Horizon

"Language defines us as humans"
Language = ability to transmit thoughts
Babies pick up language with minimal effort
Nature vs Nurture
How we learn to speak is still a mystery

Deb Roy - Cognitive psychologist -> turns house into 24 hour surveillance of his baby "speech-home project".
Captured every moment from birth - 3 years old
Babbles - one word - two words - more complex

Talk to children in positive ways "positive reinforcement"
Parents simplify their speech -> elongate gaps between words
Convergence: adapting language to audience
"Parentese"
At first phonological awareness outdoes semantic awareness
By the time a child is 5 they'll know ~5000 words
As they grow up they learn 3000 words a year
When a child doesn't know a noun they'll use determiners eg. "that's a" "that one"
Voicebox low down in the throat of humans giving us the ability to make a variety of noises
All points towards being born with the ability to pickup and use language without being taught

Noam Chomsky:
Forbidden Experiment = isolated baby
Noam Chomskys "L.A.D" language acquisition device

Analysis of Power in Language (David Cameron Scottish Independence Speech Text)

The first obvious point about the speech and the speaker is an underlying theme of political power. This is obvious due to the fact that the Prime Minister, David Cameron is the speaker and therefore obviously carries a large amount of political power (due to him being a ‘powerful participant’). However, David Camerons’ speech about a matter that he clearly feels strongly about (Scotlands’ Independence) is not political propaganda using his powerful status to influence the Scottish vote but more of a ‘heartfelt’ speech about why he personally doesn’t think Scotland should vote for a divorce in the long standing United Kingdom.

Cameron shows a lot of influential power in this speech down to the fact that he doesn’t try to use his political power to enforce authority and tell Scotland that they shouldn’t break up the UK because ‘he says so’ etc. but instead he talks about the benefits of the UK staying together and the heritage & history of the UK in a speech in which he is trying to influence the Scottish vote towards, what he believes, is the right decision.

Due to this text being a persuasive speech there is many a persuasive & power assertive technique being used and one of the most immediately obvious ones is the repeated use of personal pronouns such as “we” and “us”. This language technique implicates a lot of power in this speech in particular because of the subject of the speech. This speech is about the potential that Scotland now have to break free from the United Kingdom and by using personal pronouns like David Cameron does in this speech he is creating a sense of togetherness. This asserts a lot of power in the speech because Cameron uses his political power to try and bring together two countries that are on the verge of divorce and only a man with power could do such a thing via one speech and this technique combined with David Camerons’ reasons for the UK staying intact asserts a lot of power.

In my opinion David Cameron does a very good job of asserting power in a laid back and open way via this speech instead of just working on his political power to demand a change in mind of the Scottish citizens.


http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/02/david-camerons-speech-on-scottish-independence-full-text-and-audio/

Text Talk Review

Texting has been a huge part of human communication since not long after the SMS was invented however it gets a lot of stick (mostly form the older generation’ about its apparent ‘killing’ of the English language; being described as “snot-talk” & “Unimaginative, bleak, bald, sad shorthand drab shrinktalk” according to John Sutherland. It has also been mentioned that it is “doing to our language as Genghis Khan did to his neighbours 800 years ago” by John Humphrys.

This is not the only criticism of text talk however, as most text talk is blamed on teenagers, being called “SMS vandals” by John Humphrys. However, text talk is not disliked by all; in fact it is very popular. The connotations between teenagers and text talk is untrue however, as certain abbreviations were added to the Oxford English Dictionary almost 200 years ago. ‘Cos’ the abbreviation of ‘because’ was added in 1828 and ‘wot’ from 1829. David Crystal mentions that “Many [abbreviations] can be found in literary dialect representations, such as by Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Walter Scott, DH Lawrence, or Alan Bleasdale ("Gissa job!")”. To me, this shows that if literary legends could use a primitive sort of ‘text talk’ in their writing then it is definitely not ‘killing’ the English language. Personally I can argue against the accusation of teenager ruining the English language as I personally, at 16 years old, text with barely any text talk apart from the odd missed capital or punctuation.

David Crystals’ “2B or not 2B?” from July 2008 presents the idea of text talk from a neutral perspective which sheds the true light of how text talk has been going on for years and it is not just an aggressive assault on the standard English language created by those troublesome teens. It shows that even when messages were sent via telegraph people ‘double-decked’ words such as MumDad or ComeQuick as the writers of messages were charged per word. It even points out that Anglo-Saxon scribes used quicker ways to write (although not quite text talk) such as '&' instead of 'and'.

Personally I think the accusations that text talk devised by teenagers is killing the English language and I argue that the English language is infinitely changing and adaptable, the world (including the Oxford English Dictionary) is just keeping up with the times. You should too.

The Guardian 'Twitter' Article

theguardian 

Technology Blog

The Big Twitter Take Over

Is Twitter taking over as the king of the social networks?

 
Sam Lammond





theguardian.co.uk, 18/10/2013, 10:27 GMT



  
 Twitter Logo, Credit: www.prconversations.com

By now, almost everyone has heard of the social networking giant 'Twitter'. But how big exactly is Twitter? The statistics are incredibly surprising.

Created in March 2006 by  Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass and launched in July 2006 Twitter is a lot younger than a lot of it's rivals (Facebook, MySpace etc.) however, this has not deterred it from overtaking slightly older social networking sites such as bebo in terms of active users.

Although Twitter may be a long way off overtaking Facebook in terms of active users (Facebook has 1.15B active users, whereas Twitter has a mere 190 million) it is catching up slowly but surely with 135,000 new users daily.

So, Twitter may not be the 'king of the social networks' just yet, but is it only a matter of time?

Bibliography

http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/10/09/60-sensational-social-media-facts-and-statistics-on-twitter-in-2013/

http://www.prconversations.com/index.php/2011/08/using-twitter-for-pr-events/

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

 


   

Entertaining Travel Writing (Fictional)

An hour passes - or maybe 2. The hot sand crunching under my heavy boots as I trudge slowly but surely through the Taklamakan. As the hot air fills my lungs my mouth gets dryer and my eye lids grow heavier. I had been walking for what I thought had been 2 days and the lack of sleep and supplies was finally getting to me.

I had been broken up from my group the day before & I decided that the safest bet of leaving the 'Sea of Death' safely was to head for the silk road and look for one of the oasis towns along it. If I was to make it to a town before night I would have to move quickly and without stopping, as the Taklamakan is known for having cold nights even during summertime. This was looking less possible every passing minute.

I traipsed on through the desert. The rolling sand dunes seemed to go on forever but I didn't stop, I had been following my compass to where I thought the silk road would be as I had no map and no guide. The unforgiving conditions were taking their toll on my body and mind, I walked on ignoring mirages and fatigue along the way.

As I hesitantly edged my way down a large dune I spotted moving dots on the horizon. With new found enthusiasm I walked on much faster than before, determined to get to the path or even catch up with the apparent travellers I could barely see. After walking for what felt like hours I finally made it to the dusty trail I had spotted the travellers on earlier and I looked along the path in the direction they were walking. I didn't know what to think when I saw it, it took me a few seconds to clear my mind and think. I had seen this place before but only in pictures. The Chinese city of Kashgar. How could I have been so close to Kashgar Prefecture and not known? Elated I made my way to the city, where I could finally find out what had happened to my crew and return home.

Persuasive Travel Writing (Upper Class Airline) (Short)

Here at Lammond Travel, we don't cut corners. We take the utmost care in ensuring that our customers get to their destination and enjoy the journey. From the moment of booking your flight we here at Lammond Travel want you to have the easiest and most relaxing experience possible. Everything from the food to the entertainment on our flights is the best quality service an airline can produce - and it's served with a smile.

With a menu of original recipes carefully perfected and served by our teams of professionally trained chefs and an on-flight entertainment service provided by netflix you will never be bored or hungry, and when paired with our unique reclining bed-seats this is the ultimate flying experience and for far cheaper than the average airlines first class tickets.

There's a reason Lammond Travel has been in the top 10 airlines for 6 years running and that reason is quality.

Short Geoffrey Monologue

Geoffrey is a vicar - he is pompous but good looking and dedicated to the church. It is evening and he is eating dinner.

Despite Mr Medlicott being away I felt my sermon went down well this morning,a lthough it usually does. Once again my wife turned up late and once again I chose to ignore it, however it is beginning to become embarrassing. Apart from those two hiccups my sermon and lesson went well, and there was an impressive turnout from the collection plate.

After we came back from the sermon we both went to the kitchen and I sat dwon whilst Susan cooked me some, how do I put this, 'interesting' chicken wings. To break the awkward tension I piped up with 'That went down well. She replied "the chicken wings?" (I hope she was joking). "My sermon. I felt it hit the nail on the head'. I placed my hand on top of hers, hoping that she would decide to act like a wife for once but, of course, no such luck.