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This article addresses many parents' concerns of their kids listening to rap music. Questions that are answered in this article are questions like does rap promote violence or influence sexual behavior amongst teens. The conclusion was that rap is an art form used to express many emotions. Like all art and everything else in life, there is the good and the bad. Rap can promote violence and talk about it or it can condemn violence and propose solutions to them. The article seemed to suggest that what influenced teens actions more than rap lyrics was the social and economic factors of where the teen is growing up.

In this article, scientists analyze 5,000 orangutan "kiss squeaks." They think that our ancestors used orangutan kiss squeaks as a precursor of consonants and vowels. The kiss squeaks require the action of the lips, tongue, and jaw similar to the movements needed to say consonants. Scientists believe orangutan kiss squeaks to be the crucial "building blocks" in the evolution of language.

It was especially interesting that this effect held not only for those who had been adopted after the age of 17 months, when they would have been saying some words, but also for those adopted at under 6 months.

Researchers looked at international adoptees (babies that were adopted at a couple months old and grew up hearing a different language than they heard while in the womb) and were able to see what babies hear in the womb and soon after birth has an affect on how they perceive sounds. Newborn babies can actually recognize the voices they've been hearing for the last three months in the womb, especially the sounds that come from their mothers. When born, babies prefer these familiar voices to strangers voices. Babies can also detect rhythm and prefer other languages with similar rhythms, rather than languages with different rhythms.

This article is about the Icelandic language, which is seen as a source of identity and pride, is being damaged by the widespread use of English. Former president of Iceland, Vigdis Finnbogadottir, is worried that the Icelandic language will end up in the "Latin bin".

Useful info for all collaborative activities. The 3 takeaways: 1. SET THE AGENDA The meeting's agenda can be summarized on a handout, written on a whiteboard or discussed explicitly at the outset, but everyone should know why they've gathered and what they're supposed to be accomplishing. The agenda provides a compass for the conversation, so the meeting can get back on track if the discussion wanders off course. 2. ​START ON TIME. END ON TIME. A definitive end time will help ensure that you accomplish what's on your agenda and get people back to their work promptly. 3. ​END WITH AN ACTION PLAN Leave the last few minutes of every meeting to discuss the next steps. This discussion should include deciding who is responsible for what, and what the deadlines are. Otherwise, all the time you spent on the meeting will be for naught. Mark Toro, managing partner of North American Properties - Atlanta, a real estate operating company, uses a phrase to end meetings that has become a common acronym in office e-mails: W.W.D.W.B.W., which stands for "Who will do what by when?"

For anyone who's ever dated, or maintained any kind of relationship, in the digital age, you have probably known a breadcrumber. They communicate via sporadic noncommittal, but repeated messages - or breadcrumbs - that are just enough to keep you wondering but not enough to seal the deal (whatever that deal may be). Breadcrumbers check in consistently with a romantic prospect, but never set up a date. They pique your interest, of that prospective job, perhaps, by reminding you repeatedly that it exists, but never set up the interview. Breadcrumbers are one step shy of ghosters, who disappear without a trace, but are in more frequent contact than a person giving you the fade. On the hierarchy of digital communication, the breadcrumber is the lowest form. "It really is a cousin of the 'friend zone,'" said Rachel Simmons, an author and leadership coach at Smith College. "It's about relegating a person to a particular dead end, but one that still keeps them hanging on in some way."

R.I.P. to the understatement. Welcome to death by Internet hyperbole, the latest example of the overly dramatic, forcibly emotive, truncated, simplistic and frequently absurd ways chosen to express emotion in the Internet age (or sometimes feign it). The trend toward hyperbole appears to echo a broader belief among experts that young women are its first adopters. One explanation for the use of hyperbole (OMG!) With the increase in digital, vs. face to face communication, we must come up with increasingly creative ways to express tone and emphasis when facial cues are not an option. There's a performative element to our social media interactions, too: We are expressing things with an audience in mind. Tyler Schnoebelen, a linguist and founder of Idibon, a company that uses computer data to analyze language, notes "Performance generally requires the performer to be interesting. So do likes, comments and reshares. Exaggeration is one way to do that."

Writer Jessica Bennett shares the perks, perils and absurdities of the way we communicate via social media. Entertaining and informative reading.

There was a time when the term "mom" (when said in public, anyway) elicited a certain kind of eye roll. Yet these days, "mom" is the highest form of flattery. And you don't even have to be an actual mother to receive it (nor does the mom you're talking about need to be yours). Mom (adj) has become Internetspeak for the absolute coolest.

Almost every language on the planet includes words that sound like the things they describe. Crash, yawn, glug… speech is just full of these onomatopoeias. And because they have their root in real things they're often easy to identify. Even a non-native speaker might recognise the Hindi "achhee" (a sneeze) or the Indonesian "gluk" (glug). Because these onomatopoeias are so widely encountered, easy to pick up, and convey information might they be the first form of language? That's the argument presented in a recent paper published in Animal Cognition. It points out that our ancestors would have begun encountering more and more noises that we could repeat. Tool use/ manufacture in particular, with its smashes and crashes, would be a prime source of onomatopoeias. Mimicking these sounds could have allowed early humans to "talk" about the objects; describing goals, methods, and objects. Might handing someone a rock and going "smash" been a way to ask them to make a tool? Perhaps different noises could even refer to different tools. Humans are good at extracting information from mimicked sounds. These sounds also trigger "mirror neurons" - parts of the brain that fire when we observe other people doing something - allowing us to repeat those actions. Seeing someone hold a rock a certain way and saying "smash" could have helped our ancestors teach the proper way to smash. But the biggest benefit would be the fact that you can communicate about these objects without seeing them. Having a sound for a tool would allow you to ask someone for it, even if they didn't have it on them. Given these advantages, it's easy to imagine how evolution would have favoured people who mimicked noises. Over time, this would have driven the development of more and more complex communication; until language as we recognise it emerged. Following this narrative, you can see (or maybe hear) how an a human ancestor with almost no language capability gradual

A study shows evidence that bats may have dialects, like humans. Researchers studied vocal learning in bat pups.

With increasing membership in the EU more languages and translators are needed. Members struggle to figure out which languages should be considered official languages, which leads to disagreements

They say that actions speak louder than words. This article certainly confirms that. Conversations are only 7% of the content of your words. 55% is conveyed by your body language. When words, tone, and body language clash, most people go with what the body says. It's an ingrained response, from a time before language. At times, you speak loudest when you don't say anything at all.

This article brings about the topic of how people end their emails differently. In the recent past, it has been deemed "cool" to have an email signature that read "Sent from my iPhone". Now, however, this is seen as generic. People are coming up with new ways to sign their emails that are original. They also aim to include personality and tone. This is proven to be challenging for many people because signatures are generally short. Email signatures can not only help indicate whether a person is professional or not, but also whether the person is irritated, silly, rushed, etc.

This article covers a few of the same things people covered from their recent projects. It is centered around the tone of emails and what makes that tone- words like "hi" vs. "hey", emoji use, punctuation, and response time. It also brings up an interesting point. "Research has found that when parties are getting along, they tend to mimic each other's subtle speech patterns".

New and unexpected acronyms are taking over our texting universe. "Any idea what 'IWSN' stands for in Internet slang? It's a declarative statement: I want sex now." I honestly didn't know what "IWSN" stood for and it's surprising to see that teenagers are actually using these acronyms as secret codes for illegal/inappropriate actions.

This topic is really similar to what we discussed in class about babble and how almost all languages worldwide share a similar way of talking to their babies. This article talks about how different settlements could have communicated with each other without learning each other's language. They did this by studying "vocal charades," which were vocal noises that could be attributed to different actions. For example snoring noises meant "sleep."

Article provides helpful reminders re: active listening; see article for specific how-tos. The seven tips: 1. Paraphrase 2. Ask questions 3. Express empathy 4. Use engaged body language 5. Avoid judgement 6. Avoid giving advice 7. Take turns

Over the years, we have found that our words come from different parts of the brain. In addition the part of the brain which we use to formulate thoughts into sentences, we also use the part of the brain that deals with emotion when we swear. Researchers discovered that patients with neurodegenerative diseases like a stroke, were still able to swear. Studying patients with Tourette syndrome have also proved that swearing uses many areas of the brain. Since swearing involves the emotional part of the brain, we know that profanity is used to express intense emotions.

Regular speech is generated in the left hemisphere, in an area of the brain close to the surface. The cerebral cortex, or "gray matter," is often associated with higher thought processes such as thought and action. "It's sophisticated," says Bergen, "and comports with the idea of what it means to be human." Swearing, on the other hand, is generated much deeper in the brain, in regions that are older and more primitive in evolutionary terms, says Bergen. These regions are often found in the right hemisphere in the brain's emotional center, the limbic system."These are words that express intense emotions-surprise, frustration, anger, happiness, fear," says psychologist and linguist Timothy Jay, who began studying profanity more than 40 years ago."[Swearing] serves my need to vent, and it conveys my emotions to other people very effectively and symbolically," he says. "Where other animals like to bite and scratch each other, I can say 'f*ck you' and you get my contempt-I don't have to do it physically." Profanity serves other purposes, too. Lovers use it as part of enticing sex talk; athletes and soldiers use it to forge camaraderie; and people in positions of power use it to reaffirm their superiority. Profanity is even used as a celebratory expression, says Adams, citing "F*ck yeah!" as an example. The meaning of a profanity, like any other word, changes with time, culture and context. While swear words have been around since Greek and Roman times, and maybe even earlier, the types of things people consider offensive have changed. "People of the Middle Ages had no problems talking about sex or excrement, that was not their hang-up," Adams explains. "Their hang-up was talking about God disrespectfully...so that was what a profanity was."

The left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for emotions like happiness, sadness, and anger. The part of the brain that we use to formulate thoughts into sentences is that part that we also use to deal with emotion when we swear. Different studies done on people found with brain issues/diseases allowed researchers to understand that profanity is used to express the extreme emotions.

This article talks about the decline in religious conversations happening within the US. The author, a strong religious practitioner and son of megachurch pastor describes his worries with the trends being shown. His main problem with the shift away from religious conversations was that he worried people were losing faith. He argues that organized religion, and specifically Christianity will slowly die without faith speech. He believes that the reason why faith speech is dying is because of its misuse by politicians, and the media to manipulate the public.