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How texting affects writing.

An interesting story--my students, you might recall Sheryl Turkle of MIT referencing robot therapists in her TED talk. USC has developed a robot therapist, Ellie, designed to talk to people who are struggling emotionally, and to take their measure in a way no human can. Originally developed to work with military PTSD patients, Ellie's purpose: to gather information and provide real human therapists detailed analysis of patients' movements and vocal features, in order to give new insights into people struggling with emotional issues. The body, face and voice express things that words sometimes obscure. Ellie's makers believe that her ability to do this will ultimately revolutionize American mental health care.

This is just a "picturesque" way to read Chinese. This was mentioned in class and this came to mind!

To explore metaphors more fully on your own, there are three directions you can go. The first is simply to start noticing whenever you meet one. Jane Hirshfield slipped metaphors into many of the things she said in this lesson.

Daniel Tammet has linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia. This means that all of these aspects are woven together in his perception of the world. Through this talks he discusses what it is like to have synesthesia and how it affects his use of language in his everyday life.

There are two neural mechanisms that scientists believe enable us to communicate. One is that sound waves made by the speaker affects how the listener's brain responds, which is basically the same way the speaker's brain is responding. The other is that human brains have formed a common neural behavior which makes our brains respond in the same type of pattern, allowing us to share information through this neural behavior. One of the experiments discussed in this article explains that people were brought in and scanned by fMRI machines, monitoring the part of the brain that processes sound waves coming from the ear. These subjects were monitored while they were at rest, telling a story, and/or listening to a story. It then discusses the results and results of similar experiments.

Words change meaning all the time - and over time. Language historian Anne Curzan underscores the natural process of language evolution, presenting 20 words that illustrate the creative morphing of language. Take, for example the word "clue". Curzan notes that "centuries ago, a clue (or clew) was a ball of yarn. Think about threading your way through a maze and you'll see how we got from yarn to key bits of evidence that help us solve things."

It seems like a lot of people can't get enough of being told how to live their lives by Scandinavians. That's what you might assume by the truckload of English-language books, articles, and TED talks emerging in recent years, all urging readers to adopt lifestyle philosophies that hail from various Nordic cultures. First came the craze for Danish hygge (pronounced HOO-guh) a striving for cozy, primarily domestic wellness that some authors claimed lay behind Danes' apparent satisfaction with their lives. Then we discovered Swedish lagom (LAW-gm), a term broadly meaning "just enough," whose use as a moderating folk principle, boosters suggested, has helped Swedes achieve their unusually high levels of happiness. Now, as Sweden's neighbor Finland tops this year's Northern European happiness league, Finnish writers and pundits are getting in on the act, tossing their own mythologized national mental attitude-called sisu-into the crowded Nordic life-hack market. Sisu= fortitude; inner stamina; grit.

Good example of code switching. Jamila Lyiscott, a "tri-tongued orator", demonstrates the three "distinct flavors" of english she speaks.

In this TED-Talk, Dr. Naja Ferjan Ramirez, linguistics professor at the University of Washington and a specialist in the brain processes of children 0-3 years, lays out the benefits of bilingualism, tells how to optimize language learning to achieve better acquisition, and dispels some common concerns about the cons of creating a bilingual child. No surprises here: start early, and create conditions where babies are exposed to the desired target languages-this will enable babies to process the sounds of dual languages, not just one. Ideally, babies will have frequent, social interactions with fully-competent, fluent speakers of the target languages. Ramirez also mentions a major cognitive benefit to bilingualism: a strengthened prefrontal cortex: the area of the brain that deals with task-switching and flexible thinking.

This article reminded me of the Ted Talk we watched in class. It's interesting how a "language nest" works and how parents get paid to learn and speak Ojibwe with their children. I'm curious how language revitalization will evolve in the future.