Category Archives: Social Science

Paradox of the evolutionary metaphor in language death

When Languages Die: Science and Sentiment : In his book When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge K. David Harrison illustrates the individual face of language loss, as well as its global … Continue reading

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Posted in Feminism, Linguistics, Philosophy, Reviews, Social Science | Leave a comment

From culture-specific to the universal in the US counter-insurgency manual

“Be polite, be professional, be prepared to kill.” Lt. Col. Nagel summarizing a new US Army counterinsurgency manual (on the Daily Show) This quote reminds of the critique of universalist pragmatics by Anna Wierzbicka. Wierzbicka and others (e.g. Goddard) points … Continue reading

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Posted in Discourse - text, Framing, Linguistics, Social Science | Leave a comment

Folk theories of conceptual causality and collective autonomy

Film examines Daily Mail ‘diet’ | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited In the footsteps of Supersize Me, a documentary-maker has attempted to find out whether we are what we read by giving up all news sources except the Daily Mail. … Continue reading

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Girl Wars, Boy Wars

The Girl Wars : Terrible Mother on Offsprung.com It seems like half the interactions between women can be classified as Girl Wars. Do we ever get out of this? And why the hell are girls so vicious to each other? … Continue reading

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Posted in Cognition, Education, Feminism, Framing, Literature and narrative, Social Science | Leave a comment

Networks of trust and the newspaper business

Virtual Economics: Why newspapers are not screwed …newspapers’ core value is not their content but their validation. Sure it’s expensive to create content. In the long run this probably doesn’t really matter. There’s plenty of content. The value that newspapers … Continue reading

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Bi-furcated narrative frames in public policy debates

Confessions of a BBC liberal – Times Online There is a perfectly reasonable case for progressive liberal reform of penal policy. There is also a perfectly reasonable case for a stricter and more punitive penal policy. This programme was quite … Continue reading

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Metaphoric inferencing in action and the negotiation of interpretive privilege

Making Light: Bookstore chain puts the screws on small publishers We have concluded that we have far too many suppliers, Malarkey again. Rimmer is inappropriately borrowing language from other industries, as though A&R were a construction firm and he’d noticed … Continue reading

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Anecdotes, metaphors and the negotiated truth

Media Matters – “Media Matters”; by Jamison Foser “I believe in the usefulness and validity of the telling anecdote — the seemingly small story that reveals a broader truth about a politician or other subject,” Carney wrote. And who can … Continue reading

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Media and scenarios of public opinion formation

Disfavor for Bush Hits Rare Heights – washingtonpost.com That may stem in part from the changing nature of society. When Caddell’s boss was president, there were three major broadcast networks. Today cable news, talk radio and the Internet have made … Continue reading

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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

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Posted in Linguistics, Philosophy, Social Science | Leave a comment