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Who could have imagined this kind of success for a scientific blog on bilingualism? In 2016, François Grosjean was interviewed about his Psychology Today blog, “Life as a bilingual”, by Ewa Haman, Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw. The Polish translation appeared under the title, “Nie mógłbym nawet marzyć o takiej liczbie czytelników” on dwujęzyczność.info. […]
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The Lake Chad region in Central Africa is home to a plethora of languages of different genetic affiliations, among them the about 200 so-called Chadic languages, named after the Lake. The best known of the latter is Hausa; with almost 100 million speakers it is the most widely spread lingua franca in West Africa. Linguists […]
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Much of the advertising we see and hear attempts to portray a product or brand in a positive light. However, sometimes the most striking adverts appear when brands go against this positivity bias, and instead draw our attention to hard-hitting, serious topics in a shocking way (in a strategy known as ‘shockvertising’).
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David Gramling, author of The Invention of Multilingualism, answers the above question, and many more, following his book launch on 20 September. What similarities do you see between the languages you know? The most consequential similarity I see between German, Turkish, Spanish, French, and English is that they are ‘named languages’ whose elite, standardized forms […]
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You can’t speak English without speaking Shakespeare. Not only did he introduce several hundred words still used today (assassination, beguiling, contaminated, domineering, excitement, fixture, go-between, hostile, ill-tempered, lack-lustre, monumental…), he gave us dozens of idioms. If you stand with bated breath, say that love is blind, worry about green-eyed jealousy, think that truth will out, […]
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Word nerd alert! The New York Times announces the 50 Most Frequently Looked-up Words of 2010. Check out Philip Corbett’s observations on 50 Fancy Words…
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Colleen Cotter, a scholar of linguistics, former news reporter and editor, and the author of the forthcoming News Talk: Investigating the Language of Journalism, talks about her expectations for the book and about the importance of initiating a cross-community dialogue. ----- News Talk: Epilogue By Colleen Cotter It is a truism in the news bizz that you have succeeded in writing a “balanced” story if all your sources take issue with and are unhappy with it. I never bought that (nor do others follow the precept).
Read MoreFair, balanced, unbiased, impartial. Journalism, in theory and by definition, hinges on an ideal of neutrality, an expectation of the direct presentation of facts and findings. Yet the process of news-making is a constant ebb and flow of editorialization. From the selection to the construction of a story, editors and journalists invariably serve as a filter – controlling everything we read, see, and hear. Today, Colleen Cotter, a former news reporter and editor and the author of the forthcoming News Talk: Investigating the Language of Journalism, dissects the inner workings of the media to define the processes and practices that go into crafting our understanding of the day’s events. -------- How to be a language savvy news consumer By Colleen Cotter All professions have them: routines of interacting and communicating that become normalized. That become part of the everyday routine of doing business. A pilot’s FAA-mandated cockpit routine revolves around safety talk. A Disneyland employee uses the specified vocabulary of the Magic Kingdom to enhance the visitor experience. A police officer’s question-asking style leads to “just the facts, ma’am” while the therapist’s are more personal. So it goes with news language. News language isn’t about “correctness” as such, although that’s part of the picture. It can also tell you a lot about what goes on behind the scenes in a newsroom, how reporters and editors think about things, and what the news conventions are. To become a language-savvy news consumer, you have to think both small (words and patterns) and big (culture and concept). Here are some suggestions:
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