"NATURAL"
As a word, we respond to the word "natural" extremely positively.
As a matter of fact, things that are "natural" are often the opposite.
"It's good for you. It's natural."
"Oh yeah? So's arsenic. Want to eat that?"
"Natural selection"
"Natural flavors"
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"A QUESTION CAN CHANGE YOUR MEMORY"
Found in
Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling Toward Happiness,
(Gilbert is a Harvard professor)
For example,
volunteers in one study were shown a series of slides depicting a red car as it
cruises toward a yield sign, turns right, and then knocks over a
pedestrian. After seeing the slides,
some of the volunteers (the no-question group) were not asked any questions,
and the remaining volunteers (the question group) were. The question these volunteers were asked
was this: “Did another car pass the red car while it was stopped at the stop
sign?” Next, all the volunteers were
shown two pictures—one in which the red car was approaching a stop sign and one
in which the red car was approaching a yield sign—and were asked to point to
the picture they had actually seen. Now,
if the volunteers had stored their experience in memory, then they should have
pointed to the picture of the car approaching the yield sign, and indeed, more
than 90 percent of the volunteers in the no-question group did just that. But 80 percent of the volunteers in the
question group pointed to the picture of the car approaching a stop sign. Clearly, the question changed the volunteers’
memory of the original experience.
–p87-88
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"WHAT WORDS DO YOU NOTICE? THE SLEEP LIST"
Bed. Rest. Awake. Tired. Dream. Snooze. Blanket. Doze. Slumber. Snore. Nap. Peace. Yawn. Drowsy.
(Give the list for a few seconds. Then take it away. Ask this question:)
Which of the following words was not on the list? Bed, doze, sleep, or gasoline?
Most get it wrong. We don't remember the words. We remember the basic meaning.
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"Lifetime Warranty"
When purchasing windows I was offered a lifetime warranty. The hitch was this, it was not about a warranty that lasted for MY lifetime. It was a warranty that lasted for the "lifetime of the window" which was considered to be 7 years.
When I bought a sofa from Sofa Express, I bought lifetime stain protection. When they went out of business, I learned that it was good for their lifetime, not mine.
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"Fun Size"
It isn't small. It isn't extra small. It is "fun size."
When the audience can tell that a person is using a fake or unnatural way to describe a product, the power of words loses much of its power. This is one reason for taking this class. We are exposing the students to large numbers of these kinds of descriptions as a vaccine.
The word on the package doesn't bother us. When it is heard from a person or in a commercial, my radar goes up.
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"The Telephone Game"
Students in my courses often complain about the proper use of quotations. On a day where I am going to be teaching acknowledging quotes, I often have them play the telephone game in class.
You know the rules, right? A person makes up a phrase, which is whispered to everyone in the room one at a time, at the end, the phrase is mangled.
Play this and enjoy it.
State to the class, "Now imagine that someone comes up to you and quotes (insert the name of a student in class) as saying (insert the mangled phrase here.)
Would you believe that person? Would you think that the speaker was a little bit strange?
What if that person said "I think that X person said Y." How would adding the words "I think" change the sense of the statement.
What if that person handed you a cellphone as he made that statement, and the cellphone was programmed with (the student in class)'s phone number? What if the person said, "go ahead and call them if you don't believe me."
This is why English teachers have developed some rules for handling quotations
This is also why we force our students to write things down instead of trying to remember what professors say.
Big finish: In order to demonstrate why I think writing is so important, we will play this game one more time. This time I have a message that I want to pass through 22 people, one-at-a-time.
At this moment I pull a fortune cookie from my pocket, crack it open, and hand the fortune to the first person in class. This fortune is quickly passed along while the students look at me, either grinning or groaning, and thinking, "I see what you did there."
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"Sara Lee Cake Metaphor"
As teachers, we focus a great deal on passive/active readers, so I stumbled upon a metaphor about being active
unfortunately, my sara lee cake metaphor isn't based on facts..
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp
This is how factoids come around. Do you know the meaning of factoid? (Most won't.) People repeat facts when they come in the form of a vivid example or a good story.
We tend to trust things that we have heard before.
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"Supercalifragilistic Expealidocious"
Have you heard of Mary Poppins?
How about "supercalifraglisticexpeialidocious"?
Well then spell it
The answer is "I T".
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"Going once.... Going twice.... Sold American...."
Consider auctions and auctioneers
The auctioneer never stops speaking....
The brain processes the words, "going once. going twice...:
It increases the scarcity pressure.
By the time the brain processes the words, the sale it about to end. This means that rational thought does not have time to occur.
Consider the speed that Derren Brown talks during his tricks.
Consider the speed of the Modern Con Man talking.
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Say shop
Say flop
say crop
what do you do at a green light?
Say pork
Say dork
Say storck
What do you use to eat soup?
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Foreclosure everything confusing can make. - On a Billboard put up by the Ad Council.
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Xylaphone
"Xylaphone should be spelled with a z. If someone messes with you, tell them to get their head "z-rayed." -Mitch Hedberg
Ask the class, what are five words that you have a great deal of trouble spelling?
Ask the class, what are some words that have a spelling that doesn't make any sense?
Developing a personal list of trouble words is an important part about being a reflective writer.
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The Power of Words- unnecessary censorship
Your brain is a gambler, and your brain is on a roll. Most of the predictions your brain makes are right, and it is pretty cocky about it.
The problem is that your brain is often wrong. Your brain is far off, but it is not terribly far off.
In terms of language, here is the principle.
"The brain predicts patterns in language while it reads. These patterns are based on a number of things, including sentence structures, vocabulary, and life experience. These predictions are often wrong, but rarely cause for more than a moment of surprise or confusion."
In terms of language, here is the proof.
Go to youtube.com. Search for "Jimmy Kimmel 'Unnecessary Censorship'". There are no curse words in the recorded audio. Remind yourself of this before you watch the footage. While watching, notice the way your mind fills in the blanks.
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"The Dictionary Rule"
One question that all writers need to consider is this: "is this word clear to my readers?" The possible answers include 1. to all of them 2. to a group that is hard to predict (those who know based on life experience) 3. a specific group that is easy to predict.
(The above is unclever and unhelpful)
The way to tell if a word is dangerous is simple. Check how many definitions of a word there are on dictionary.com. The more definitions a word has, the more potential there is for abuse. A word with only one definition is safe. A word with 7 definitions is easy to abuse.
Think of Bill Clinton. What is the meaning of the word "is"?
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"It's Wrong. It's Wrong. Now It's Right."
What is the meaning of the word "peruse"?
Every time I've ever heard it used in my life, it meant "casually look through something." For example, "I'm going to peruse this article about XXXXXX, something that doesn't relate to my life in any way."
What it "means" according to the dictionary is "to read closely and deeply"
Here is the lesson, when the common usage becomes popular enough, it becomes the "working definition. Words mean what the people who say them mean. In any language, a large number of words have "informal definitions" which go along with the dictionary definitions. If the informal definition reaches a tipping point, the formal definition of the word may change.
Up until that point, there will be conflict. People who know and use the dictionary definition will judge those that don't. People who realize that language is flexible will know the book definition and not care much if people use it more liberally.
What is the meaning of the word "literally?"
Here's what it means.
Here's how many use it.
What is the meaning of the word "ironic"?
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