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As you can tell from the title, this article looks into why English people say sorry so often. Harvard researchers have found that perhaps the reason why English people say sorry so much is because by saying "sorry" to someone, it is the best way to get them onto your side and persuade them to do what you want. The article mentioned a study where they had an actor ask to borrow someones phone on a rainy day. When he asked the favor directly, he was only successful 9% of the time. However, when he said "Sorry about the rain" before asking the favor, he was successful 47% of the time.

Analyses show that Trump uses his android phone to tweet, while his staff uses an iPhone to write campaigns, announcements, and other business tweets. Angrier and exaggerated words like "bad" and "weak" tended to come from Trump's android writing, and overall, the majority of negative sentiment in tweets were from Trump's android, not his staff's iPhone.

The World Health Organisation counts 430m people as deaf or hard of hearing. Many use sign languages to communicate. If they cannot also use those languages to talk to computers, they risk being excluded from the digitisation that is taking over everyday life. Sign language poses particular issues in re: its translation to either text or speech. Some challenges include improving the machine-learning algorithms that recognise signs and their meaning and developing the best methods to interpret sign languages' distinctive grammars. The applications of such technology could improve the lives of the deaf, for example, allowing them to use their cell phones to search for directions or look up the meanings of unknown signs, without resorting to the written form of a spoken language.

Article discusses the negative impacts of parent screen time and digital device distraction on parent-child communication, conversational interaction, and language development, especially in young children.

Ever used an emoji before? Most people have used an emoji in a text or message if they have a phone or laptop. The majority of emoji users are pretty harmless with the meaning behind the use of words. However not all have used it so positively. In fact, more and more law systems are bringing in linguist (emoji) experts as a witness to testify the meaning behind emojis given the context. Which is even more interesting is that some defendants have been convicted partially based on the meaning behind an emoji. For example there is one man who was convicted because of his use of a gun emoji which the expert witness testified the sinical, threatening meaning of the emoji. This article might make you think before you send your next emoji...

Ubiquitous video technology and social media have given deaf people a new way to communicate. They're using it to transform American Sign Language. For more than a century, the telephone has helped shape how people communicate. But it had a less profound impact on American Sign Language, which relies on both hand movements and facial expressions to convey meaning. Until, that is, phones started to come with video screens. Over the past decade or so, smartphones and social media have allowed ASL users to connect with one another as never before. Face-to-face interaction, once a prerequisite for most sign language conversations, is no longer required. Video has also given users the opportunity to teach more people the language - there are thriving ASL communities on YouTube and TikTok - and the ability to quickly invent and spread new signs, to reflect either the demands of the technology or new ways of thinking.