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How social media is changing how we talk- the etymology nerd

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How social media is changing how we talk- the etymology nerd

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How social media is changing how you talk | Adam Aleksic | TEDxPenn

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Don't be alarmed if you see young people use increasingly macabre emojis online. In the past few years, for instance, the skull emoji has transformed into a symbol to communicate humor or irony. Much like an exclamation point or question mark, it can serve to both separate text and contextualize how a sentence should be understood. For example: I just wrote a Washington Post op-ed on Gen Z slang 💀

Although it might seem silly, the skull in my sentence serves a very important function. If I texted this to a friend without the emoji, it would either come across as boastful or oddly formal. Punctuating the text with a skull lightens the tone and signals humility by shifting attention to the absurdity of the situation.

In this sense, the emoji is a tone tag - a character specifying the message's intent. You're very aware of this concept, even if you don't know it. Exclamation points are just tone tags indicating excitement, while question marks signal curiosity or confusion. People have tried introducing tone tags for irony before: In the late 1580s, English printer Henry Denham proposed a "percontation point" (⸮) for rhetorical questions. Other iterations of the "irony mark" popped up in the late 17th century - an inverted exclamation point (¡) - and, more recently, in 2010 - through a swirly character called the "SarcMark" - but nothing caught on.

These didn't work for a few reasons. They were hard to standardize and were largely unnecessary in a time when most informal communication was happening in person, where marking tone is easy. If you find something funny, you laugh and people know what that means. But now we have to mark tone in informal communication online, which requires us to navigate an uncertain, ambiguous medium open to misinterpretation. If you're not careful, you come across sounding passive-aggressive; too careful, you come across sounding unnatural.

Thankfully, the emoji keyboard presented a readily accessible and standardized solution. Since 2011, we've been able to indicate laughing through the laughing-crying emoji, which became so widely used that the Oxford English Dictionary chose it as its 2015 Word of the Year.

However, this very popularity, coupled with our constant need to mark tone online, led to overuse. Suddenly, things had grown so "funny" that we were weeping tears of joy all the time, meaning that it was hard to distinguish when someone was actually laughing versus just trying to lighten the tone.

A similar phenomenon happened with the words "lol" and "lmao." Younger generations are now expressing humorous reactions through sentences like "LITERALLY CRYING," which, somehow, I'm still guilty of typing with an expressionless face.

Our escalating vocabulary for showing what we find funny has likewise led to a dizzying cycle of emoji evolution, since tone tags change just like words do. Once the laughing-crying emoji became passé, we mirrored the expression "I'm crying" with the crying emoji, and once that lost its appeal, we turned to the skull emoji, drawing on the idea of being "dead" from laughing.

This is part of a linguistic process called "semantic bleaching." The more we use a charged word, the more its original meaning is diluted until it's lost altogether and needs to be replaced. This isn't new. We've been semantically bleaching since words like "very" (which comes from Old French verai, meaning "truthfully") and "really" (which once meant "in reality"). Eventually, the intensifiers became oversaturated for expressing sincerity, so now we just use them to add emotional weight to statements.

The skull emoji, too, is already becoming overused. In the sentence I just wrote a Washington Post op-ed on Gen Z slang💀, I'm not using the emoji to cue laughter, as I once might have. Instead, I'm lightening my statement and, in the process, becoming another perpetrator of semantic bleaching. We're already starting to see new tone tags emerge for genuine laughter, like the tombstone to say, "No really, I'm actually dead."

These tone tags capture the culture of Gen Z, the first cohort to grow up entirely in the context of smartphone communication. We're speeding through the age-old bleaching process because of our unprecedented experience of navigating online ambiguity. For better or worse, we're locked into a complicated parade of punctuation, constantly relegating expressions of excitement in favor of their newer, trendier alternatives.

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In the past few years, the skull emoji has transformed into a symbol for younger people to communicate humor or irony.

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Opinion | How Gen Z took over incel slang

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We need to talk about the way Gen Z communicates — and how it’s influenced by so-called involuntary celibates.

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Disruptive thought leadership moving forward: how to decode Orwellian Newspeak in 2024

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There's a lack of forward visibility / I ain't got a clue

In George Orwell's 1984, the idea behind Newspeak, a drastically narrowed official vocabulary, is to control the range of thoughts people have. Limit the language and you limit critical thinking, abstract concepts, the ability to debate and dissent. And so, each year, the number of permitted words shrinks.

Modern English is not like this. Our sentences are often compressed by the limitations of social media, but our vocabulary remains plentiful. However, Newspeak is also "marked by euphemism, circumlocution, and the inversion of customary meanings", and this is very familiar in today's world of soundbites, jargon and corporate gibberish. We are inundated by words and phrases whose function is not to clearly communicate meaning, but often the very opposite. For instance, where once we had opinions, we now demonstrate thought leadership. Where once people were selfish, now they are narcissists. And instead of looking to the future, we move forward.

The good news, perhaps, is that most of these words quickly get used to the point that they become meaningless. The bad news, of course, is that new words appear all the time, like a dictionary of jargon and psychobabble slapping a human face forever. So, what are some of the most annoying words and phrases out there?

It's really authentic / It's carefully contrived to appeal to hipsters

Authenticity
Be authentic. This call for not being fake and keeping it real sounds innocuous enough, right? But it rarely means this. For instance, when applied to neighbourhoods, restaurants and craft ales "authentic" has come to mean "carefully curated to appeal to hipsters". Just look at your average cafe with its vintage light fittings, exposed concrete and distressed brickwork. The kind of authenticity you find in London is remarkably similar to that which you'll find in Austin, Oslo or Bangkok. Meanwhile, we're often encouraged to bring our "authentic selves" to work, but this throws up several questions. Does anyone really want to do this? Does your boss really want your real self anywhere near the office? And is your authentic self who you really are anyway?

Moving forwards
Like many of today's coinages, this one comes from the corporate workplace. It's easy to see why corporate speak has become so endemic. People want to sound professional and there is the belief that this is how "professional" people communicate. Moreover, by cloaking what you do in baffling buzzwords, you create a mystique, often around very mundane tasks. You may also obfuscate the meaning of unpleasant actions - for example, downsizing never sounds quite as bad as sacking.

But "moving forwards" particularly grates. Perhaps it's popular because it conveys a sense of movement and dynamism. But it's an oddly imprecise phrase. Why not say "in the future" or "in six months' time"? Even "looking ahead" is better. Often it's used when no modifier is required: "We need to grow the business moving forward." Here, it means nothing at all.

Story
As in: "It isn't part of my story." This really just means "life" but where it differs from "life" is that it allows you to cast yourself as the main character in a narrative that is full of meaning and resonance. People talk about parenting and all manner of other things becoming part of their "story". Far harder, but more honest, to admit that a huge amount of what happens to you is down to chance.

You need to think outside the box / Your ideas aren't good enough

Thinking outside the box
Another example from the workplace. There is nothing wrong with this as an idea - it just means novel or smarter thinking. But the problem is, if everyone thinks outside the box - or thinks they are thinking outside the box - then nobody thinks outside the box. To slightly adapt an old joke, you're thinking differently, just like everyone else.

Narcissist
Another popular source of contemporary coinages is therapy and self-help culture. Therapeutic sounding words are often employed in everyday usage because they convey the feeling that the speaker has authority. Words are used to elevate you above the person you are speaking to or about. In both workplace and self-help speak, repurposed words are used to signal membership of groups - with you inside the group, naturally.

"Narcissist" is a good example of this type of appeal to authority. Call someone "self-centred" or "selfish" and you're just bad-mouthing them. Call someone a narcissist and you're using the expert language of professionals. Your opinion matters more - and they're a bad person. See also: "main character syndrome".

We're going to be disruptive and agile/We're going to do something and if it doesn't work we'll change what we're doing.

Disruptive
Another once fine, but now meaningless word. It was originally used to describe entrants to markets (whether companies or products) that shook up the status quo. Now it's usually appended to anything new. Check out Bob's disruptive new leadership paradigm.

Thought leadership
The term "thought leader" was originally used to denote an expert or someone whose ideas held considerable sway. But now "thought leadership" is just a way of badging everything you ever say. Like thinking outside the box, it has come to mean everything and so means nothing.

IRL
Internet slang is another rich source of today's jargon. IRL has permeated IRL conversations - as in: "Let's meet IRL." But, seriously, wouldn't you rather just meet "face-to-face"?

Internet slang is often used to show belonging or to cloak meaning - particularly from parents or to avoid being flagged by content moderating algorithms (that's why it's known as algospeak). And sometimes it's just for the LOLs.

Toxic
People tend to attach this word to anything they find vaguely upsetting. But remember when relationships just didn't work and people were just difficult? All too often the word is now used as a way of stigmatising things you don't like. But don't worry: the other person probably describes you as toxic too.

Gaslighting
A good example of a word that has been overused to the point of losing its original and important meaning. Originally, it meant "to manipulate another person into doubting their own perceptions, experiences or understanding of events". Now it can all too often be used as a go-to retort when people tell you minor lies or, worse, if they just disagree with you. For instance, a person might claim to be gaslighted by the inclusion of the word in this list.

Punch a puppy
This delightful business phrase means to do something bad that's good for the business. Where it falls down is that, while punching puppies is bad, in real life there's very little upside, business or otherwise. But if you just want a phrase that reeks of mindless, bro-ish workplace machismo, knock yourself (or the puppy) out.

So next time you find yourself reaching for the kind of meaningless jargon that often serves as today's insidious Newspeak, consider exactly why you're using that particular word or phrase. And bear in mind the stark and frank exchange in 1984 between Winston Smith, played by Andrew Garfield in Audible's new adaptation, and his colleague Syme, played by Francesca Mills: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words ... In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime impossible, because there'll be no words in which to express it."

Newspeak Dictionary - a clip from Audible's new dramatisation

Sorry your browser does not support audio - but you can download here and listen $https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2024/03/12/audible_2.mp3

Audible's new dramatisation of George Orwell's classic tale stars Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott and Tom Hardy, with an original score by Matthew Bellamy and Ilan Eshkeri. Listen now. Subscription required. See audible.co.uk for terms. Audible and the Audible logo are trademarks of Audible, Inc or its affiliates

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Disruptive thought leadership moving forward: how to decode Orwellian Newspeak in 2024

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In George Orwell's dystopian 1984, the denuding of language is achieved through the state terror of the Party. But in 2024, has corporate jargon and self-help speak left us just as verbally impoverished?

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Swearing has become more widely acceptable over the past two decades because it is increasingly used for other purposes than to insult people, linguistics experts have said.

"Fuck" and "shit", the two most commonly used swearwords in the UK, are frequently used to emphasise a point in conversation or to build social bonds, rather than with the specific intent to cause offence, according to academic researchers.

They made the comments after the BBC presenter Mishal Husain swore seven times in under a minute during an interview with the home secretary, James Cleverly.

The broadcaster questioned him on Radio 4's Today programme on Tuesday about things he had recently been accused of saying, which included whether he had described a person or a place as a "shit-hole".

Dr Robbie Love, a lecturer in English Language at Aston University, Birmingham, said: "Swearing, as with all language use, is entirely context dependent and context specific. It's what you do with the word and the various functions, as far as performed, that informs the perception of how acceptable it is."

Love said research had found that people commonly swore in casual conversation to express surprise, to create humour, to show solidarity with their peers, or to abuse someone.

But Husain was not doing any of these, he said. "Rather, she's referring to the word that [Cleverly allegedly] used and asking whether he said it. In that context, I would argue that it's more likely to be considered acceptable, than if she suddenly said at the end of the story, 'Well, that was a load of shit, wasn't it?'

"The choice to say it might be part of a strategy to rattle James Cleverly, and not to euphemistically replace that term to force him to acknowledge the reality of that word. But I'm not sure if anybody would genuinely be offended by hearing that word in that context."

Love, who has published studies on swearing trends in informal conversation between the 1990s and 2010s, and the use of the F-word among British teenagers, said most swearwords were becoming less taboo due to the ways in which people were using them.

For example, the F-word was increasingly being used in generic phrases such as "oh, for fuck sake", or "what the fuck?", which had lessened its impact to offend, he added.

"If you break it down and think, if I say, 'who the fuck did that?', as opposed to 'who did that?', what does 'fuck' actually mean? It's just emphasising the general sentiment," he said.

The academic added that this use of the word was happening a lot more now than a few decades ago. "That's good evidence that the specific meaning of that word is falling away, because when people use it, they're using it in these kind of generic ways."

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Love said swearing performed other functions in casual conversation, such as forming social bonds between friends or work colleagues, where its usage signalled a degree of solidarity or social intimacy with the group.

Yehuda Baruch, a professor of management at the University of Southampton's business school, said his research with professionals such as lawyers, doctors and senior managers found swearing was used to create team cohesion, relieve stress and emphasise a point.

Baruch said swearing was also used in a calculated attempt to gain attention, for example, he believed, when the billionaire Elon Musk used the F-word in an interview at the New York Times DealBook summit.

He added: "I'm sure Mishal did it because she wanted to emphasise the point, so that everybody will listen. Forty years ago, she would never do it. But unfortunately, it is effective. This is the new language and we have to live with it."

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Swearing is becoming more widely acceptable, linguistics experts claim

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Swearwords increasingly used for emphasis and to build social bonds, rather than to insult, say academics

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English still rules the world, but that’s not necessarily OK. Is it time to curb its power? | Michele Gazzola

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For fluent speakers, there are clear benefits – for others, there are huge costs. Here are some ways to boost linguistic justice, says lecturer Michele Gazzola

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NATIVIST THEORIES (INNATE IDEAS) OF FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

The term nativist is derived from the fundamental assertion that language acquisition is innately determined, that we are born with a genetic capacity that predisposes us to a systematic perception of language around us, resulting in the construction of an internalized system of language. Innateness hypotheses gained support from several sides. Eric Lenneberg (1967) proposed that language is a "species-specific" behavior and that certain modes of perception, categorizing abilities, and other language-related mechanisms are biologically determined. Chomsky (1965) similarly claimed the existence of innate properties of language to explain the child's mastery of a native language in such a short time despite the highly abstract nature of the rules of language. This innate knowledge, according to Chomsky, was embodied in a metaphorical "little black box" in the brain, a language acquisition device (LAD). McNeill (1966) described the LAD as consisting of four innate linguistic properties:

1. The ability to distinguish speech sounds from other sounds in the environment

2. The ability to organize linguistic data into various classes that can later be refined

3. Knowledge that only a certain kind of linguistic system is possible and that other kinds are not

4. The ability to engage in constant evaluation of the developing linguistic system so as to construct the simplest possible system out of the available linguistic input

McNeill and other researchers in the Chomskyan tradition composed eloquent arguments for the appropriateness of the LAD proposition, especially in contrast to behavioral, stimulus-response (S-R) theory, which was so limited in accounting for the creativity present in child language. The notion of linguistically oriented innate predispositions fits perfectly with generative theories of language: children were presumed to use innate abilities to generate a potentially infinite number of utterances. Aspects of meaning, abstractness, and creativity were accounted for more adequately. Even though it was readily recognized that the LAD was not literally a cluster of brain cells that could be isolated and neurologically located, such inquiry on the cognitive side of the linguistic-psychological continuum stimulated a great deal of fruitful research.

More recently, researchers in the nativist tradition have continued this line of inquiry through a genre of child language acquisition research that focuses on what has come to be known as Universal Grammar (White, 2003; see also Gass & Selinker, 2001, pp. 168-191; Mitchell & Myles, 1998, pp. 42-71; Cook, 1993, pp. 200-245, for overviews). Assuming that all human beings are genetically equipped with abilities that enable them to acquire language, researchers expanded the LAD notion by positing a system of universal linguistic rules that went well beyond what was originally proposed for the LAD. Universal Grammar (UG) research attempts to discover what it is that all children, regardless of their environmental stimuli (the language[s] they hear around them) bring to the language acquisition process. Such studies have looked at question formation, negation, word order, discontinuity of embedded clauses ("The ball that's on the table is blue"), subject deletion ("Es mi hermano"), and other grammatical phenomena.

One of the more practical contributions of nativist theories is evident if you look at the kinds of discoveries that have been made about how the system of child language works. Research has shown that the child's language, at any given point, is a legitimate system in its own right. The child's linguistic development is not a process of developing fewer and fewer "incorrect" structures-not a language in which earlier stages have more "mistakes" than later stages. Rather, the child's language at any stage is systematic in that the child is constantly forming hypotheses on the basis of the input received and then testing those hypotheses in speech (and comprehension). As the child's language develops, those hypotheses are continually revised, reshaped, or sometimes abandoned.

Before generative linguistics came into vogue,]ean Berko (1958) demonstrated that children learn language not as a series of separate discrete items but as an integrated system. Using a simple nonsense-word test, Berko discovered that English-speaking children as young as four years of age applied rules for the formation of plural, present progressive, past tense, third singular, and possessives. She found, for example, that if children saw a drawing of an object labeled as a "wug" they could easily talk about two "wugs," or if they were presented with a person who knows how to "gling;' children could talk about a person who "g1inged" yesterday, or sometimes who "g1ang."

Nativist studies of child language acquisition were free to construct hypothetical grammars (that is, descriptions of linguistic systems) of child language, although such grammars were still solidly based on empirical data. These grammars were largely formal representations of the deep structure-the abstract rules underlying surface output, the stmcture not overtly manifest in speech. Linguists began to examine child language from early one-, two-, and three, word forms of "telegraphese" (like "allgone milk" and "baby go boom" mentioned earlier) to the complex language of five- to ten-year-olds. Borrowing one tenet of structural and behavioral paradigms, they approached the data with few preconceived notions about what the child's language ought to be, and probed the data for internally consistent systems, in much the same way that a linguist describes a language in the "field."

A generative framework turned out to be ideal for describing such processes. The early grammars of child language were referred to as pivot grammars. It was commonly observed that the child's first two-word utterances seemed to manifest two separate word classes, and not simply two words thrown together at random. Consider the following utterances: "my cap"; "that horsie"; "bye-bye Jeff"; "Mommy sock." Linguists noted that the words on the left-hand side seemed to belong to a class that words on the right-hand side generally did not belong to. That is, my could co-occur with cap, horsie, Jeff, or sock, but not with that or bye-bye. Mommy is, in this case, a word that belongs in both classes. The first class of words was called "pivot," since they could pivot around a number of words in the second, "open" class. Thus the first rule of the generative grammar of the child was described as follows:

Sentence pivot word + open word

Research data gathered in the generative framework yielded a multitude of such rules. Some of these rules appear to be grounded in the UG of the child. As the child's language matures and finally becomes adult like, the number and complexity of generative rules accounting for language competence, of course, boggles the mind.

Challenge to Nativist Approaches

In subsequent years the generative "rule-governed" model in the Chomskyan tradition was challenged. The assumption underlying this tradition is that those generative rules, or "items" in a linguistic sense, are connected serially, with one connection between each pair of neurons in the brain. A "messier but more fruitful picture" (Spolsky, 1989, p. 149) was provided by what has come to be known as the parallel distributed processing (PDP) model, based on the notion that information is processed simultaneously at several levels of attention. As you read the words on this page, your brain is attending to letters, word juncture and meaning, syntactic relationships, textual discourse, as well as background experiences (schemata) that you bring to the text. A child's (or adult's) linguistic performance may be the consequence of many levels of simultaneous neural interconnections rather than a serial process of one rule being applied, then another, then another, and so forth.

A simple analogy to music may further illustrate this complex notion. Think of an orchestra playing a symphony. The score for the symphony may have, let's say, 12 separate parts that are performed simultaneously. The "symphony" of the human brain enables us to process many segments and levels of language, cognition, affect, and perception all at once-in a parallel configuration. And so, according to the PDP model, a sentence-which has phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, semantic, discourse, Sociolinguistic, and strategic properties-is not "generated" by a series of rules (Ney & Pearson, 1990; Sokolik, 1990). Rather, sentences are the result of the simultaneous interconnection of a multitude of brain cells.

Closely related to the PDP concept is a branch of psycholinguistic inquiry called connectionism (Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986), in which neurons in the brain are said to form multiple connections: each of the 100 billion nerve cells in the brain may be linked to as many as 10,000 of its counterparts. In this approach, experience leads to learning by strengthening particular connections-sometimes at the expense of weakening others. For example, the first language acquisition of

English regular past tense forms by children may proceed as a series of connections.

First, a child may confidently connect the form went with the verb go. Then, children will often perceive another connection, the regular-ed suffix attached to a verb, and start using the word goed. Finally, with more complex connections, children will perceive goed as incorrect, and maintain both connections, the oed form connected to most verbs, and the went form as a special connection. "According to such accounts, there are no 'rules' of grammar. Instead, the systematicities of syntax emerge from the set of learned associations between language functions and base and past tense forms , with novel responses generated by 'online' generalizations from stored examples" (N. Ellis, 2003, p. 88).

Finally, in recent years a further development of connectionist models of language acquisition is seen in a position that oddly hearkens back to the spirit of behavioral approaches. Emergentism, a perspective, espoused by O'Grady (1999, 2003), MacWhinney (1999), and others, holds that "the complexity of language emerges from, relatively simple developmental process being exposed to a massive and complex environment. The interactions that constitute language are associations, billions of connections, which co-exist within a neural system as organisms co-exist within an eco-system. And systematicities emerge as a result of their interactions and mutual constraints" (N. Ellis, 2003, p. 81). This perspective disagrees sharply with earlier nativist views by suggesting that "there is no inborn Universal Grammar (i.e., no innate grammatical system)" (O'Grady, 1999, p.623).

Emergentism perhaps represents a more cautious approach to a theory of language acquisition than was evident in the early nativist claims, some arguments (Schwartz, 1999) notwithstanding. By attending more judiciously to observable linguistic performance and to the identification of neurolinguistic components of language acquisition (Schumann et al., 2004), researchers can be more cautious about making too strongly "mentalistic" claims about the psychological reality of rule construction in language acquisition.

Approaches from within the nativist framework-as well as the challenges just outlined above-have made several important contributions to our understanding of the first language acquisition process:

1. Freedom from the restrictions of the so-called "Scientific method" to explore the unseen, unobservable, underlying, abstract linguistic structures being developed in the child

2. The construction of a number of potential properties of Universal Grammar, through which we can better understand not just language acquisition but the nature of human languages in general

3. Systematic description of the child's linguistic repertoire as either rule-governed or operating out of parallel distributed processing capacities, or the result of experiential establishment of connections

Nativists contend that a child is born with an innate knowledge of or predisposition toward language, and that this innate property (the LAD or UG) is universal in all human beings. The innateness hypothesis was a possible resolution of the contradiction between the behavioral notion that language is a set of habits that can be acquired by a process of conditioning and the fact that such conditioning is much too slow and inefficient a process to account for the acquisition of a phenomenon as complex as language.

An interesting line of research on innateness was pursued by Derek Bickerton (1981), who found evidence, across a number of languages, of common patterns of linguistic and cognitive development. He proposed that human beings are "bioprogrammed" to proceed from stage to stage. Like flowering plants, people are innately programmed to "release" certain properties of language at certain developmental ages. Just as we cannot make a geranium bloom before its "time," so human beings will "bloom" in predetermined, preprogrammed steps.

One of the assumptions of a good deal of current research on child language is the systematicity of the process of acquisition. From pivot grammar to three- and four-word utterances, and to full sentences of almost indeterminate length, children exhibit a remarkable ability to infer the phonological, structural, lexical, and semantic system of language. Ever since Berko's (1958) grolll1dbreaking "wug" study, we have been discovering more and more about the systematicity of the acquisition process.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, several researchers pointed out that the language of second language (L2) learners is systematic and that learner errors are not random mistakes but evidence of rule-governed behavior (Adjemian, 1976; Corder, 1967; Nemser, 1971; Selinker, 1972). From this developed the conception of "interlanguage," the proposal that L2 learners have internalized a mental grammar, a natural language system that can be described in terms of linguistic rules and principles. The current generative linguistic focus on interlanguage representation can be seen as a direct descendent of the original interlanguage hypothesis. Explicit claims are made about the nature of interlanguage competence, the issues being the extent to which interlanguage grammars are like other grammars, as well as the role of Universal Grammar (UG).

The question of whether UG mediates L2 acquisition, and to what extent, has been much debated since the early 1980s. This question stems from a particular perspective on linguistic universals and from particular assumptions about the nature of linguistic competence. In the generative tradition, it is assumed that grammars are mental representations, and that universal principles constrain these representations. Linguistic universals are as they are because of properties of the human mind, and grammars (hence, languages) are as they are because of these universal principles. The first decade of research on the role of UG in L2 acquisition concentrated on so-called "access," exploring whether UG remains available in non-primary acquisition. The issue of UG access relates to fundamental questions such as: what are natural languages grammars like? What is the nature of linguistic competence? How is it acquired? UG is proposed as a partial answer, at least in the case of the first language (L1) grammar, the assumption being that language acquisition is impossible in the absence of specific innate linguistic principles which place constraints on grammars, restricting the "hypothesis space," or, in other words, severely limiting the range of possibilities that the language acquirer has to entertain. In L2 acquisition research, then, the issue is whether interlanguage representations are also constrained by UG.

UG is proposed as part of an innate biologically endowed language faculty (e.g., Chomsky, 1965, 1981; Pinker, 1994). It places limitations on grammars, constraining their form (the inventory of possible grammatical categories in the broadest sense, i.e., syntactic, semantic, phonological), as well as how they operate (the computational system, principles that the grammar is subject to). UG includes invariant principles, as well as parameters which allow for variation. While theories like Government-Binding (GB) (Chomsky, 1981), Minimalism (Chomsky, 1995), or Optimality Theory (Archangeli and Langendoen, 1997) differ as to how universal principles and parameters are formalized, within these approaches there is a consensus that certain properties of language are too abstract, subtle, and complex to be acquired in the absence of innate and specifically linguistic constraints on grammars.

UG is postulated as an explanation of how it is that learners come to know properties of grammar that go far beyond the input, how they know that certain things are not possible, why grammars are of one sort rather than another. The claim is that such properties do not have to be learned. Proposals for an innate UG are motivated by the observation that, at least in the case of L1 acquisition, there is a mismatch between the primary linguistic data (PLD), namely the utterances a child is exposed to, and the abstract, subtle, and complex knowledge that the child acquires. In other words, the input (the PLD) underdetermines the output (the grammar). This is known as the problem of the poverty of the stimulus or the logical problem of language acquisition.

Closely related to the innateness controversy is the claim that language is universally acquired in the same manner, and moreover, that the deep structure of language at its deepest level may be common to aU languages. Decades ago Werner Leopold (1949), who was far ahead of his time, made an eloquent case for certain phonological and grammatical universals in language. Leopold inspired later work by Greenberg (1963, 1966), Bickerton (1981), Slobin (1986, 1992, 1997), and \Vhite (1989, 2003), among others.

Currently, as noted earlier in this chapter, research on Universal Grammar continues this quest. One of the keys to such inquiry lies in research on child language acquisition across many different languages in order to determine the commonalities. Slobin (1986, 1992, 1997) and his colleagues gathered data on language acquisition in, among others, Japanese, French, Spanish, German, Polish, Hebrew, and Turkish. Interesting universals of pivot grammar and other telegraphese emerged. Maratsos (1988) enumerated some of the universal linguistic categories under investigation by a number of different researchers:

Much of current UG research is centered on what have come to be known as principles and parameters. Principles are invariable characteristics of human language that appear to apply to all languages universally, such as those listed above. Cook (1997, pp. 250-251) offered a simple analogy: Rules of the road in driving universally require the driver to keep to one side of the road; this is a principle. But in some countries you must keep to the left (e.g., the United Kingdom, Japan) and in others keep to the right (e.g., the United States, Taiwan); the latter is a parameter. So, parameters vary across languages. White (2003, p. 9) notes that "UG includes principles with a limited number of built-in options (settings or values), which allow for cross-linguistic variation. Such principles are known as parameters." If, for example, all languages adhere to the principle of assigning meaning to word order, then depending on the specific language in question, variations in word order (e.g. , subject-verb-object; subject-object-verb, etc.) will apply.

According to some researchers, the child's initial state is said to "consist of a set of universal principles which specify some limited possibilities of variation,expressible in terms of parameters which need to be fixed in one of a few possible ways" (Saleemi, 1992,p. 58). In simpler terms, this means that the child's task of language learning is manageable because of certain naturally occurring constraints.

For example, the principle of structure dependency "states that language is organized in such a way that it crucially depends on the structural relationships between elements in a sentence (such as words, morphemes, etc.)" (Holzman, 1998, p. 49).

Take, for example, the following sentences:

1. The boy kicked the ball.

2. The boy that's wearing a red shirt and standing next to my brother kicked the ball.

3. She's a great teacher.

4. Is she a great teacher?

The first two sentences rely on a structural grouping, characteristic of all languages, called "phrase;' or more specifically, "noun phrase." Without awareness of such a principle, someone would get all tangled up in sentence (2). Likewise, the principle of word order permutation allows one to perceive the difference between (3) and (4). Children, of course, are not born with such sophisticated perceptions of language; in fact, sentences like (2) are incomprehensible to most native English-speaking children until about the age of 4 or 5. Nevertheless, the principle of structure dependency eventually appears in both the comprehension and production of the child.

According to UG, languages cannot vary in an infinite number of ways. Parameters determine ways in which languages can vary. Just one example should suffice to illustrate. One parameter, known as "head parameter," specifies the position of the "head" of a phrase in relation to its complements in the phrase. While these positions vary across languages, their importance is primary in all languages. Languages are either "head first" or "head last." English is a typical head-first language, with phrases like "the boy that's wearing a red shirt" and "kicked the ball." Japanese is a head-last language, with sentences like "wa kabe ni kakkatte

imasu" (picture wall on is hanging) (from Cook & Newson, 1996, p. 14).

Doughty, Catherine J and Long, Michael H. 2005. The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. Blackwell Publishing

Searle, J.R. 1971. The philosophy of Language. London: Oxford University Press

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NATIVIST THEORIES (INNATE IDEAS) OF FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

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NATIVIST THEORIES (INNATE IDEAS) OF FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION The Nativist Approach The term nativist is derived from the fundam...

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Traveling, Fighting, Dancing: Illness and Recovery Metaphors

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What language can do to you, and what you can do with language.

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Imagine a world without language. Language is all around us. It serves as the cornerstone of human communication. It shapes our interactions, influences our understanding of the world, and allows us to express our thoughts and emotions.

For those passionate about exploring the intricacies of language and delving into the depths of linguistic and English language studies, there are universities worldwide that stand out for their exceptional departments in this field.

These four world-class universities boast renowned departments of Linguistics and English Language. These institutions have established themselves as global leaders in language studies, attracting top-notch faculty, fostering groundbreaking research, and providing an enriching academic environment for students.

Whether you're a prospective student looking to pursue a degree in linguistics or an avid language enthusiast eager to delve into the latest advancements in the field, these exceptional linguistic and English language departments will ensure you secure a successful career.

Lancaster University

Lancaster University's Department of Linguistics and English Language is one of the largest departments of its kind in the UK - and one of its best-ranked. It's 10th in the world for Linguistics in the 2023 QS World University Rankings, second in the UK for Linguistics in the Times and Sunday Times Good University 2023 and third in the Complete University Guide (CUG) 2024.

This success is due in no small part to its cutting-edge, empirically-based theoretical and applied linguistics research in a wide range of areas from helping catch cyber criminals via their linguistic thumbprints, through ensuring pilots have sufficient language proficiency to communicate with the control tower, to revealing the nature of Shakespeare's language - all areas of expertise at Lancaster.

For the last 40 years, researchers here shape and inform pressing cultural, social and educational issues around the world. In the Research Excellence Framework 2021 (REF2021), the Linguistics department achieved the highest possible score for impact and was rated "outstanding" for 100% of its research impact, "world-leading" for 100% of its research environment and ranked second in the UK for overall research quality.

With distinguished faculty leading the way, students learn from experts while immersed in a rich environment that pushes them to discover the role of language in society. The department stands out for its remarkable flexibility, offering a wide range of programmes with a diverse range of delivery. Whether you prefer on-campus or online learning, full-time or part-time study, or short courses, there is always the right programme that caters to your needs.

Whichever programme you choose, you'll gain transferable skills for the dynamic job market. With Lancaster, your career is emphasised from the very beginning of your degree, ensuring you'll evolve into an expert on language and linguistic analysis by the time you graduate.

University of Edinburgh

Nestled in the historic and picturesque city of Edinburgh, the University of Edinburgh stands as a beacon of academic excellence, captivating students worldwide. Among its many exceptional departments, the Linguistics and English Language Department shines as a vibrant and dynamic hub of linguistic inquiry and exploration.

The department emphasises applied linguistics, addressing real-world language-related issues. Students have opportunities to explore areas such as language teaching, second language acquisition, language assessment, and language policy. This applied focus equips students with practical skills and prepares them for careers in language education and related fields.

It boasts expertise in language technology and computational linguistics, leveraging technology to analyse and process language data. Students can explore areas such as natural language processing, corpus linguistics, and computer-assisted language learning. This intersection of language and technology provides unique insights into the digital transformation of language-related fields.

The faculty members actively contribute to groundbreaking research and are at the forefront of linguistic inquiry, providing students with an exceptional learning experience. Students in the department have access to a wide range of courses and programmes that cover both theoretical and applied aspects of language studies.

Here, a strong emphasis on research is placed by offering numerous research opportunities for undergraduate and postgraduate students. Students are encouraged to engage in independent research projects, work closely with faculty members, and contribute to ongoing research initiatives. The department's collaborative and supportive research environment enables students to develop their research skills and make original contributions to the field of linguistics.

UC Berkeley

UC Berkeley needs no introduction for its academic and research excellence - especially after being named the number one public university by US News and World Report.

The university is home to an excellent Linguistics Department renowned for its study of language and other diverse subfields. With a long-standing reputation and a commitment to groundbreaking research, the department provides an enriching environment for students interested in linguistics.

The department's faculty boats scholars and researchers who are leaders in their respective fields. Curriculum is comprehensive, covering foundational and advanced linguistics topics. Students have the opportunity to study various aspects of language, engaging with theoretical frameworks and analytical methods. The curriculum encourages critical thinking, data analysis, and problem-solving skills, equipping students with a solid foundation in linguistic theory and methodology.

Here, students have ample opportunities to engage in independent research projects or collaborate with faculty members while also participating in fieldwork. Students benefit from access to a wide range of resources, including well-equipped laboratories, language archives, and computational tools, facilitating their research endeavours.

Seminars and workshops further foster a vibrant intellectual community. They bring together students, faculty, and distinguished guest speakers, creating a dynamic intellectual exchange and collaboration platform.

University of Toronto

The University of Toronto (U of T) is Canada's leading higher education provider, founded in 1827. As an international, top research-intensive institution, UofT is driven to inspire and innovate, consistently producing graduates who make positive changes in the world.

The U of T's Department of Linguistics is a leading academic department dedicated to studying language and its intricacies. With a rich history and a commitment to excellence, the department offers a vibrant learning environment for students interested in exploring the diverse field of linguistics.

At the heart of the department is its distinguished faculty, renowned scholars and researchers at the forefront of linguistic inquiry. Their expertise spans various subfields, including phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, psycho-linguistics, sociolinguistics, and more.

The department offers a broad curriculum, encompassing a wide range of courses that dive into the structural, cognitive, and social aspects of language. Students have the opportunity to tailor their studies according to their interests, exploring different linguistic phenomena and theories. The curriculum is designed to foster critical thinking, analytical skills, and a deep understanding of the complexity of the English language.

For graduate students, the department offers rigorous master's and PhD programmes, equipping them with advanced training and research skills to pursue careers in academia, research, or industry.
*Some of the institutions featured in this article are commercial partners of Study International

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4 universities with exceptional linguistic and English language departments

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Studying linguistics and English language at these four universities around the world will equip you with valuable skills and enhance your career prospects.

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Language and Power- Prime Minister's Questions

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Language and Power- Prime Minister's Questions

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razy as this might sound, 10 years ago I honestly thought Barbie was tottering on her tiptoes, ready for a well-earned retirement. A few years earlier, my book, Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, had energetically questioned why we not only assumed it was natural that girls would love dolls but also why we expected girls to turn themselves into pretty objects in turn.

My questions coincided with growing unease in society with the way the apparently innocuous doll contributed to harsh stereotypes for girls. Barbie made girls less ambitious, psychologists said, or more prone to eating disorders. Sales began to slide; "Barbie slump", the headlines had it in 2016, or "Barbie out of fashion".

But just as we started to think it was time for Barbie to be consigned to landfill, the manufacturer, Mattel, gave her a fresh look - or rather, any number of fresh looks. In response to fading enthusiasm for the doll, with her cookie-cutter skinny blonde looks, we've had a run of new Barbies. Black Barbies with natural hair, Barbies in wheelchairs, with hearing aids and vitiligo, and all sorts of role model Barbies from Jane Goodall Barbie to Clara Amfo Barbie. And now, with all the glamour that Margot Robbie, Issa Rae and Greta Gerwig can bring to the beach party, Barbie rises yet again. This time, we're told, she's empowering. This time, we're told, she's actually funny. This time, even if you hate Barbie, you'll love Barbie.

So the release of the film has cued a slew of commentators explaining why feminists should learn to stop worrying and love the doll. To an extent, I agree. I never banned the pink plastic ones from my children's toybox. In fact, Barbies seemed to wander into my daughter's bedroom of their own accord as gifts and hand me downs from friends and family. As research shows, playing with dolls can stimulate empathy and imagination, and I enjoyed listening to my daughter and her friends chattering away as they took the plastic people on crazy adventures.

So I don't want to overstate the pernicious influence of Barbie herself. I get that she is just a doll, and most women can take or leave her, play with her or bin her, and might even be inspired by her. Just as it isn't Instagram alone that fuels narcissism, or the Kardashians alone who enforce unrealistic body expectations, no single brand, model or social media platform should be the target for feminists' concerns about why inequality and sexism are so damn hard to shift.

In a world in which women are told they can be anything, too often they still have to be dolls as well

But in her own little way, Barbie tells us something about the bigger impasse in which women still find ourselves. The plethora of new, aspirational Barbies, who combine cool jobs with gleaming smiles and shiny hair, serve to remind us just how hard it still is even for successful and experienced women to be valued if they don't also show doll-like qualities - prettiness, neat wardrobe, perfect shape, youthful faces. In a world in which women are told they can be anything, too often they still have to be dolls as well.

And the reinvention of Barbie shows us all too clearly how the language of women's empowerment has been taken up on a massive scale not as a means to revolution, but as a tool to unlock further consumerism. The new film has already led to a vast wave of lucrative marketing opportunities for Mattel. "This summer, as well as dressing in Barbie apparel from Gap, Primark or Forever 21, wearing her shoes from Aldo or inline skates from Skatehut and sporting her makeup (NYX Cosmetics and others), you can also relax on a Barbie x Funboy pool float while enjoying Pinkberry's Barbie-branded frozen yoghurt ... play on your pink Xbox and then brush your teeth using 'the pinkest oral beauty collection ever', " ran a Guardian article.

Because Mattel executives now feel they need to speak the language of feminism to sell more effectively to women, they do so energetically. They have reimagined Barbie as "the original girl empowerment brand" and have created something called the Barbie Dream Gap project, to "level the playing field for girls globally by giving them the resources, inspiration and support they need to believe that they can do or be anything". In practice, it means that a minuscule proportion of Mattel's profits - in 2022, $250,000 (£190,550) out of $394m, or less than 0.1% - is now put into projects that support girls' ambitions, such as school workshops or "mentorship conferences".

This kind of initiative is hardly unique to Mattel. Throughout the business world, executives have learned to speak about aspiration and role models and to remind young women to work on their own confidence and ambition. But while the focus is so firmly on this "dream gap", all around the world women are still falling into the reality gap. What's in that gap? Not low aspirations, but low pay, lack of childcare, drudgery, inequality.

To tackle those issues, feminists would need to be able to challenge the excesses and entrenched hierarchies of capitalism rather than embrace them. Mattel's dedication to using feminist language to sell more and more plastic flotsam to women seems to me to be a poor return on our former dreams of thoroughgoing social change.

I'm not the only one who feels this shift in feminism towards individualism and consumerism as a loss. Living Dolls has just been reissued, and I've been struck by some conversations I've had with younger readers, who are telling me forcefully that not only do they recognise the problems I mapped out 13 years ago, but they feel that things have only got worse for women and girls. If we still believe girls deserve a freer and more equal world, we need to stop looking to dolls to lead the way forward.

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She's had a whip-smart Hollywood facelift, but Barbie still isn't much of a role model | Natasha Walter

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Mattel has reinvented its doll in the language of empowerment, but it's a hollow, plastic form of feminism

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By Lillian Stone Features correspondent

Lazy girl jobs, girl math, girl dinner - feminised trends are everywhere on social media. There's community and levity in them, but also a darker side.

In July, the "lazy girl job" took over social media. In a TikTok video, 26-year-old creator Gabrielle Judge, who coined the term, described this kind of role as "basically something you can just quiet quit" while making a comfortable salary and having excellent work-life balance.

If it sounds like an ideal job that anyone can do, it is - yet Judge wrapped it as a "girl" phenomenon. It was one of the reasons the term went viral.

Lazy girl jobs are just one instance of a parade of content recently branded as "girl" trends. In the past month, we've seen the rise of "girl math", which allows shoppers to justify pricey purchases with a bit of number crunching; and "girl dinner", in which meagre snack platters constitute a full dinner.

As these trends rise, there's one key thing they have in common besides their nomenclature - there's nothing inherently feminine about them at all. Just as easily as women, men can have good, low-stress jobs; do mental gymnastics to permit themselves to buy something expensive; and eat five strawberries, two boiled eggs and a lone cheese stick for dinner.

Yet experts say these creators are onto something - branding them as girl trends is a smart move if they want maximum impact. At their core, these labels are clever marketing, which gets people talking. However, as much as girl trends can build community and drive conversation, they can also be infantilising and reinforce harmful gender stereotypes.

Savvy branding

In many cases, there's very little inherently gendered about these viral girl trends.

For instance, in girl math, the TikTok phenomenon that argues "any purchase under $5 is free", has its roots in a common behavioural finance concept called the "pain of paying", in which people - regardless of gender - experience negative emotions when shelling out for goods or services, especially when paying with cash. The premises in girl math - that anything purchased with a gift card is free, as are items discounted by more than 50% - are non-gendered psychological justifications to skirt discomfort of shelling out money.

Getty Images

Financial experts say there's nothing gendered about the 'girl math' trend - it's underpinned by universal behavioural finance concepts (Credit: Getty Images)

Yet leaning into the girl label with content like this is smart branding, says Shilpa Madan, an assistant professor of marketing at Singapore Management University. She argues these terms become sticky because the framing makes them more approachable. They let groups - in this case, women - feel seen.

"As human beings, we have an innate desire to belong to social groups. When something is labelled as a 'girl' thing, it creates an immediate sense of relatability, fostering a feeling of community and shared sisterhood," says Madan. "Any excuse to partake in a shared ritual or join a 'tribe' as part of a viral trend - even temporarily - is hard to resist."

TikTokers are leaning into the girl-trend action to expand their audience. It's a savvy move, explains brand strategist Liv Steigrad.

"Using 'girl' as a prefix has picked up enough traction to be an effective brand asset. When you see 'girl'-something, you have an idea of what to expect. And when your audience knows what to expect, you can either fulfil their expectations or subvert them in some way," she says. Both are important: "Fulfilling an expectation builds community and connection, and subverting an expectation creates something new and surprising. Both aspects play into what makes trends go viral."

Businesses also know the value of the tribalism inspired by this label - they've capitalised on "girl" trends for years. In summer 2019, musician Megan Thee Stallion's Hot Girl Summer inspired supplement companies, beauty brands and influencers to hop on the trend train. Today, online marketers are sharing round-ups of "essential" girl dinner toolkits, with high-priced charcuterie boards and aprons.

Confirmation bias - for better or worse

Yet for as savvy as these hashtags are, there may be an unintended downside for wrapping trends in feminised branding. Experts maintain that girl trends can create prescriptive gender dynamics out of thin air.

"Gendered labels may be catchy, but they're restricting," says Madan. "Men can also be interested in 'lazy jobs', and some women might not appreciate their careers being labelled 'lazy' or their dinners as exclusively 'girl' territory. It is easy for these labels to feel patronising, especially since they may inadvertently minimise the complexity of women's experiences or undermine their autonomy."

Any excuse to partake in a shared ritual or join a 'tribe' as part of a viral trend - even temporarily - is hard to resist - Shilpa Madan

Isabel Barrow, the director of financial planning at US-based investment company Edelman Financial Engines, points to the girl math trend as particularly problematic. "As a financial planner, I don't think that this is a male or female thing. Calling it 'girl math' is trying to say that women are more susceptible to making bad financial decisions than men, which I don't find to be the case."

Barrow also believes adding "girl" to a trend's nomenclature feels derisive. While TikTok creators may note that the trend is steeped in sarcasm - one creator says "pls don't take this seriously" in her video's caption - a general audience might misconstrue the nuance.

For this reason, other TikTok personalities have pleaded with their audiences to stop normalising the girl math term.

"What's 'boy math'? Opening spreadsheets and doing finance?" posted Jess Ramos, a data analyst who shares her experiences in the tech world on TikTok. In her video, she notes the problem is "using 'girl' as a proxy for bad math or silly math or illogical math".

Steigrad says that girlification as a marketing tool can enforce confirmation bias - the human tendency to look for things that confirm one's pre-existing beliefs. "People who believe women are empowered will see feminism in girl dinner," says Steigrad. "People who think society and social media are absurd will see the absurdist comedy. People who deep down believe women are silly or lesser will interpret the trend in that way."

Yet Steigrad says that as lazy girl jobs, girl math, girl dinners and their other girly counterparts have invaded the zeitgeist, the gendering isn't all bad. For some, it can be a reclamation of traditionally derisive terms.

"It all started when words like 'girl boss' and 'mumpreneur' popped up, followed by the collective frustration and recoiling against those terms," says Steigrad. "And so, as a way to deal with being infantilised, women reclaimed the 'girl' prefix, turning it into something sarcastic and funny. Sometimes you have to laugh so you don't cry, right?"

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Lazy girl jobs, girl math, girl dinner - feminised trends are everywhere on social media. There's community and levity in them, but also a darker side.

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Heard your baby can only see in black and white? Surprisingly, they can actually see some colour from the moment they're born, although it's a little while before they can see the full 'rainbow' and be able to use words like 'red' and 'yellow' in a sentence.
"It's a common myth that babies can only see black and white at birth", says Dr Alice Skelton from the University of Sussex's School of Psychology. "If at birth you show a baby a very bright red and white light, they'll look for longer at the red light than the white. So we know they can tell those two colours apart."

Alice is an expert in how and when babies see and learn about colours. She adds, "For babies, it's a bit like the saturation dial has been turned down on the world. Colours need to be very intense for them to see them at first."

To see the world through your baby's eyes, Alice suggests imagining you've put a photo almost entirely into monochrome and you're able to dial just a little bit of the colour back in. "That's what it's like for babies."

The reason for this is the special cells in our eyes that help us see the world in colour, which are known as cones, aren't fully developed at birth. "Once these colour cells have developed to be more like adults', usually around two months, they'll see an improvement in the colours they can see", adds Alice.

It's a quick process. "How well they can see colour gets twice as good for every doubling of age", she explains. This means when your baby is six months old, they'll see colour twice as well as when they were three months old. "This keeps going until they're about 17 or 18 years old. That's the age your colour vision is the best it's going to be, and then it starts getting worse again."
Here's a basic colour timeline:

Not really, but they do like high contrasting colours, says Alice. So look for picture books and toys that are colourful, not just black and white. "Babies would prefer to look at something colourful than something black and white. They're driven to seek out colour. It's a bit of information about the world that's useful to them."

Not for a while. "These colours are probably quite greyish to babies", says Alice. This means pastel-coloured toys will all look similar to babies, no matter which colour they are. "They need colours to be intense to see them."

This usually comes when your child is between 2-3 years old, although it could be a bit earlier or later. Speech and language therapist Claire Smith says, "Learning colour words is part of language development, but don't sweat it if your child isn't picking them up yet. The language building blocks are naming words (nouns) and action words (verbs). When they've grasped these, your child will move on to describing words (adjectives)." Only when they're ready can they move onto conceptual words for sizes, shapes and colours.

"One of the possible reasons children struggle learning colour words is to do with the idea of where the boundary is between different colour groups. Where is the point that blue becomes green, or the point that red becomes pink?", says Alice.

Another issue is that there are a lot of different shades of each colour, says Claire. And this can make it hard for children to learn colour words. "You might say to your child, 'the sun is yellow', 'that flower is yellow' and 'these socks are yellow'. But they'll all be different."

Colour-blindness (also known as colour vision deficiency) is very rare, affecting around 8% of boys and less than 0.5% of girls. Colour-blind children find it hard to tell the difference between colours. For example, your child might not be able to see a red ball on the green grass.

"There's no point worrying when children are still learning colour words", says Alice. "We know they find them difficult to learn and they might make mistakes. If they are still consistently mixing up colours when they are 3, especially red and green, talk to your health visitor or optician."

Claire has these top tips:

1. Focus on one colour at a time

Work on understanding one colour first. Say to your child, "Let's find lots of blue things today. You've found a ball that's blue. Look, the slide is blue", and so on. When you're confident they've understood 'blue', move on to a contrasting colour like yellow and do the same thing. This helps your child learn that colours are labels that describe things.

2. Think how you're using colour words

A common mistake parents make is to point to something - a teddy for example - and say, 'red' or 'look, it's red'. It's not just red, it's a teddy that's red. The colour name is secondary to what the thing actually is. So try saying, 'The teddy is red' instead.

3. Use colours every day

Make colour words part of your everyday language and give your child choices. 'Do you want red socks or blue socks?'. The best way to help children to learn language is to use what children are interested in at that time.

4. Don't just focus on colours

It's best to focus on what the thing is rather than its colour. If a car goes past, you can say, 'a red car', but use lots of other describing words too, for example, 'It's a fast car' or 'It's a noisy car'. This helps develop your child's vocabulary in a massive way. From a language point of view, colours are often less important than other describing words. So don't get too bogged down if they don't learn them quickly.

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How toddlers learn colours: When do children see colours and how do they learn colour words?

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Have you heard that babies only see in black and white? This isn't strictly true, but the way they see colour and learn about colour takes a long time to fully develop.

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Student Life Magazine- Written by and for students

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Student Life Magazine- Written by and for students

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Student Life | A Deep Dive Into What Matters To You

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The ultimate student guide to gaming, fashion, beauty, travel, food, LGBT, tech, money, sexual, mental and physical health & much more…

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Project qualification | Level 3 Extended Project | Pearson qualifications

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Information for students and teachers of our Edexcel Level 3 Extended Project, including the specification, key documents and teaching support.

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The text message is celebrating its 30th birthday - the first was sent to a mobile phone by a Vodafone engineer in Berkshire in the UK on 3 December 1992.

It was sent in order to test out the tech, and read "Merry Christmas".

Neil Papworth sent it to one of the firm's bosses, Richard Jarvis, who was at a Christmas party. He did not get a reply.

Mr Jarvis's phone, a new-to-the-market Orbitel 901, weighed 2.1kg - roughly the same as 12 standard iPhone 14s.

At its peak, phone users exchanged billions of SMS - or Short Message Service - messages every year, and in 2010 the word "texting" entered the dictionary.

The service is still used, although internet-based, encrypted messaging platforms like WhatsApp and iMessage are far more popular.

According to Statista, there were 40 billion SMS messages sent in 2021 in the UK, down from 150bn in 2012. By contrast, there are 100 billion WhatsApp messages sent worldwide every day.

The service is still used by the NHS to send out appointment reminders, and by some firms as a form of log-in authentication, where a number sequence is sent which has to be entered into its website.

However, SMS messages are not end-to-end encrypted, and therefore not considered to be secure.

Originally, an SMS could only be text, up to 160 characters long. The concept was born in the early 1980s but it was almost 10 years before one would be sent to a mobile device.

Most early phones had numeric keyboards, with two or three letters attached to each number - so for example to type the letter C, the number one key had to be pressed three times.

"Handset manufacturers didn't include proper QWERTY keyboards because mobiles were only for making telephone calls and receiving messages, but not sending them," said Nigel Linge, professor of telecommunications at the University of Salford.

Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, recalled giving training sessions on how to send and receive text messages.

"It took off like wildfire and before long people were getting so fast at texting on phones, they could pretty much touch-type on a numeric keyboard," he said.

"These days people spend more time looking at their phones than talking into them. SMS was arguably the catalyst for that transition."

You can follow Zoe Kleinman on Twitter (@zsk).

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'Merry Christmas': 30 years of the text message

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The text message is celebrating its 30th birthday - the first was sent to a mobile phone by a Vodafone engineer in Berkshire in the UK on 3 December 1992. It was sent in order to test out the tech, and read "Merry Christmas".

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Name: Multicultural London English.

Appearance: The UK's future dominant dialect.

Wagwan blud? OK, let's get this out of the way immediately. Multicultural London English is a real dialect spoken by an increasingly large number of people. The last thing anyone wants to read now is a broadsheet newspaper journalist using it as an excuse to act like Richard Madeley doing a bad Ali G impersonation.

I am sorry and ting. I swear to God, this is your last warning.

Fine. What's Multicultural London English again? MLE is a dialect spoken by young, working-class Londoners who grow up in areas marked by high levels of immigration. It has its roots in patois spoken by Caribbean migrants who arrived in London after the second world war, but has since become more widespread.

Is this why my nephew keeps calling me "mandem"? Probably. But get used to it. Linguistics experts have argued that MLE is spreading so fast that most people in the UK will probably speak a version of it within 100 years.

This sounds like a disgrace. It isn't, though, is it? The beauty of language is its ability to adapt and change over time. It is perfectly natural to assume that people a century from now will have entirely different speech patterns, just as nobody today uses the sort of dialect that was common a century ago.

It doesn't sound very British, though. Yes, it does. MLE is a dialect that has developed organically in the UK. It's as British as red-faced cockneys, or bowler-hatted bankers, or whatever other cartoon nostalgia you are imagining. It's different, but different doesn't always mean worse.

Well, if we're all going to be speaking this soon, I'd better have a crash course. You want some slang lessons?

Yes please. I'm doing this reluctantly, and very briefly: "hench" is "muscular", "peng" is "good", "wasteman" is "a useless person", and "shook" is "scared".

I have written all these down. You're wasting your time. Slang dies quickly, and the MLE speakers of 2122 won't use any of these. What you should be listening for is grammar and phonology. Although people who speak Estuary English regularly drop their aitches, for instance, MLE speakers will always pronounce theirs.

What else? Well, MLE is characterised by long vowels made in the centre of the mouth; for example, "go" will rhyme more closely with "more" than "mow". Also "th" words like "thing" and "thank" often become shortened to a hard T ("ting" and "tank") in addition to the historical estuary F ("fing" and "fank").

That sounds fine. See? Nothing to be afraid of.

In fact, it sounds rather peng. Get out.

Do say: "MLE will be our dominant dialect within a century."

Don't say: "MLE is bare swag, rudeboy."

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Wagwan? Why are more and more Britons speaking Multicultural London English?

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Hench, peng, shook ... if you don't know what any of these mean, you're nothing more than a wasteman. MLE is sweeping the country!

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One in four have accents mocked at work - survey - BBC News

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Almost half of those surveyed have also faced jibes over their accents in a social setting.

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About this Course

About the Course

In this course, Dr James Murphy (University of the West of England, Bristol) explores politeness theory. In the first module, we introduce the concept of politeness theory and think about its development from the 1970s to the present day. In the second module, we look more closely at one of the most influential theories of politeness -that of Penny Brown and Steve Levison - before turning in the third module to consider theories of impoliteness. In the fourth module, we use some of the concepts that we have learned so far to analyse an 2009 interview between Andrew Marr and Peter Mandelson, before moving on in the fifth and final module to think about canonical verbal formula mismatches, especially in relation to apologies, e.g. "I'm sorry but you're an idiot."

About the Lecturer

Dr James Murphy is a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol).

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About this Course About the Course In this course, Dr James Murphy (University of the West of England, Bristol) explores politeness theory. In the first module, we introduce the concept of politeness theory and think about its development from the 1970s to the present day.

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Professor David Crystal: The Influence of the King James Bible on the English Language

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Extended Project Qualification- extra UCAS points

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Extended Project Qualification- extra UCAS points

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Open University Creative_Free Writing Course

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Open University Creative_Free Writing Course

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Have you always wanted to write, but never quite had the courage to start? This free course, Start writing fiction, will give you an insight into how authors create their characters and settings.…

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Welcome to Planet eStream the complete media management solution. Please enter your username and password.

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English and Media Centre (EMC) is an educational charity providing CPD and innovative & award-winning teaching materials to secondary English & Media teachers

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A Level English Language: The Language Levels

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Study with Quizlet and memorise flashcards containing terms like Genre, audience, purpose and others.

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Study with Quizlet and memorise flashcards containing terms like abstract nouns, Accent, Accommodation and others.

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About this Course

About the Course

In this course, Dr Jack Wilson (University of Salford) explores the use of gesture in communication. In the first module, we think about the concept of multimodality, the idea that communication can involve different 'modes', e.g. linguistic, visual, gestural, etc. After that, we think about the relationship between language and gesture more specifically, noting that gesture can often contain additional information that is not contained in the linguistic mode. In the third module, we think about the relationship between gesture and thought, before turning in the fourth module to consider the relationship between gesture and language acquisition. In the fifth module, we think about the role of gesture in both learning and teaching, before turning in the sixth module to consider the gesture of pointing in more detail. Do we all point in the same way? If not, why not?

About the Lecturer

Dr Jack Wilson is a Lecturer in the School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford. His research focuses on co-speech gestures, which are meaning gestures that accompany language use.

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About this Course About the Course In this course, Dr Jack Wilson (University of Salford) explores the use of gesture in communication. In the first module, we think about the concept of multimodality, the idea that communication can involve different 'modes', e.g. linguistic, visual, gestural, etc.

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About this Course

About the Course

In this course, Dr Hazel Price (University of Salford) explores the fields of semantics and pragmatics. In the first module, we provide an introduction to both fields, before turning in the second and third modules to explore each field in more depth, including the concepts of sense relations, vagueness and ambiguity, the cooperative principle and Grice's maxims of conversation, and speech act theory. In the fourth module, we explore three types of inference in language - entailment, presupposition and conversational implicature - before applying some of the concepts we have learnt to a real text: Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003). In the final module, we explore some of Dr Price's own research: the evolution of the phrase 'mental health'.

About the Lecturer

Dr Hazel Price is an Academic Fellow in English Language at the University of Salford. Her research interests include corpus linguistics, (critical) discourse analysis and pragmatics. Her recent publication include (as co-editor) Applying Linguistics : Language and the Impact Agenda (2018) and (as co-author) The Babel Lexicon of Language (2021).

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About this Course About the Course In this course, Dr Hazel Price (University of Salford) explores the fields of semantics and pragmatics. In the first module, we provide an introduction to both fields, before turning in the second and third modules to explore each field in more depth, including the concepts of sense relations, vagueness and ambiguity, the cooperative principle and Grice's maxims of conversation, and speech act theory.

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It's wonderful stuff, swearing. It stiffens the sinews and summons up the blood, and not just metaphorically. Obscenities actually do act on us physiologically. Swearing increases electrical conductance across the skin, pushes the heart rate higher and measurably increases resistance to pain.

Obscenities are also linguistically interesting in themselves: the more currency they have, the more their emotional colouring and the associations they trigger overwhelms what they actually mean. "Fucking", these days, only rarely means "having sex". And they become marvellously plastic, grammatically.

Swearing doesn't just mean what we now understand by "dirty words". It is entwined, in social and linguistic history, with the other sort of swearing: vows and oaths. Consider for a moment the origins of almost any word we have for bad language - "profanity", "curses", "oaths" and "swearing" itself .

Melissa Mohr's title, then, is more than just an attention-grabber: the history of swearing is one of a movement back and forth between the holy and the shit. At different times in the history of the west, the primary taboo has been to do either with God, or with the functions of the human body. (The latter, though, does subdivide in a meaningful way between the sexual and the excremental. Really, this book should have been called "Holy Fucking Shit".)

Though Mohr is mainly interested in English, she is generous in roping in examples from outside it. A helpful and interesting chapter on ancient Roman filth does much to sketch the background, too. How do we know what was obscene in a dead language? By literary genre, essentially: if it was written on the toilet wall but didn't appear in satire, it was likely to be properly rude. English has a "Big Six": "cunt", "fuck", "cock", "arse", "shit" and "piss" (though Mohr plausibly suggests that "nigger" should now be in there). The Romans had a "Big 10": cunnus (cunt), futuo (fuck), mentula (cock), verpa (erect or circumcised cock), landica (clitoris), culus (arse), pedico (bugger), caco (shit), fello (fellate) and irrumo (er, mouth-rape).

So the Romans, like us, had a primary relationship between the body and the idea of obscenity - though their sexual schema was a little different, with shame attaching, above all, to sexual passivity. Sexual obscenity also, to complicate things, had a sacramental function - as witness the fruity ways of the god Priapus. Some of that shit was holy.

In medieval times, though, the emphasis was all on the holy. Common words for places and things contained vulgarities regarded as quite innocuous. London and Oxford both boasted a "Gropecuntelane", which is where the prostitutes hung out, and if you visited a country pond "there would've been a shiterow in there fishing, a windfucker flying above, arse-smart and cuntehoare hugging the edges of the pond, and pissabed amongst the grass". At the same time it's hard to recapture quite how shocking medieval people would find a vain oath.

Christianity was founded on oaths and covenants - as was the whole dispensation of feudal society. To swear an oath was to compel God to pay attention to your promise - and to do so in vain was to dishonour God and risk eternal damnation. Indeed, it was believed that if you swore on God's body - "'sblood!"; "God's bones!"; "by Christ's nails!" - you physically spilled his blood, broke his bones and tore out his nails in heaven.

Mohr credits the decline in the importance of oath-swearing to the rise of the merchant classes. Feudal society's scheme of estates was bound by chains of oaths between lords and vassals, right up to the king. Capitalism moved us from oaths to contracts: the oath before God became less important than keeping your word to business partners - and you didn't need eschatological terror to enforce that. Plus, there's the dry, old complaint that swearing constantly "devalues the currency". Between 1640 and 1660, around the civil war, men might have to swear as many as 10 conflicting oaths of loyalty if they wanted to keep their heads attached to their necks.

At the same time, something else was going on: the idea of privacy. In an age when everybody pissed and shat in public, and sex would as like as not take place in a room or even a bed shared with others, taboos around bodily functions weren't all that strong. Chaucer's " swiving", " toords", " queyntes" and " erses" were vulgar and direct, but they weren't obscene. One word was regarded in the late-18th and 19th centuries as so shocking that it was variously rendered " inexpressibles", " indescribables", " etceteras", " unmentionables", " ineffables", " indispensables", " innominables" " inexplicables" and " continuations". That word? "Trousers."

How things change. By the first world war, soldiers swore so much that the word "fucking" came to function as no more than "a warning that a noun is coming". Now even the extremest obscenities have lost their power to shock. In Irvine Welsh's novels, for instance, "cunt" is more or less a synonym for "bloke". It is telling that, where for the Romans the genitals were veretrum or verecundum ("parts of awe" or "parts of shame"), "in today's American slang, the genitalia are devalued as 'junk'".

The only actually taboo language is that of racial insult. Words like "wop", "kike" and "yid" (though not, interestingly, "nigger") were intended to give offence from the off - but only to those on the receiving end. As Mohr writes, the idea that everybody should find them offensive is a relative innovation. Not, it should be said, a bad one.

Mohr's scholarship seems to be sound and her approach positively twinkles with pleasure and amusement. She gives her chapters headings such as "Shit, That Bloody Bugger Turned Out To Be A Fucking Nackle-Ass Cocksucker!", and she's not above finding it funny that a paper on urinary incontinence was co-authored by Splatt and Weedon.

I'd like Mohr's account to have tipped a wink to Viz comic's monumental and still-growing Profanisaurus. Her argument might have been strengthened, too, by reminding us that Eric Cartman, in South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, saves the world from Satan and Saddam Hussein with the words: "Fuck, shit, cock, ass, titties, boner, bitch, muff, pussy, cunt, butthole, Barbra Streisand!"

But here I pick nits. This is a cracking fucking book, and innominables to anyone who says otherwise.

* Sam Leith's You Talkin' to Me? is published by Profile.
Topics

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Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing by Melissa Mohr - review

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It's wonderful stuff, swearing. It stiffens the sinews and summons up the blood, and not just metaphorically. Obscenities actually do act on us physiologically. Swearing increases electrical conductance across the skin, pushes the heart rate higher and measurably increases resistance to pain.

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A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics, by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne.

Most people are listening to us via podcast apps, like iTunes, SoundCloud, and Google Play Music, but we're using youtube's auto-caption feature to generate a first draft of our transcript (check out its hilarious errors at twitter.com/hashtag/amtranscribing), so we figured we'd make the videos public for anyone who prefers listening here or wants to read the transcript before it gets paragraphed and punctuated and put up on lingthusiasm.com

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A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics, by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne.

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Five-time winner of Best Education Podcast in the Podcast Awards. Grammar Girl provides short, friendly tips to improve your writing and feed your love of the English language. Whether English is your first language or your second language, these grammar, punctuation, style, and business tips will make you a better and more successful writer. Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast.

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grammar english spelling school language

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New York Times bestselling author Mignon Fogarty shares her weekly Grammar Girl podcast and video tips about English, grammar, and writing. Her website has been named one of Writer's Digest's 101 best websites for writers multiple times, she is on the Writers Board for NaNoWriMo, and she is an inductee in the Podcasting Hall of Fame.