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Hermeneutics: The pursuit of meaning following specified principles of interpretation.
Heresy: An opinion or doctrine at variance with those generally accepted as authoritative.
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Category Archives: Linguistics
Blurring the lines of folk and expert theory
Its All Semantics – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog A similarly obtuse but less jargon-laden example of unintentially comedic writing is the title of IRS form 5213, which I am convinced was penned by Terry Gilliam a … Continue reading
Posted in Discourse - text, Linguistics
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Walking robots and local grammars
BBC NEWS | Technology | Robot unravels mystery of walking “Babies use a lot of their brains to train local circuits but once they are trained they are fairly autonomous.”Only when it comes to more difficult things – such as … Continue reading
Posted in Cognition, Linguistics, Technology and life
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Sources of usage consensus in language change
Shifting Idioms: An Eggcornucopia : OUPblog Original New sleight of hand: 85% 15%: slight of hand fazed by: 71% 29%: phased by Ben Zimmer lists the increasing changes (by ‘false’ analogy) in the spelling of some … Continue reading
Posted in Linguistics
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Conservatism as part fo language competence
Language Log: Keeping “wrong grammar” off the air A program will be assigned a “PG” rating if it shows “people speaking with wrong grammar (except for humorous effects).” The article doesn’t say who gets to be the “grammar cop” — … Continue reading
Posted in Linguistics, Philosophy, Social Science
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Language Log: The Supreme Court Fails Semantics
Language Log: The Supreme Court Fails Semantics All that the Court actually argues is that “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS” contains a reference to drug use. Gibberish is surely a possible interpretation of the words on the banner, but it is … Continue reading
Posted in Linguistics, Society and politics
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Professional linguists and folk theory of language
Language Log: The Linguistic Abilities of the Presidential Candidates For what it’s worth, if we count only confirmed languages spoken fluently or reasonably well, the average number of languages other than English spoken by the Democrats is 0.83, by the … Continue reading
Posted in Discourse - text, Linguistics
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Wittgenstein and folk theories of language and intelligence
Quote Details: Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophy is a battle… – The Quotations Page Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. Ludwig Wittgenstein Austrian philosopher (1889 – 1951) Two interesting things about this quote. First, … Continue reading
Posted in Linguistics, Philosophy
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Rejection of metaphor
Metaphorically Challenged : Terrible Mother on Offsprung.com âThat is an awesome metaphor,â? I said. Because it is. Itâs funny without the use of burning children. But it isnât accurate. John isnât on some emotional island where he canât understand what … Continue reading
Havel on intertextuality
CBC.ca Arts – Retired Czech leader Havel pens new play “Living in the world of political language was quite an inspiration” he said. “I try [in my play] to reflect the automatic political language, where you say one word to … Continue reading
Mis-entrenchment of codified blendings
The Newshoggers: Jeri Thompson – asset or albatross? [Part Two] However, thanks to a commenter at my place, I see by common definition “trophy wife” is indeed considered to be an insult. All I can say is that I didn’t … Continue reading
Posted in Analogies, Cognition, Feminism, Framing, Linguistics, Society and politics
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