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Eye contact plays a bigger role in communication than previously thought. Our pupils, which we cannot control, expands or contracts based on the attractiveness of what we're looking at. Blinking speed can also tell us something. You blink faster when talking to someone you find attractive. Too much constant eye contact can make people feel uncomfortable. A reason why children are often victims of pet attacks is that they stare too long at the animal and the animal feels threatened. The best use of eye contact is regular intervals rather than constant eye contact.

Western literature exhibits a gradual progression from narratives that relate actions and events to stories that portray minds in all their meandering, many-layered, self-contradictory complexities. Perhaps people living in medieval societies were less preoccupied with the intricacies of other minds, simply because they didn't have to be. When people's choices were constrained and their actions could be predicted based on their social roles, there was less reason to be attuned to the mental states of others (or one's own, for that matter). The emergence of mind-focused literature may reflect the growing relevance of such attunement, as societies increasingly shed the rigid rules and roles that had imposed order on social interactions. But current psychological research hints at deeper implications. Literature certainly reflects the preoccupations of its time, but there is evidence that it may also reshape the minds of readers in unexpected ways. Stories that vault readers outside of their own lives and into characters' inner experiences may sharpen readers' general abilities to imagine the minds of others. If that's the case, the historical shift in literature from just-the-facts narration to the tracing of mental peregrinations may have had an unintended side effect: helping to train precisely the skills that people needed to function in societies that were becoming more socially complex and ambiguous.

This is an interesting article that explains the weird linguistic phenomena in which people are able to read a sentence where the letters in each word are jumbled up. Although scientists haven't came up with an exact conclusion for this amazing human capability, this article provides a few theories.

Our human brains are naturally pattern-seeking, hence we attempt to make sense of gibberish, a phenomenon known as pareidolia. Pareidolia is also the same reason why we see shapes in clouds, hear Satanic msgs. in music played backwards, think Minion Happy Meal toys are spouting obscenities, and understand the vocal substitutions made by ventriloquists.

This article argues how there is a separate language of the law. This language consists of technical legal terms and it is different from ordinary language because ordinary language cannot compare to the amount of legal terms. This type of language allows for more precision by stating specifically the rules of something. This can prove that the Constitution was writing in the language of the law. This is because the Constitution consists of around 100 reasons why the United States shouldn't be a part of Britain.

Pew Researchers surveyed more than 1,500 technologists and scholars about the forces shaping the way people interact with one another online. They asked: "In the next decade, will public discourse online become more or less shaped by bad actors, harassment, trolls, and an overall tone of griping, distrust, and disgust?" The vast majority of techonolgists surveyed-81 percent of them-said they expect the tone of online discourse will either stay the same or get worse in the next decade. "Cyberattacks, doxing, and trolling will continue, while social platforms, security experts, ethicists, and others will wrangle over the best ways to balance security and privacy, freedom of speech, and user protections. A great deal of this will happen in public view," Susan Etlinger, a technology industry analyst, told Pew. "The more worrisome possibility is that privacy and safety advocates, in an effort to create a more safe and equal internet, will push bad actors into more-hidden channels such as Tor." Tor is software that enables people to browse and communicate online anonymously-so it's used by people who want to cover their tracks from government surveillance, those who want to access the dark web, trolls, whistleblowers, and others. The uncomfortable truth is that humans like trolling. It's easy for people to stay anonymous while they harass, pester, and bully other people online-and it's hard for platforms to design systems to stop them. Hard for two reasons: One, because of the "ever-expanding scale of internet discourse and its accelerating complexity," as Pew puts it. And, two, because technology companies seem to have little incentive to solve this problem for people. "Very often, hate, anxiety, and anger drive participation with the platform," said Frank Pasquale, a law professor at the University of Maryland, in the report. "Whatever behavior increases ad revenue will not only be permitted, but encouraged."

This article explains why filler words, such as "like," "um," "uh," "you know" and "yeah", are used so extensively when we speak in conversation. What studies have own through this article is that the use of filler words has increased over the past 30 years. There are many factors that contribute to the utilization of filler words. As we know, there is no actual need for filler words, but nervousness and lack of confidence does play a factor in why filler words are used so much . Another reason we use filler words is because we are unsure about the topic of a specific conversation. Studies showed that when talking about a topic that is complex or that the subject is unfamiliar with, they tend to use more filler words as opposed to when a subject is talking about themselves or a simple topic.

Fred Zindi Music Have you ever thought of the reasons why our music finds it an uphill struggle to make it in neighbouring countries? In October, last year, I gave 10 copies of Jah Payzah's "Jerusarema" CD to delegates at a music conference in Brazzaville, Congo and asked them to listen to it, then give me feedback on what they thought about the music.

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.

Deaf people from Philadelphia have a noteworthy, distinctive regional accent in their signg language. When most people talk about a dialect in spoken languages, and in sign languages too, a lot of what they center on are lexical differences: differences in words. In ASL, there are many, many signs that have lexical differences. For example, the (Philadelphia) sign for hospital is exceptionally different from what standard ASL would be, and among other things. To the point where the signs are not able to be deciphered based on what they look like. The historical reason for the differences between Philadelphian sign language and standard ASL: the first school for the deaf was founded by a French teacher, and therefore Philadelphia sign is more akin to French signing than American signing.

The priming effect occurs when one is exposed to words or images that subconsciously influence decision-making. For example, seeing pictures of a shower would likely influence you to fill in so__p as "soap." But, seeing pictures of bread, you would probably say "soup." A somewhat controversial study has shown that subjects who were unknowingly exposed to elderly words (like bald, gray, and wrinkle) walked more slowly toward the next experiment than the control group. Another study asked participants to lie via email and another group of participants to lie via voicemail. Those who lied on the email were more likely to purchase soap, whereas the group who lied via voicemail were more likely to buy mouthwash. This wasn't included in the article, but I suspect the reason it's easy to come up with puns is because our brains are primed to think of words within a certain theme. The article mentioned that you can use priming to help you come up with new ideas around a central idea by writing related words in a list, until you think of something appropriate.

That agonizing moment when you know precisely what you want to say but you fail to produce the word or phrase is known as a "tip-of-the-tongue" moment. Lise Abrams, a psychology professor at the University of Florida has studied the phenomenon for 20 years. Researchers have even found occurrences among sign language users--termed "tip-of-the-finger" states. Key findings: 1. Low-frequency use: We're more likely to draw blanks on words we use less frequently - like abacus or palindrome. 2. There are also categories of words that lead to tip-of-the-tongue states more often. Proper names are one of those categories. There's no definitive theory, but one reason might be that proper names are arbitrary links to the people they represent, so people with the same name don't possess the same semantic information the way that common nouns do, Abrams said.

This article explains the reason why we call our parents mom and dad. The article gives examples of different ways to say mom and dad in different languages in a table, to show how similar the sounds of mom and dad are across those languages. The article then explained how social constructs and culture keeps us from calling our mom or dad their legal name.

This article discusses why children call their parents 'Mom' and 'Dad', and why not other names. It talks about how the role sounds play, and the role that cultural rules play in why most people refer their parents in this way.

This article talks about how speech and language disorders can occur in a variety of different ways. Sometimes, people's brains have problems figuring out how to make their mouths and tongues move in the proper way to make the sounds they want to make. The article goes over how these children might have problems learning others things as well such as reading. In other cases, some children have speech language disorders because of cerebral palsy which means that the muscles in their bodies do not work as well as they should, making it harder to make your mouth create the right sounds. or, children might be deaf, and unable to hear that they're making wrong sounds. The article states many different reasons why people might have speech and language disorders

Essayist Ligaya Mishan (one of my best friends from Punahou!) examines "cancel culture"--the practice of publicly ostracizing a person, whether it's professionally, personally, or in the digital/social media world--historically contextualizing the phenomenon, which is not recent, but something that has existed in many cultures, past and present, and examining the reasons behind it. This essay is also a Words R Us special in its use of etymology: examining the origins and evolution of different words related to cancel culture.

Esperanto isn't common and only spoken by language enthusiasts eager to learn this language said to be the most accessible and easy to learn. However, Esperanto, unlike English, has yet to catch on and a significant reason might be that there aren't any nations/states already speaking and connected to Esperanto.

This article talks about how society right now is living in "The Age of Profanity," meaning that swearing has become so much a part of our lives, that it isn't really viewed as "inappropriate" anymore. In the article, Benjamin K. Bergen and Michael Adams, who both wrote two different books about profanity, agree that the court system, English teachers, and parents who teach children that swearing is unacceptable, are the only reasons why profane words still exist today. Benjamin K. Bergen, author of, "What the F," talks about how there are very blurred lines between words classified as profane and words that are perfectly okay to say. He also points out that there is no evidence to say that exposure to profanity harms children, but slurs that are directed at people because of their racial, ethnic or sexual identities are. Michael Adams, author of, "In praise of Profanity," talks about how even though we are in "The Age of Profanity" now, it won't last for long because the future of swearing belongs to slurs. On the other hand, he talks about fearing a future where "nothing will be obscene, nothing profane and nothing taboo," because of how socially acceptable and common profanity has become.

Scientist discuss why humans enjoy swearing so much and what actually happens in our brains when we do use curse words.

The article details changes in the verb that has the most meanings. Currently, the verb with the most definitions appears to be run, but it was not always this way. Other verbs such as "put" and "set" used to have more, but over time, "run" has out paced them. The article finishes by explaining a potential reason for this change and how British versus American culture could have had an effect.

This article is about how being out of school for half a year could change children's relationship with formal expression. Learning online is not nearly as effective as in-school instruction and this article talks about how that may affect young students in the future. It also talks about how children who speak a non-English language at home will become more proficient in that language due to the nation-wide stay at home orders. This article highlights the benefits and drawbacks that will affect young children and their language due to being in quarantine.

This article talks about how people will be affected by the Coronavirus linguistically. It reasons that now people are staying at home, their home languages can be better preserved. The article also mentions that online teaching is not as effective as interpersonal teaching because young students won't be learning kinesthetically and will only be learning passively through a screen. This holds true for me, as certain topics are better explained to me in a classroom setting.

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.