mentioned things like liars trying not using first person pronouns and increased use of negative statements that could be subconsciously mirroring the negative emotions a liar may feel such as fear or guilt.

In this article they talk about how certain words can dampen the effect of negative emotions. Furthermore they talk about how talking about how you feel can often improve your mood.

This article is about the positive and negative effects of technology on children, this talks specifically about statistics and how they can benefit and not benefit from technology use.

This article contains several data tables that show the different modes of communication and how often we use each one. Certain graphs organize data by gender, age, impact on school, and much more. Something that interested me was that our time spent on text-based technology has negatively impacted our ability to write. This article analyzes each set of data points and puts our usage of electronics into perspective, as technology has dominated the way we converse.

Texting can mold a child or teenager's brain negatively.

This article discusses the negative impact of digital technology and communication on personal relationships, courtship, and romance.

A new form of therapy makes use of virtual therapists, who have the capacity to read facial expressions, vocal patterns, body posture, and speech tones. Cleo Stiller, host of Asking For A Friend, said in a video, "[The virtual therapist]'s also interpreting my speech in real time. Am I using positive or negative language? [the therapist] adjusts her questions based off of my responses." The benefit of virtual therapy is that it removes some of the stigmas associated with "seeing a shrink," and allows people to feel more open with their feelings and problems... at least, that's the idea.

Study finds that positive self talk phrases improve performance, while positive self talk sentences and negative forms of self talk do not improve performance

Donald Trump has begun casting all unfavorable news coverage as fake news. In one tweet, he even went so far as to say that "any negative polls are fake news." And many of his supporters have picked up and run with his new definition. The ability to reshape language - even a little - is an awesome power to have. According to language experts on both sides of the aisle, the rebranding of fake news could be a genuine threat to democracy.

Employees carrying out an insider attack at work can be identified from the language they use in emails, according to psychologists. The Lancaster University study found that an analysis of the email language of employees within an office environment managed to identify 80 to 90 per cent of those actively stealing confidential information and passing it to a provocateur. Their analysis found that the attackers were much more self-focused, using words like "me," "my" and "I" and they used more negative language compared with typical co-workers. They also found that employees conducting an insider attack reduced the extent to which they mimicked the language of their co-workers. This reduction in mimicry, which suggests an inadvertent social distancing by the attackers, increased over time, such that by the end of simulation, it was possible for the researchers to use the combined metrics to identify 92.6% of insiders.

I was surprised by this article and by the fact that sometimes, our seemingly boring moments in life has the potential to transform into a great college essay. This article made me change my views of college essays and reexamine what topics I want to write about.

I liked the ideas this essay shared because I realized that if I were to have written my college essay prior to reading this article, my essay would've been similar to the majority of students who submit college essays. This site stresses the importance of being different and that having humility, humor, and personal stories in college essays are attractive. But the article did imply that there are limits and that some things such as torturing animals and showing inconsideration to other people, are inappropriate.

It seems more common now for counselors and advisors to recommend writing about everyday things, but with our own personal "flair." So it was helpful to read in this article about how there are some negative everyday experiences that are important to leave out.

Negative vs. Positive Language

"Most people implicitly associate positive ideas with "right" and negative ideas with "left"....The meanings of words in English, Dutch, and Spanish are related to the way people type them on the QWERTY keyboard. Words with more right-hand letters are rated as more positive in emotional valence than words with more left-hand letters, consistent with right-handers' tendency to implicitly associate "good" with "right.""

This commercial is promoting "Pepsi Max, with zero calories." It has the unstated premise that anything without calories must be good for you or that anything without calories is the healthy way to go. But the truth of the matter is that not everything without calories is "good." Diet sodas don't actually have any nutritional value and many contain a chemical in them called aspartame which proves to have some negative effects when not taken in moderation.

"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?