Welcome to the second installment in our series on Ferdinand de Saussure and the linguistic science of semiology. Now where were we? In the last post we discussed Saussure’s theory of the “sign” as a combination of the “signified” (the concept represented by a word) and the “signifier” (the spoken or written word doing the representing).
How do we use language? We use it to express ourselves through speech, to record our experiences or to invent and tell stories in writing. But before all that begins, before a word leaves our lips or a pen hits the page, we use language in our heads. This code we share is more than a “simple naming process.” It’s the means by which we …
You may recall that last year we selected a rare word, a tongue-twister of sorts, as the 2011 Word of the Year: tergiversate which means “to change repeatedly one’s attitude or opinions with respect to a cause, subject, etc.; equivocate.” Rather than pick a word that rose to prominence through common usage during the year (like Occupy or Arab Spring), we selected a word hidden …
From Dr. Doolittle to Jane Goodall, human-animal communication has occupied our thoughts both in fiction and in reality. Dogs recognize their names when they are called; researchers have successfully taught primates to communicate in sign language; and the famed African gray parrot, Alex, built a vocabulary of over 100 English words out of which he learned to form cogent sentences. All of these examples show humans …
From the California dance band !!! to MIA spelling out her name in dashes, musical artists seem to love putting symbols in their names. Perhaps none more extravagant than pop star Ke$ha, who differentiates herself with a single letter substitution. Born Kesha Rose Sebert, the singer/songwriter/rapper simply exchanged the S in her first name with a $ (or dollar sign). The artist initially made the …
The phrase body language or nonverbal communication often gets tossed around. From public speaking to a first date, our movements and facial expressions say a lot about our feelings and intentions. During political debate season, politicians’ body language is under just as much scrutiny as their remarks, and if the candidates aren’t careful, they might misspeak without saying a word. Most researchers conclude that human …
We all know that infants don’t actually speak with an accent because they don’t really speak at all. But for a long time scientists presumed that infants’ brains could not process sounds at all. Professor Patricia Kuhl, the director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Learning at the University of Washington, wanted to test this notion. Kuhl studied infants between six and eight months …
Recently we asked members of the Dictionary.com Facebook page a simple question: What was the last word you looked up, what was the specific issue you were trying to solve, and what were the circumstances? The results floored us. At last count, more than 450 people shared their stories. Here are a few examples: “Looked up “enure/inure” for supervisor as he was unsure of meaning and …
You may have read the news about the discovery of a new species of monkey in Africa, known as the Lesula, or Cercopithecus lomamiensis. The announcement of any new species is thrilling, and Lesula is only the second new primate species to be identified in the past 28 years. When something as rare and significant as this occurs, we immediately turn to where nature meets …
Can you imagine a world in which the sounds of G and C were both represented by the letter C? Try to imacine it. Believe it or not, for much of their history, the sounds of C and G were represented by the same symbol. Eventually, however, both sounds received their own differentiated symbols. Both G and C have their origin in the Phoenician letter gimel, …
Are some languages able to express certain ideas better than others? Are there concepts that exist in particular languages and nowhere else? As more and more languages become extinct, linguists are realizing that they contain a type of knowledge beyond simply a different set of words and grammar. In the next fifty years, linguists believe that 3,500 languages will go extinct. As globalization has linked markets and communities, …
Have you felt that English wasn’t rationally constructed? Do you ever wonder, for instance, why we made “affect” and “effect” seem so similar when they mean two different things? Or why “you’re” are “your” sound identical, but are dissimilar in meaning? Couldn’t we have designed something little bit more simple? About two decades ago, a group in Washington, D.C. attempted to do just that.