Words R Us

For you athletes out there, an article on sports psychology and how self-talk, either technical or motivational, can enhance performance.

Science Daily is one of my favorite resources for finding current news, videos, scholarly articles, images, and books about language and its intersections with the sciences: neurology, psychology, anthropology. Try typing in keywords for your desired topic.

If a man wishes to become a great orator, he must first become a student of the great orators who have come before him. He must immerse himself in their texts, listening for the turns of phrases and textual symmetries, the pauses and crescendos, the metaphors and melodies that have enabled the greatest speeches to [...]

An article which describes the background and ideas behind Mark Pagel's book, "Wired for Culture" and how language is intertwined in our society and cultural background.

The vast majority of the 175 indigenous languages still spoken in the United States are on the verge of extinction. Linguist Elizabeth Little spent two years driving all over the country looking for the few remaining pockets where those languages are still spoken - from the scores of Native American tongues, to the Creole of Louisiana. (Audio Story is also given).

"According to a paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Dialect Society in January by Brice Russ, a graduate student at Ohio State University, the 200 million or so messages posted each day in the supposedly placeless world of Twitter may end up being a rich source of information about regional difference. ... it may allow them to track linguistic patterns on a vast scale and in something close to real time, identifying phenomena that can then be investigated more deeply by traditional fieldwork."

How language may actually be a form of technology

According to researchers in New Zealand, robot language may be imminent in the near future.

According to European researchers, gestures help learning languages.

Maybe this is why Italians use gestures so much :P

Catalani beat you, Mark.

Margaret Noori, a professor at the University of Michigan is exploring the implications of bridging the digital divide to use social media as a linguistic preservation tool. Noori's studies are centered around Anishinaabemowin, the native language of the Ojibwe, Michigan's indigenous population.

An interesting guide to French grammar...This website explains how the French distinguish between "tu" and "vous", which are both translated as "you", depending on who they are adressing. How did this develop? Who decides? Why do some languages (like French) have this system, and others don't?

"Whether it be uptalk (pronouncing statements as if they were questions? Like this?), creating slang words like "bitchin' " and "ridic," or the incessant use of "like" as a conversation filler, vocal trends associated with young women are often seen as markers of immaturity or even stupidity. ... But linguists - many of whom once promoted theories consistent with that attitude - now say such thinking is outmoded. Girls and women in their teens and 20s deserve credit for pioneering vocal trends and popular slang ... the idea that vocal fads initiated by young women eventually make their way into the general vernacular is well established."