Psycholinguistic researchers analyzed more than 1 million Reddit posts a year before and a year after users posted about their breakup.
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Linguistics – Analysis and Comment
Because of context and history, some words and phrases carry a heavy burden with them. Their mere mention can bring back painful memories and problematic situations.
Grammar isn’t a way to bully people for making mistakes, says a longtime English instructor. It is a way to understand how our language operates, in all its many written and spoken varieties.
Barbara Windsor was the Cockney queen of EastEnders but you’re more likely to hear her famous accent in Essex now rather than London.
Medicine’s linguistic history in English is rich indeed, peppered with borrowings from French. But the Old English renderings retain a certain charm.
For decades, forensic linguists have helped crack cases involving false author attribution, masked voices, false confessions in criminal cases and copyright disputes.
Hashtags are infiltrating language well beyond their original use on Twitter — and linguists are struggling to define their role.
While some adults see implicit meaning in sentences, children can miss it. Two linguists explain how this can happen, and why it matters in communication.
Accusing a person or company of ‘virtue signalling’ has become a common putdown. But slurs like these are not new.
Updates to the Oxford English Dictionary provide a fascinating glimpse into how language changes in the face of rapid and unprecedented social and economic disruption.
In languages from Central Asia to the Amazon and New Guinea, stringing multiple ideas together is something children learn at an early age.
“Karen”, the name that has become code for boorish, entitled behaviour, joins a long history of names being appropriated for various purposes – often unkindly.
The use of military metaphors in some contexts can be helpful. In medicine? Not so much.
We want to be whitelisted and not blacklisted for jobs. White lies make stretching the truth okay, but you don’t want to receive a black mark on your record.
New linguistic research suggest early Germanic language and culture was strongly influenced by the Mediterranean superpower Carthage more than 2,000 years ago.
Because sarcasm is often difficult to discern and improperly used, it can operate as a linguistic mulligan. But deploy the excuse too much, and you might raise some eyebrows.
Worried you won’t be understood while wearing a mask? Don’t be. We studied how people sound while talking through fabric and the results are encouraging.
Those with a diagnosis of schizophrenia may be more likely to interpret metaphorical thoughts literally.
Generic names can take on a linguistic life of their own, becoming powerful forms of social commentary.
Dickens had some clever little narrative tricks, which become clear when his work is analysed as a single data set.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee highlights the richness of the English lexicon by picking some tough entries with foreign roots.
The etymology of an epidemic.
One anthropologist found 1,072 similar words for ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ in the world’s languages. It turns out a mix of biology, culture and encouragement from parents explains this phenomenon.
Second-language learners from different age groups seem to have equal chances of becoming highly proficient speakers as long as they are placed in a supportive environment.
Have you been pulled up by a “grammar Nazi”? Now you can correct them back.