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In the tweet from Cher, she used 3 emojis: 😥👇🏻📱. I think that these all serve different purposes. The 😥 emoji has an expressive purpose which shows that she is sad. The 👇🏻 emoji has a referential purpose as it conveys information about what she is telling people to look at. Specifically, she is pointing to the article she linked below. The 📱 emoji has the directive purpose of telling people that they should call that number. Even without saying 'call', Cher would have gotten her message across due to the emoji. I chose this tweet specifically because I thought it was interesting how explicit the differences in the purpose of each emoji were and that they were all a single tweet. I also included a conversation between me and my mom about my calculus homework where she used the emoji 😳 expressively to show that she is shocked (... that I waited until the last minute to do my homework). I wanted to include this because looking at my messages on Twitter I noticed that directive emojis were typically accompanied by words that had the same meaning; the emojis were usually not stand-alone trying to give a direction. Similarly, the referential emojis were usually tied to the words being said. Meanwhile expressive could be used alone and have the same exact message, as seen in my mother's text, she didn't even use words to convey the message, only an emoji. I just thought that those observations were interesting. I think that my mother's use of emojis was very successful, and I use it in the same way. In my opinion, emojis (or emoticons) were made to express emotion as implied by the name which is why a stand-alone emoji is most successful when used expressively.

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I chose the NBC article because overuse of saying sorry is something that I have noticed in my own vocabulary and many of my friends. Given my own experience, I was easily accepting toward this view without as much quantitative evidence of women overusing "I'm Sorry". I chose the BPS article because I liked the specific examples that it gave. In the BPS article, it gave many examples of conversations between men and women that highlighted different aspects of the way they communicated. There was a tendency for men to begin speaking before women and interrupt them more readily. I think that this aligns more with Lakoff's dominance model which is how women communicate in a way that maintains their inferior position that has been established in society. Aspects of it include women using more intensifiers, tag questions, and overall being more polite. With this in mind, I think that that saying sorry could demonstrate Lakoff's dominance model as well in terms of saying sorry even when unnecessary (or men not saying it when women might deem it necessary). Tannen's difference model is more so that men and women just speak differently in the same way that people from different racial groups may speak differently. The way that both articles explained themselves makes me lean toward viewing how women's speak through Lakoff's lens of a women's register.

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When I give lectures about talk, one of the most frequent questions from audiences is, 'Do men and women talk differently?' Indeed, it is often not asked, simply asserted - 'but, of course, men and women talk differently'. People who raise this topic generally assume I will confirm what they think they already know.

We think we already know that women and men talk differently for many reasons. We know it from the thousands of 'pop' psychology and communication books, from Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus to He's Just Not That into You. There are thousands of scientific articles that report sex differences in behaviour of all kinds. We think we know about gender difference because research that does not show difference is often not published. Indeed, using gender as a research category is often not interrogated at all. That women and men talk differently has long since passed beyond the realm of academic enquiry and is just what we know.

Researchers have addressed questions about gender and language for several decades. In the 1970s, the linguist Robin Lakoff identified a so-called 'women's register'. It is through language, Lakoff argued, that women's inferior place in society is maintained. Women's talk is more polite than men's; women use more tag questions (e.g., 'isn't it?'), use weaker directives, avoid swearing, and use more empty adjectives (e.g., 'cute') than men.

Lots of research followed Lakoff's original ideas, testing out gender differences in who talks most, who interrupts more, who uses more 'minimal responses' (e.g., 'mm', 'yeah'), and who controls the topic of a conversation. But many apparent findings about gender difference are built on shaky foundations.

For example, the idea that men grab power by interrupting women (more than women interrupt men) is based on a mistaken understanding of interruption. Consider Example 1. The square brackets on lines 02 and 03 indicate when the speakers talk at the same time.
Example 1: From Beattie (1983)
01 A: ... so he (.) he gives the impression that he

02 wasn't able to train them up. [Now

03 B: [He didn't try hard

04 enough heh heh heh

The original analyst of this example claimed that 'Speaker B clearly interrupts Speaker A'. Another analyst, Celia Kitzinger, points out that, in fact, Speaker B starts talking at the precise point when Speaker A reaches the end of their sentence - in technical terms, the end of a 'turn constructional unit'. Speakers frequently - and unproblematically - start to speak at the end of another speaker's sentence. B does not interrupt A.

In Example 2, Tony and Marsha are talking about their son's vandalised car. Kitzinger points out that Tony - a man - starts his turn before Marsha - a woman - completes hers.
Example 2: Tony and Marsha
01 Tony: That really makes me mad.

02 (0.2)

03 Marsha: .hhh Oh it's disgusti[ng as a matter of ] fact.

04 Tony: [ P o o r J o e y. ]

Some researchers would use these three lines of talk as clear-cut evidence of men's dominance over women. However, a closer look reveals that when Marsha describes the vandalism as 'disgusting', her turn has already delivered something that could be complete. Adding 'as a matter of fact' is not necessary. So Tony is not interrupting when he says, in overlap, 'Poor Joey'. The parents talk in tandem to share the same feelings about what has happened to their son.

A little later in the same call, Tony and Marsha are discussing a problem for their son, who is travelling on a standby flight from Marsha's home back to Tony's. On lines 05 and 06, both speakers talk at the same time.
Example 3: Tony and Marsha
01 Marsha: What time did he get on the plane.

02 Tony: Uh::: (0.2) I: don't know exactly I think it was

03 arou:nd three o'clock uh something of that sort.

04 (0.2)

05 Marsha: Oh: maybe he g[ot s'm-

06 Tony: [He took it at four. Gerda says.

This time, Tony starts talking at a point in Marsha's turn where she is clearly not finished - she has not completed her turn in terms of its grammar, intonation (there is no full stop) or action (she has not finished her speculation about her son's circumstances). Tony interrupts Marsha. But, as Kitzinger points out, Tony's interruption is cooperative:
In response to Marsha's enquiry about when their son boarded a plane, Tony reports not being sure and then gives an approximate answer ('around three o'clock or something of that sort'). At line 05 Marsha is apparently using this report as the basis for some speculation about what may have happened and it is this speculation, based on his (as it turns out erroneous) report, that Tony interrupts. Tony's new partner, Gerda, who has overheard his report of Joey's departure time, has apparently corrected him and he is relaying this correction ('four o'clock') to Marsha before she can develop a theory about Joey's flight based on incorrect information. The interruption is here used to implement a correction that has consequences for the turn Marsha is in the course of producing, and it is thus clearly a cooperative action, and from Marsha's point of view, a helpful interruption.
All of this shows us that simply counting instances of overlapping talk says very little about interruption.

Other claims about gender differences in talk have also later been revealed to be flawed. A common assertion is that women talk more than men. The words that characterise the way women talk perpetuate this myth - women chatter, gossip, prattle, natter - about trivial matters. At the same time, feminist researchers have claimed to find that men talk more than women, hogging the floor in public and workplace settings. Yet more scientists have found that no gender difference exists in who talks more.

Throughout my book Talk: The Science of Conversation, there are hundreds of examples of men, women, salespersons, mediators, police officers, clients, customers . . . using tag questions (e.g., 'don't you'), 'minimal responses' (e.g., 'mm', 'yeah'), initiating topics, and overlapping each other. If we categorise all of our examples in terms of gender alone, we will make erroneous claims about women and men at the same time as we miss what is going on in each case. We will stop looking for other explanations for the way people talk.

Consider two examples from the start of a telephone call to a double-glazing company (Example 4) and the vet's (Example 5).
Example 4: Calling double-glazing sales
01 Sales: G'd afternoon, Fine Bar Wi:ndows,

02 (0.6)

03 Customer: .shih (.) .hh >hi< w'd it be po:ssible f'somebody

04 t'come an' give me a quote on uh: a window an:

05 some doors please.
Example 5: Calling the vet
01 Vet: Dunnetts Vets.=Highuptown, Maggie speaking, how

02 can I ↑he:lp.

03 (0.4)

04 Pet owner: Hello there:.=um: I need t'make an appointment

05 t'bring the cat in t'get its um: updated ↓vaccina:tions.

In both cases, the callers are making a request. They design their requests differently. For some gender difference researchers, the customer calling about windows uses stereotypically female language, with hedges and modal verbs ('Would it be possible'), hesitations ('.shih (.) .hh'), and in a polite manner ('please'). The pet owner is stereotypically male, with a direct request ('I need . . .') which is less polite.

The caller in Example 4 is a man; in Example 5 a woman. Perhaps these are just atypical cases - obviously not all men and women speak like their stereotype! But if we start and stop with gender as the only lens through which to interpret the data, we identify only exceptions that prove the rule.

Instead, conversation analysts start with action - what are the speakers doing? Are they entitled to do it? Do they know about the service and what it provides? What is at stake? People begin requests with 'I need' when, say, calling for an ambulance, or a doctor, or

for something relatively important and urgent - like vaccinations. People also say 'I need' when they know what the service offers, and that they are entitled to use it. However, when people are less familiar with the service and what it offers, or they are less entitled to ask for it, or if their problem is not urgent, they often ask 'would it be possible'. These kinds of contingencies better explain the differences in the way people talk.

Plenty of myth-busting science about gender difference exists. Yet our ideas about differences between women and men persist. Gender difference studies start with the assumption that all women and all men can be classified, even with caveats, into two homogeneous groups. Often, then, researchers do not really study gender difference. They simply create and maintain it. They make selective observations to confirm what we already know about how women and men behave.

As a PhD student in the early 1990s, I struggled with all these ideas. I wanted to say something about gender and language. But I didn't want to make assumptions about what I would find when I analysed interaction. I didn't want to reproduce stereotypes. At the same time, I felt that gender imbalance and stereotypes were all around me. How could I capture them? The conversation analyst Curtis LeBaron had the answer:
we should not . . . say 'oh, look, here's a man and a woman talking; . . . oh, we can make these conclusions about gendered communication'. But rather we should say, 'gender only becomes an issue when the participants themselves make it one and we can point to different things about that'.
And, it turns out, people invoke gender a lot. Gender matters to people. Making it relevant does things. Here is just one example, from the PhD I eventually wrote. My research was on gender and conversation in university tutorials. My initial interest was in whether or not male students dominated the floor, leaving female students less verbal space to participate.

My data were thirty hours of tutorials. I quickly realised that coding and counting and correlating with gender would tell me little about what was going on in the encounters. I was also increasingly unhappy with the Men Are from Mars . . . view of gender. So I asked LeBaron's question: how does gender become an issue for participants themselves?

In Example 6, four psychology students are analysing an image in a magazine. They have been instructed to produce a collaborative written report about the materials they are discussing. Bob reminds them of this task.
Example 6: University tutorial
01 Bob: Is somebody scribing. who's writin' it.=

02 Ned: =Oh yhe:ah.

03 (0.8)

04 Matt: Well you can't [ read my ] writin' once I've

05 Ned: [She wants to do it.]

06 Matt: [wri:tten it.]

07 Klara: [.hehhhh ]

08 Ned: We:ll secretary an' female.

As the person asking the question 'Is somebody scribing. who's writin' it' - taking the 'first pair part' - Bob relieves himself of the obligation of answering the question and becoming the scribe. Ned is first to respond, saying, 'Oh yhe:ah.'. He remembers that they must do this, but does not volunteer. After a gap, Matt provides a reason why he cannot be the scribe (his writing is indecipherable). At the same time, Ned nominates Klara. He says, 'She wants to do it.' as he points to her. Ned's words and embodied conduct are fitted together.

Klara has also not volunteered to scribe. Her small laughter particle ('.hehhhh') could be responding to Matt's comment about his own handwriting, or Ned's suggestion that she wants to scribe. Ned then provides an account for his nomination of Klara: 'We:ll secretary an' female.'. At this point, gender becomes relevant to the encounter. It is invoked by Ned to do something. The stereotype that women are secretaries is used at a particular point to make something happen. And Klara becomes the secretary. Her participation in the discussion is reduced to note taker.

You might agree that this is a powerful moment in which gender and language come together. You might also think that this is a oneoff. So what? It is much easier to divide the world into two genders from the start and count the things people do. How do we capture sufficient numbers of moments like this to say something meaningful and generalisable?

There are several answers to this question. First, Example 6 is a demonstration of a method of investigating gender and language - one that does not start with any assumptions about women and men. We can capture moments of gender relevance without using gender as a scientists' category, at all. We can investigate gender as a speaker's category.

Second, conversation analysis is neither a quantitative nor a qualitative method. It is sometimes both. One conversation is not a useful unit of analysis. One conversation contains many questions, many answers, many overlaps, many pauses, many 'ums' and 'uhs'. An apparently single conversation delivers lots of instances of particular phenomena. In the conversation analyst Emanuel Schegloff's words, 'one is also a number, the single case is also a quantity, and statistical significance is but one form of significance'. Claims about gender and interruption may be based on large datasets, but if there is a basic error in identifying interruption in the first place, Schegloff is correct to point out that 'quantification is no substitute for analysis'.

Third, conversation analysis is a form of logical analysis. An example from linguistics makes the point: the sentence 'Peter forwarded the letter to his aunt Mary' is grammatical (if you don't agree with me, you don't understand what 'grammatical' means, or you don't speak English), and its grammar can be sensibly analysed. On the other hand, 'To aunt the forwarded Peter letter Mary his' contains the same words but is not grammatical, and has no structure. It is not a matter of counting how many times people say these things, or asking how many people agree about their grammaticality. It's a matter of knowing how to speak English, and you can make definitive analyses of these things from just one example.

What makes a turn in conversation analysable is that it is recognisable and understandable by people, including analysts, who are members of a culture and a linguistic community that talk in those ways. We don't need huge samples and probabilistic statistics to do an analysis, even though we do need collections of instances of a phenomenon to analyse and figure out how they work. But even then, the analysis of each and every 'instance' is done on the same basis, including recognising something as an instance, which is the tacit ability that people have, and that anthropologists need, to understand the uses of their own natural language, or one in which they have acquired some competence.

Fourth, when people ask me a 'how many' question, I respond with an illustration to challenge the presuppositions built into it. I ask how many black holes (or big bangs) does a physicist need to say something meaningful about the science of black holes? Most people laugh, and then say 'one'. I recently asked a physicist this question. He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then replied 'five'. So how many negotiations with persons in crisis do we need to study before saying something meaningful about effective practice? How many times would you need to see that asking people to talk does not get people to talk? I do have more than one example. And it is helpful to show that asking people to talk does not work in other settings too. But the logic and explanation remain the same.

Fifth, quite simply, it would be strange to discount an analysis of a conversation because there is only one instance. Sometimes there may only be one instance to study. If you are at a party, and a guest collapses, hopefully you or someone else will call for an ambulance. If the ambulance takes a long time to arrive, and the guest dies, the telephone call will be a source of evidence in any subsequent investigation. Compared to the numbers of patients calling their GP receptionist, there are very few police negotiations with suicidal persons in crisis. But it is important to know how they work.

Finally, I have spent a good chunk of my career showing that, actually, one can identify and analyse moments like 'Well secretary an' female' systematically. With large datasets of lots of interaction, it turns out that people often invoke gender (or other categories such as age or ethnicity) in the same kinds of settings, in the same kinds of turns, doing the same kinds of actions. We just need to study real talk - the answers are often right in front of us.

Elizabeth Stokoe is Professor of Social Interaction in the Discourse and Rhetoric Group at Loughborough University, using conversation analysis to understand how talk works. Outside the University, she runs workshops with professionals using her research-based communication training method called the 'Conversation Analytic Role-play Method'. She is one of thirteen WIRED 2015 Innovation Fellows; has given TEDx, New Scientist, SciFoo/Google, Cheltenham Science Festival and Royal Institution lectures, and her research and biography were featured on BBC Radio 4's The Life Scientific. Her book Talk - The Science of Conversation, published by Robinson, is available now. This extract is reproduced with kind permission.

You can read more from Professor Stokoe in her Latitude Festival appearance for us (also available as a podcast); or revisit the 2013 'Careers' interview which she says led to all sorts of new opportunities!

Professor Stokoe also introduces a special issue in our December 2018 edition.

See also the recent profile in The Observer.

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Do women and men talk differently? - The British Psychological Society

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When I give lectures about talk, one of the most frequent questions from audiences is, 'Do men and women talk differently?' Indeed, it is often not asked, simply asserted - 'but, of course, men and women talk differently'. People who raise this topic generally assume I will confirm what they think they already know.

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Without assigning gender, Tara Swart, neuroscientist, medical doctor, leadership coach and author of the upcoming book " The Source: Change your mind, change your life " says serial apologists mostly do so out of habit, possibly stemming from a childhood where one was made to feel wrong or fearful of punishment (and thus, perhaps anxious). "It may be that the normal human need to belong has been compromised, creating a shame response that's meant to induce forgiveness and reacceptance," she explains. "Apologizing when we have done something wrong is a real strength, but compulsive apologizing presents as a weakness at work and in personal relationships," Swart says.

What's more, if you're apologizing for fear of socially rejecting someone, your words might fall on deaf ears anyway. After examining three sets of studies, researchers from Dartmouth College and University of Texas, Austin found "apologies increased hurt feelings and the need to express forgiveness but did not increase feelings of forgiveness."

In this vein, Swart says both giving and receiving apologies can sometimes elicit what she describes as "survival emotions," such as fear, anger, disgust, shame or sadness, which pump the stress hormone cortisol into our brains.

From a neuroscientific perspective, Swart says curbing the constant need to apologize requires the same strategy as kicking any other habit, and thus "building a strong new pathway in the brain" through:

An awareness that you want to change

Attention to each time you apologize excessively

Accountability - have a friend or partner alert you each time you do it

Mindfully swapping out apologies for other phrases

Instead of reverting to apologies, Jovanovic offers these options:
Instead of saying "I'm sorry," say: Instead of saying "sorry to interrupt you," say:

" I'd like to add..."

"I have an idea...."

"I'd like to expand on that..."

Instead of saying "sorry to complain," switch it to:
"Thank you for listening..."
Instead of apologizing in an email, consider saying:

"Thank you for catching that...."

"I appreciate you bringing this error to my attention...."

"Thanks for flagging this issue for me..."

If you're running a little late, instead of saying sorry, consider:
"Thank you for waiting for me..."

Whatever your reason for developing this habit, like with any habit, you can nip it in the bud with a little effort. There's even a plug-in for that; Jovanovic recommends a Google Chrome plug-in called "Just Not Sorry " to alert you to words that undermine your message in emails.

Want more tips like these? NBC News BETTER is obsessed with finding easier, healthier and smarter ways to live. Sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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Stop saying 'I'm sorry' when you don't mean it - say this instead

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Without assigning gender, Tara Swart, neuroscientist, medical doctor, leadership coach and author of the upcoming book " The Source: Change your mind, change your life " says serial apologists mostly do so out of habit, possibly stemming from a childhood where one was made to feel wrong or fearful of punishment (and thus, perhaps anxious).

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So far I've collected 96 tokens, which is a little far from the goal, but I know that I will see many this weekend where I can finish collecting tokens, but it will be a lot of people from the same age range.

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I chose the Greeting topic. So far I have about 25 tokens, so I am slightly behind. I have club activities including fundraising coming up, and essentially I think I can use that time to record a variety of people's responses in saying hi when they come up. I am also planning to reach out to friends vs. family vs. acquaintances via the phone to see some formality differences.

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In this example, we see Carl Gallagher, from Shameless, speaking using AAVE and slang. I think that this exemplifies covert prestige because the use of AAVE and slang are non-standard variants but in a certain community of speech or "covert" group that has positive associations with the non-standard variants. In this case, in juvie, all the inmates spoke the same in order to maintain the status quo. We can see when Carl is in the courtroom, the other's reaction to him speaking aligns with people who don't have a positive association with these non-standard variants. Generally, these nonstandard variants are seen as uneducated, low SES, inappropriate, or rude. I think that it was used here to emphasize how Carl attempts to fit in with certain groups of people, and even at one point sees someone else and imagines that is him. I think it also shows both the view of Carl being seen as 'cool' and fitting in vs. rude and inappropriate. I mainly chose this because I have watched a couple seasons of Shameless, and I think the use of AAVE in popular culture is the most prominent use of covert prestige.

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Carl Gallagher "White Chocolate"/Gangster Scenes 1080p

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I found these specific advertisement examples online, but I chose Subway and Papa John's because they are popular fast food chains, so the majority of people have seen these slogans. Subway was the first company to come to mind when I was thinking of companies tailoring their advertisements because no fast food restaurant will have 'fresh' ingredients in the way that they are portraying. The intended effect of using adjectives like fresh or better ingredients is to make the food seem of higher quality than it is and therefore more appetizing. These signs are not only in commercials and other typical advertisements but also on their packaging and social media accounts. If you come in contact with these companies, their slogan is hard to miss. Even though there are fast food chains all around the country ('everyone' is targeted) lower SES communities have a higher density of fast food restaurants because they are inexpensive meals and usually these places are food scarce. I think that these companies are targeting poorer communities because perhaps they cannot afford 'fresh' produce or it's not as accessible where they live, so places like Subway could be a replacement--again they would want to dine there more. A place that is known to have fresh ingredients would not have to disclaim it as fast food restaurants do. While I don't believe their slogans change from place to place (especially because they are national brands) I do believe that having higher density fast food places are a contributing factor to their advertising.

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"eat fresh."

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"Better Ingredients. Better Pizza."

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The Linguistic variable that I chose this time is ,what I believe is termed, aspectual. That is where one uses "to be" unconjugated explicitly or implicitly instead of the conjugated form of "to be" like am/are. The first example is from Foster the People's song "Pumped Up Kicks", they say "He be coming home late, and he's coming home late". This shows both variations: He be vs. He is. The second example of Lil Uzi Vert at the time 2:46, he says "We at Eliannte" instead of "we ARE at...". Grammatically, in standard English, using the conjugated form of "to be" would be considered correct and in professional settings, this would more commonly be used. Because of that aspectual speak can be associated with lower SES/educational backgrounded groups. Further, aspectual can be a part of African American Vernacular (AAVE) grammar, with its own set of rules. I chose to use this example because I noticed that many people around me and then myself started using aspectual grammar because of seeing it online. The social network, then the community of practice started including it which influenced the individual. I think that it is important to speak about this because some people view using AAVE as uneducated when it does have its own set of rules and is essentially a dialect. It has also become a large part of black culture and now that so many people are adopting it themselves, there is controversy around that.

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[Verse 1]
Robert's got a quick hand
He'll look around the room, he won't tell you his plan
He's got a rolled cigarette
Hanging out his mouth, he's a cowboy kid
Yeah, he found a six-shooter gun
In his dad's closet with a box of fun things
I don't even know what
But he's coming for you, yeah, he's coming for you, wait

[Chorus]
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run faster than my bullet
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run faster than my bullet

[Verse 2]
Daddy works a long day
He be coming home late, and he's coming home late
And he's bringing me a surprise
'Cause dinner's in the kitchen and it's packed in ice
I've waited for a long time
Yeah, the sleight of my hand is now a quick-pull trigger
I reason with my cigarette
And say, "Your hair's on fire, you must've lost your wits," yeah

[Chorus]
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run faster than my bullet
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run faster than my bullet

[Bridge]
Run, run, run, run
Ru-ru-ru-run, run, run
Ru-ru-ru-ru-run, run, run, run
Ru-ru-ru-run
Run, run, ru-run, run

[Chorus]
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run faster than my bullet
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run faster than my bullet
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You better run, better run faster than my bullet

Robert, the main character and narrator of the song, dreams of violence towards his rich classmates and peers. The song details his plans and ambitions for a school shooting, diving deep into the causes of his emotions.

During a 2011 Rolling Stone interview, Foster said:

I was trying to get inside the head of an isolated, psychotic kid.

Although this song is peppy and upbeat, Foster uses this to mask the true meaning of the song, and makes for a beautiful yet haunting composition, a tension which he referenced in the same interview:

It's a 'fuck you' song to the hipsters in a way - but it's a song the hipsters are going to want to dance to.

Despite many believing that this song condones and encourages violence, Foster said otherwise in a 2011 USA Today interview:

The song is not about condoning violence at all. It's the complete opposite. The song is an amazing platform to have a conversation with your kids about something that shouldn't be ignored, to talk about it in a loving way.

Ask us a question about this song

What have the artists said about the song?

I kind of wrote the song to bring awareness to the issue. That sort of thing keeps happening more and more in our country; it's kind of turning into an epidemic. To me the epidemic isn't gun violence; the epidemic is lack of family, lack of love, and isolation - kids who don't have anywhere to go or anyone to talk to and that's what makes them snap.

If the band could've changed anything about the song,what would they've changed?

Yeah, I would've taken some of the choruses out. There's too many double choruses. That's the nature of putting a demo online. Usually, I would sit with a demo and listen to a song a hundred times and then when I go to record it for real, I would have a better idea of which parts feel kind of long and which parts make me lose interest or start to get annoying so I can tighten them up. But because that was the demo, I didn't have time to do that and once it became reactive, it didn't make sense to put a different version out. It's like, "Well, why would I change it? It's not broken." But that second chorus was something that always bothered me - it's already a long chorus so it didn't need to repeat, and then the end, the outro, it's the chorus three or four times in a row. It's just overkill. We've been playing it different live for years. I think we changed that the first year when we're playing it live, we never play double choruses."

- Via MTV (2019)

Is he talking about trying to kill these people?

As stated above, the song is about Robert who dreams of harming his peers, so, yes.

Pumped Up Kicks by Nicole Milik, Pumped Up Kicks by Panic! at the Disco, Pumped up kicks by Bre Kennedy, Pumped Up Kicks by Richard Cheese, Pumped Up Kicks by Katy McAllister, Pumped Up Kicks by Vitamin String Quartet, Heavydirtykicks by SLNTWLF, Ducked Up Lips by The Key of Awesome, PUMPED UP KICKS by 3TEETH, Circles by Niall Horan, Pumped Up Kicks by Breathe Electric, Putting a Spin on Pumped Up Kicks by Egg (mylifeisayolk), Pumped up Kicks by Tiffany Day & PUMPED/UP/KICKS by Dethradiorecords.online

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Pumped Up Kicks Lyrics: Robert's got a quick hand / He'll look around the room, he won't tell you his plan / He's got a rolled cigarette / Hanging out his mouth, he's a cowboy kid / Yeah, he found a six-

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When looking at grammatical structures that are prescriptively described as 'incorrect', I looked at the use of yes vs. no when answer a negative question. For example, when asking the question "You don't want a slice of pizza?" most would answer "no, I don't want a slice." In standard English, you would use 'No' coinciding with their negative statement while Japanese people will try to tell the questioner whether what they said is correct (Sora News 24). I chose this because, in other languages, such as Japanese, which my brother and mother speak, they typically use 'Yes'. When answering the same question would result in "Yes, I don't want a slice." They first agree with the previous statement then follow up with a negative statement. This often comes up when I am talking to them and there always needs to be a clarifying statement. I couldn't find any attitudes towards this grammatical difference and I assume it is because most people in the US use 'no' instead of 'yes' in these scenarios. I would say that the use of 'yes' is found in people with English as a second language whose native tongue has the opposite structure. Further, I didn't see any discussion of this difference resulting in any views of ignorance, rather just mild confusion. However, many believe that in English, no would be the correct word choice. I don't disagree with that, because I do think that saying 'yes' is confusing, but I believe this is because when learning English that is how I was taught. I don't see anyone advocating for a change, in the same way, that if I learned Japanese I would likely try to abide by their typical way of speaking.

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Entry 1: ELB: Answering a Negative Question

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Entry 1: ELB: Answering a Negative Question

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With negative questions that require a yes or no, there can sometimes be confusion in the correct way to answer. Grammatically, you may assume that a negative question answered in the affirmative should be a negative statement (i.e. "Doesn't it look good?" - "Yes it doesn'
t."). A friend of mine teaching in Vietnam was told that this was given as a rule by one of her fellow teachers, as taught in a reference book. Theoretically this may make sense, but in practice this is NOT how negative questions work. In fact, the answer to a negative question will often be very similar to the answer to a positive question. Here's why:

Negative questions generally ask for the same information as the positive form. This may sound confusing, so let's just look at a few examples:

Does he like chocolate?

Doesn't he like chocolate?

In both cases we are answering whether or not he likes chocolate. The answer provides the same information, it is only the form of the question. So, we can answer both these questions the same way.

Does he like chocolate? Yes, he does. / No, he doesn't.

Doesn't he like chocolate? Yes, he does. / No, he doesn't.

The rules here can be hazy, and different negative questions may be more confusing or require different answers - but in practice any native speaker would know that you generally answer a negative question the same way you would a positive one. The reason for this is to do with the correct statement for a clear answer for the required information, not to respond to the specific question form.

So if you need to know how to answer a negative question, do not think about changing the grammatical form, simply consider how you would give the correct information. The next step is to consider where these negative questions come from.

Generally, a negative question is used to add emphasis or surprise. This is usually because we wish to suggest a negative response, when the negative answer is already known or suspected. So while the answer may be applied to both a positive and negative question, the context of the person asking the question can dictate which question is asked.

A common example in English would be "Aren't you going?" or variations of this form. Consider these two examples:

1. "I need a lift to town, are you going to the cinema this evening?"

2. "It's late, aren't you going to the cinema this evening?"

The answer to both these questions might be "No, I'm not going, I have too much work." - the contexts for the questions are very different. 1. is asked as an open question (we do not know the answer) 2. is asked in the negative form because the speaker has reason to believe the answer will be negative (it is late so going to the cinema is unlikely).

Bear in mind there are many other contexts and considerations that may be made when negative questions come into play. If you have any examples that you don't feel fit this general introduction please do let me know!

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How do you answer a negative question? (Grammatically speaking) - English Lessons Brighton

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With negative questions that require a yes or no, there can sometimes be confusion in the correct way to answer. Grammatically, you may assume that a negative question answered in the affirmative should be a negative statement (i.e. "Doesn't it look good?" - "Yes it doesn' t.").

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Negation in English: Advanced Grammar for IELTS

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In English grammar, negation is a grammatical construction that contradicts (or negates) all or part of the meaning of a sentence. There are

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You can learn all the words and practice all the kanji, but there's one little Japanese language quirk that will almost certainly trip you up when you first encounter it.

An enormous number of westerners who come to Japan on a work visa do so to teach English. Often, speaking Japanese is not a prerequisite for being a native English teacher or teaching assistant in Japan (in fact, many language schools would rather you didn't, so that you're not tempted to use Japanese in the classroom), but this very often means that how well you and your coworkers communicate will depend entirely on their English-speaking ability, at least to begin with.

In most cases, with the help of a few gestures and repetition, everything goes relatively smoothly. But even when your Japanese coworker speaks close to perfect English, there's one major difference between English and Japanese (and Korean, and a number of other languages, for that matter) that causes sometimes comical levels of confusion between the two parties involved: answering a negative statement.

Anyone who has worked in Japan as an English teacher will undoubtedly have had at least one conversation that went like this:

Regardless of whether it's a lack of classes, hair on your head or money in your wallet, when a Japanese person responds to a native English-speaker's negative question, or vice-versa, there's almost always a moment or of confusion before they're both on the same page.

You see, in Japanese, the following exchange would make perfect sense.

A: あら！牛乳ない！買いに行かなきゃ。
Ara! Gyuunyuu nai! Kai ni ikanakya.
Ah, there's no milk! I'd better go and buy some.

B: 牛乳ないって？
Gyuunyuu nai tte?
We don't have any milk?

Of course, in English, the last utterance here would usually be "No (there isn't any milk)," but in Japanese, the speaker, rather than affirming the presence or absence of said delicious cow-juice, either confirms or denies the statement that the other person just made. Rather than meaning "Yes (there's no milk)", this final "うん/ un " actually means "Yes, what you've just said is true."

Still confused? A few more examples:

Question: You aren't going to the party?
Japanese response: Yes (that's right; I'm not going).
English response: No (I'm not going).

Question: Oh, so you don't like dogs?
Japanese response: Yes (that's right; I don't like dogs).
English response: No (I don't like dogs).

Question: There aren't any trains after 1am?
Japanese response: Yes, there aren't any.
English response: No, there aren't any.

I suppose the key thing for English speakers to remember is that Japanese yes/no responses to negative questions are intended to tell the questioner that whatever they've just said either is or isn't the case. When you think about it, in a funny way it's English, rather than Japanese, that's the quirky one...

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When "yes" means "no" - The Japanese language quirk that trips English speakers up

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You can learn all the words and practice all the kanji, but there's one little Japanese language quirk that will almost certainly trip you up when you first encounter it. An enormous number of westerners who come to Japan on a work visa do so to teach English.