Words R Us

This article discusses the importance of not incorrectly using medical terms and disorders to describe emotion. It talks about how it can be insensitive towards people that actually suffer from the disorder and how the casual use can make the idea of the real thing seem less serious to others.

With police brutality recently becoming a prominent topic in the political world, linguists are trying to find the link between police language used during these incidents and the incidents themselves. In the study, they analyzed police scanner transcripts and examined police communication ramifications. The goal of this ongoing study is to infer what the police officer is thinking and assuming at the time of the incident.

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."

This article discusses the history of acronyms and how they evolved from initialism. It also talks about the difference between the two, which is that initialism is an abbreviation pronounced as the actual letters (i.e. AFK and BRB), while acronyms are abbreviations pronounceable by its letters (i.e. SCUBA and NASA). Over time, the word "acronym" was used to describe all abbreviations formed by the initial letters of each word, leading to the extinction of initialism.

How can we use small talk to create new connections? Is there more that lies behind it than just filler?

This article discusses the over-emphasized importance of perfecting a second language, and what we should really be focusing on when working to acquire another language.

This article discusses the English language and if it could become the one surviving language. With English being a language that everyone wants to know, due to business opportunities, media, and more, could it be a possibility to be the universal language?

As AI advances, so does its language. A chat bot by Google uses language to speak with others in conversation. However, it runs into some problematic issues, especially regarding its ethics. For instance, it will associate doctors as men and nurses as women. Research is being put in place to make it a safer program.

This article explains language variations and behavioral differences with the presence of a large group and without the presence of a group at all.

This article explains why teenagers are, in fact, not affecting the evolution of language as drastically as we initially thought.

This article discusses how Google Translate functions. Google Translate is a relatively accurate and easy-to-use translator. At first, the system required millions of human-generated translations of texts to identify patterns, in order to provide a pretty accurate translation. Also during this early period, the translator would use English as an intermediary language-languages were translated to English and then from English to the target language. The translator was decent at translating short excerpts, but as the texts got longer, there is a decline in the quality of the translations. In 2016, Google announced they were shifting to a neural network machine learning process, which is supposed to attempt look at the full context of the texts to eliminate discrepancies in translations. This way instead of an intermediary language, the system can just translate from one language to another.

This article provides an insight into an interview with Christopher Manning, a Stanford professor of computer science and linguistics. He is focused on computational linguistics, also known as natural language processing. Natural language processing involves creating algorithms that can allow computers to understand written and spoken language and then intelligently respond. This involves systems such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Voice. These systems are pretty advanced technology, however, they are still far from perfect. Manning notes that people will probably still be working on natural learning processing in twenty years.

This article talks about how social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Reddit have helped researchers track the dynamic of a relationships of people who have broken up. There are signs you might be able to detect when a relationship is about to end, even before either person consciously aware of this. The subtle changes in language leading up to a breakup, such as the use of "I"-words, talking more about other people than ideas, and referencing their partner quite a bit (because their identities are still so strongly knit), for example, can be seen as evidence of an impending split.

This article talks about the relocation of the cockney accent from east London to Essex. The cockney dialect is thought of as a white, working class accent originating in London, but the culture has spread to Essex because of migration due to poverty, overcrowding, deindustrialisation in London and development in Essex. Similar to second-generation immigrants or mixed race people, this has resulted in a confused sense of identity for Essex-born and Cockney-speaking individuals.

This article is about he worldwide medias use of strong/violent words regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict. The words used by the media are only making the conflict worse apparently.

This article is about South Africas move towards making sign language an official language of the country. Sign language would be recognized as the 12th official language of South Africa if passed.

Some metaphors are common in spoken language but are inappropriate in sign, body-part metaphors are possible in sign metaphors but odd/uncommon in spoken metaphor. In spoken language, tone and body position determine when a metaphor is that and not literal. Sign metaphors also have similar markers such as change in facial expression but are more limited in expressing change in tone and body position (as the body is already the main mode of communication). There is a sign for "metaphor" or a way to slightly change the signs for common words in metaphor so that the "listener" knows that the "speaker" means something metaphorically as opposed to literally.

Outlines the importance of early children's language development. It highlights the importance of the four main components to early language development: Phonology, Semantics, Grammar and Pragmatics. This article shows the critical period of first 5 years in development as this is the time that baby's nerve connections are being made and those for speech/communication need to be built early on so that they're inherent to learning.