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Language is universal - wherever there are humans, there is language. Not only do we depend heavily on language for conversation, we use it for archiving those conversations through books, texts and emails. For something so pervasive in human life, it only makes sense that we should try to understand it. "Just because all humans have language does not mean that all language is acquired in the same way," says Scofield, who studies child language development. Nouns, for instance, are typically learned earlier than adjectives.

This article discusses patterns of speech and social aspects that affect the persuasiveness of words.

This is a bunch of cool metaphors that i found really cool and convenient while doing our activity

Barack Obama says his address to Congress this year is all about 'finding areas where we agree, so we can deliver for the American people'. And if there's one thing we can all agree upon, it's emojis.

This was a very interesting article about how to read body language, specifically if you are in sales and work on a commission.

"Over the course of a week last year, the CMU team gathered 380,000 messages from 9,500 users, selecting messages from within the continental United States. ... Those non-standard written forms showed some interesting regional patterning. Spelling cool as coo or koo turns out to be a California thing. ... As research on Twitter dialects progresses, more research tools will likely become publicly available so that everyone can join in on the fun."

People have been asking this question for hundreds of years. Linguists have been paying special attention to it since the 1940's, when a linguist named Benjamin Lee Whorf studied Hopi, a Native American language spoken in northeastern Arizona. Based on his studies, Whorf claimed that speakers of Hopi and speakers of English see the world differently because of differences in their language.

Each year, more than 800,000 men, women, and children cross international borders seeking refuge from persecution. Under the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 145 nations have agreed to protect those who are at risk in their own countries because of war or persecution. If asylum seekers can prove their claim is "well founded," they are granted refugee status. If they cannot prove they are fleeing legitimate persecution, they are deported. The challenge, says Associate Professor Fallou Ngom, is how to identify asylum seekers when "they do not have documents. They have only their mouths." "Every human has features in his or her voice that makes it unique"-a linguistic fingerprint. As a result, many governments have begun using "language analysis" to determine an asylum seeker's country of origin. The process entails an interview with the asylum seeker, which is then analyzed by a native speaker in his or her language.

This article reminds me of the "Singing Neanderthals" reading that we did. Perhaps whales, like babies, hear tones instead of actual words and can also perceive emotions of other whales they communicate with. If this is so, would this 'tone communication' be considered a language in of itself?

Researchers at Harvard University have found that humans aren't the only ones who can groove to a beat - some other species can dance, too. The capability was previously believed to be specific to humans. The research team found that only species with the capacity for vocal mimicry, that is, copying sound, seem capable of beat induction, the ability to discern the beat in music. Beat induction also enables such actions as clapping, making music together and dancing to a rhythm. The data suggests that some of the brain mechanisms needed for human dance may have originally evolved to allow us to imitate sound.

Short article about another study done that proved texting actually helps the development of children's spelling skills and IQ level.

Psychological research shows that jargon kills attention, comprehension, retention and motivation.

Scientist look into seeing whether or not animals can really communicate with one another. In what scenarios do they communicate, and why.

Like the facebook thing

GENIE An Abused Child's Flight From Silence. By Russ Rymer. 221 pp. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. THE story of the girl known by the pseudonym Genie, who spent the first 13 years of her life locked in a bedroom alone, alternately strapped down to a child's potty chair or straitjacketed into a sleeping bag, fed on baby food and beaten with a wooden paddle when she so much as whimpered, is really three stories woven together.