YOU TALK FUNNY

There is a distinction between having the legal right to say something and having the moral right not to be held accountable for what you say. Being asked to apologise for saying something unconscionable is not the same as being stripped of the legal right to say it. It’s really not very fucking complicated. Cry Free Speech in such contexts, you are demanding the right to speak any bilge you wish without apology or fear of comeback. You are demanding not legal rights but an end to debate about and criticism of what you say.

—

China Miéville (via kdeln)

#word

(Source: chinamieville.net, via taylortalkstrash)

Haaa, architecture puns. Ridic. 

Grammatically, there are various ways of describing what’s going on. One helpful set of terms is essential vs. nonessential. When the identifier makes sense in the sentence by itself, then the name is nonessential and you use a comma before it. Otherwise, no comma. That explains an exception to the only-thing-in-the-world rule: when the words “a,” “an” or “some,” or a number, come before the description or identification of a name, use a comma.

timefornaps:

According to a paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Dialect Society in January by Brice Russ, a graduate student at Ohio State University, the 200 million or so messages posted each day in the supposedly placeless world of Twitter may end up being a rich source of information about regional difference.

To demonstrate the validity of Twitter-based research, Mr. Russ searched through some 400,000 Twitter posts coming from identifiable locations and zeroed in on three different linguistic variables, starting with the regional distribution of “soda” vs. “pop” or “Coke,” something that has been well-studied by scholars and amateurs alike. Next, he tracked the use of “hella,” an intensifier (as in “hella boring”) that is associated with Northern California but whose regional distribution has only been examined anecdotally. Finally, he looked at the well-documented syntactic construction “needs X-ed” (as in“the car needs washed”), which is common in the Midwest and especially around Pittsburgh.

Mr. Russ’s results for carbonated beverages, plotted onto a Google map, track closely with previous research, with “pop” predominant from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest, “Coke” predominant in the South and “soda” ruling the Northeast and Southwest while also cropping up elsewhere. But his map for “hella” shows the word leap-frogging up the West Coast to Seattle (and, more puzzlingly, popping up in St. Louis and Kansas City). “People may be moving up the coast, bringing it with them,” he said, adding that he was utterly confounded by the midwestern “hella” hotspots.

As for the “needs X-ed” construction, Mr. Russ detected hints of a southward drift since it was studied in the mid-1990s, though he was cautious about drawing firm conclusions. “There could have been diffusion southward,” he said. “Or I may have just caught something that the previous research missed.”

Look, Megan Rascal! Fun with linguistics!

Fun indeed.

(Source: abbyjean, via time-for-naps)

The idea that young women serve as incubators of vocal trends for the culture at large has longstanding roots in linguistics. As Paris is to fashion, the thinking goes, so are young women to linguistic innovation.

— They’re, Like, Way Ahead of the Linguistic Currrrve

(Source: The New York Times)

Um…I can’t think of one.

julianneeee:

vegansaurus:

“Many people like eating meat, but most are reluctant to harm things that have minds. The current three studies show that this dissonance motivates people to deny minds to animals. Study 1 demonstrates that animals considered appropriate for human consumption are ascribed diminished mental capacities. Study 2 shows that meat eaters are motivated to deny minds to food animals when they are reminded of the link between meat and animal suffering. Finally, Study 3 provides direct support for our dissonance hypothesis, showing that expectations regarding the immediate consumption of meat increase mind denial. Moreover, this mind denial in turn reduces negative affect associated with dissonance.”

I thought “affect” was wrong, but it’s correct if you look at definition 3 in the New American Oxford

Someone was concerned over a word usage in my post (not mine, it’s a quote), but they sorted it out! This is my kind of gal. 

Affect/effect is quote a troublesome pair though. From my favorite grammar site:

There are five distinct words here. When “affect” is accented on the final syllable (a-FECT), it is usually a verb meaning “have an influence on”: “The million-dollar donation from the industrialist did not affect my vote against the Clean Air Act.”

Occasionally a pretentious person is said to affect an artificial air of sophistication. Speaking with a borrowed French accent or ostentatiously wearing a large diamond ear stud might be an affectation. In this sort of context, “affect” means “to make a display of or deliberately cultivate.”

Another unusual meaning is indicated when the word is accented on the first syllable (AFF-ect), meaning “emotion.” In this case the word is used mostly by psychiatrists and social scientists—people who normally know how to spell it.

The real problem arises when people confuse the first spelling with the second: “effect.” This too can be two different words. The more common one is a noun: “When I left the stove on, the effect was that the house filled with smoke.” When you affect a situation, you have an effect on it.

Less common is a verb meaning “to create”: “I’m trying to effect a change in the way we purchase widgets.” No wonder people are confused. Note especially that the proper expression is not “take affect” but “take effect”—become effective. Hey, nobody ever said English was logical: just memorize it and get on with your life.

The stuff in your purse? Your personal effects.

The stuff in movies? Sound effects and special effects.

“Affective” is a technical term having to do with emotions; the vast majority of the time the spelling you want is “effective.”

Wikipedia even has a whole page dedicated to the use of “affect” in psychology.