Tag Archive for Language

Attention Controls Errors, Book, Ethnographic & User Data, Language, Pipsqueak Articles

Fantastical Halloween

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Books are good for the Soul

We are quickly falling into Fall. Warm sweaters, blankets, and books. But why bother with books when there is so much other entertainment around? Netflicks, HBOs, Amazons of the world are eager to grab hold of our eyeballs and never let go. It’s great for their bottom line. In 2017, the American Time Use Survey (Bureau of Labor Statistics) said that according to their survey, the number of Americans who read for pleasure had dropped by 30% since 2003. Who has the time, right? I hear that a lot too. “I’d read, but I have kids…I commute…I work long hours…I read at work…” There are many excuses. The one that most people don’t typically mention is that it is much easier to plump on a couch and watch something on TV or to simply play on one’s cell phone (for those who no longer own a TV). But reading is an active activity, while watching videos is passive. Cognitively, that makes a huge difference. Consider a piano. About 100 years ago, most households in America (middle class) had a piano in their parlor. Everyone learned to play a little bit. People could read music and play it off a sheet.…

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sci-fi bites, short story

Word Magic, narrated by Mariah Avix of 600 Second Saga

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cool word

Word Magic is a short story prequel to a larger piece of fiction I’m working on about language and its power to shape the world. I love Mariah’s work. She brings magic to my stories and to those of other writers. Please visit her site and subscribe to her work. In the meantime, enjoy this story and follow along with the text below. Word Magic “But I hate that name!” The boy tried to squirrel away from his teacher. “I didn’t ask for your opinion before assigning it to you, Acolyte Will. Names are bestowed based on a quality of need, not emotional preference.” “But you said the best words fire up emotion–” “Your name will do so… in time. Now, you have to get back to work. How many words have you discovered today, Acolyte Will?” The boy stopped squirming and settled down. He looked excited to share his lexical discoveries; it must have been a productive morning. Seeing the boy’s enthusiasm, the teacher settled down next to him. The boy had real word magic talent. It was true that he was lazy and unpredictable with it yet, but he was only a few years old still. In time,…

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Background Knowledge, Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Ethnographic & User Data, Featured, Language, Pipsqueak Articles

There’s a word for that?

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Tower of Babel

A Dictionary of Cool Words That Hide True Feelings & Meanings from Parents Many of the strange vocabulary words, that Jude and her friends, from my new novel The Far Side, use, arise from their need to create a sense of linguistic privacy from the grownups. These are real and come from hard-to-translate words from other languages, professions, or sub-cultures. Age-otori — a feeling that you look worse after the haircut. (Based on a Japanese word.) Ataraxia — a sense of stoic calm. (Based on an ancient Greek word.) Backpfeifengesicht — a face in need of a fist. (Based on a German word.) Chingada — a hellish place where all that annoy you go. (Based on a Spanish word.) Desenrascanço — to find a creative way out of a bad situation. (Based on a Portuguese word.) Dépaysement — the sense of displacement one feels when visiting a foreign country and being far from home. (Based on a French word.) Doppelgänger — a duplicate of a person. (Based on a German word.) Dustsceawung — the contemplation of the idea that everything turns to dust eventually. (Based on an Old English word.) Eudaimonia — deep fulfillment and the resulting happiness, even as…

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Background Knowledge, Background Knowledge Errors, Cognitive Blindness, Conceptual Design, Cultural Differences, Ethnographic & User Data, Users

Culture, education, language, and thinking

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How we think about problems depends in part of how we are taught to do so. And that education is seeped in our culture and language. Metaphors, mnemonics, analogies, riddles, word choice for explanations are tightly interwoven into our language. Just like it was probably impossible for Romans to invent calculus given their numeral system, it is difficult to think clearly about some problems in some languages. I’ve learned advanced physics and mathematics in English and find it very difficult to express thoughts in those domains in Russian (my native language). But when I first came to New York, I marveled at how poor my cohorts’ geometry proofs were — their presentations took a lot of space and too many steps to achieve what I was taught to do in minimal configuration. I was taught to jump and bound from concept to concept (in geometry), while the students in America were taught to crawl through ideas. I found that maddening! But it was a different math language, and as such it allowed for a different set of affordances… It is difficult to easily show the differences in thought process that language makes in this short blog. But here’s a bit…

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Background Knowledge, Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Errors, Language, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Scaffolding

Words, Language, Influence, & Design

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the power of language. Sure, there have been a lot of news relating to language (election, after all, is only a few months away): legitimate rape is one example of powerful words/phrases in the news. But I would like to briefly explore how words and language can influence the design and use of a product. Language Development It might be interesting to start really early (or to look to unusual cases of individuals without language). The following program by RadioLab does a wonderful job of introducing language and the development of comprehension: Words that Change the World. This half-hour audio show presents the work of Susan Schaller, Charles Fernyhough, Elizabeth Spelke, and James Shapiro. Susan describes a case of a deaf 27 year old man who was never taught language and his journey to comprehension. Charles describes an experiment where babies, kids, and rats are asked to find items in a blank room after a brief disorientation. He discovers that language is essential to linking concepts in our brain. Elizabeth explores the benefits of language farther. And James, a Shakespeare scholar at Columbia University, talks about the use of language to communicate complex…

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Contributor, Ethnographic & User Data

“A Language of Smiles”

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Judson, O. (2009). “A Language of Smiles.” New York Times. Retreived on 30 June, 2010 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/a-language-of-smiles/?hp Summary: This article explores the possibility that languages which require a speaker to move his/her mouth in particular ways predisposes the population which speaks that language to be either happy or gloomy. This article begins by explaining that the idea that physically moving the corners of one’s mouth up into a smile or down into a frown can literally altar one’s mood is not a new idea.  Literary authors such as Edgar Allen Poe and scientists such as Charles Darwin have made references to that idea in their works.  However, data (I can only assume that by “data” the author means statistical or scientific data) has been accumulated only in the last 30 years.  Why the ways in which one moves his/her mouth can affect one’s mood is not certain.  Two possible explanations are: 1) it is a matter of classical conditioning such as Pavlov’s dog (who was conditioned to salivate whenever he heard a bell ring because he was taught to associate the bell with the appearance of food), and 2) facial gestures may have an affect on the rate of blood flow to the brain. Different languages require speakers to move their mouths in substantial (and substantially different) ways in…

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