Use Of Words Research Articles

The role of semiotics in connecting the spaces, words and embodied experiences of refugee politics

Despite the every‐day prevalence of the term ‘refugee’, fundamental questions often remain unasked. What meanings do actors associate with the label? What intentions might be driving the word's use and/or manipulation? And what implications might the existence of multiple interpretations have for the persons under discussion and the processes within which they sit? Though this is evidently important in popular accounts, where the term's misuse fuels anti‐immigration sentiments and societal mistrust, the ramifications of these multiple interpretations for assisting refugees and negotiating durable solutions have lacked critical exploration. Existing approaches to understanding the politics of the refugee regime have tended to focus on physical sites of contestation, such as refugee camps. This article re‐introduces semiotics as a heuristic framework through which to understand how the word ‘refugee’ in itself constitutes a disputed arena, and to explore what impacts this has on negotiations over their future. This approach is used to explain the controversial negotiations surrounding the invocation of the Cessation Clause for Rwandan refugees in Uganda. Extensive resistance to the cancellation of Rwandan refugees’ statuses has not been met by commensurate attempts to explain when, why and how this process unfolded. Through conceptualising the word ‘refugee’ as a sign according to the Saussurean and Barthean models of semiotics, this piece charts the multiple meanings that this label signified alongside its established legal‐normative definition, and discusses what implications this had for how durable solutions were negotiated. Disaggregating the label provides a route through which to explore what enables the conceptual and spatial dissonance that plagues certain attempts to conclude protracted refugee situations. The piece concludes by discussing the analytical possibilities that emerge from re‐engaging with socio‐semiotic approaches, including through proposing greater engagement with the political geographies of words and their meanings.

What do high school students say when they talk to their friends about substance use? Exploring the content of substance-use-specific communication with friends

ABSTRACTIn this study, we examined the content of adolescents’ conversations with their friends about substance use, adolescents’ reactions to such conversations, and reasons why some adolescents did not engage in such conversations. Based on 25 semistructured interviews with high school students, we identified three themes: informational, persuasive, and relational messages. Informational messages included discussing how many peers use substances and clarifying rumors about a friend’s substance use. Persuasive messages involved direct anti-substance-use messages (e.g., warning), direct pro-substance-use messages (e.g., legalizing marijuana), indirect anti-substance-use messages (e.g., disliking their substance-use experience), and indirect pro-substance-use messages (e.g., intentions to use substances). Relational messages included joking about substance use and establishing code words for use. Adolescents reacted to their conversations in several ways, such as shock and increased relational closeness. When adolescents did not talk about substance use with their friend, they offered several reasons, including low response efficacy and fear of ruining the friendship.

Le repas de Jean Baptiste au désert : sauterelles, crevettes ou écrevisses ? Un petit texte exégétique inédit du Xe siècle

Copied on the last folio, remained blank, of a manuscript probably originated in Fleury, an exegetical note, to be dated to the end of the tenth century, questions the true nature of locustae that Mark’s Gospel wrote they constituted the meal of John the Baptist in the desert. Refuting the idea that it could be locusts, the author implements a very critical exegesis and uses a great biblical culture and encyclopedic knowledge about the taxonomy of insects and crustaceans, and concludes that the locustae in question were to be shrimp or crayfish. The interest of this text lies mainly in the fact that, to make clear what it is, the author glosses the word “locusta” with vernacular words in use in Germany and northern Italy, and that he also convenes in support of his thesis an unknown non-Vulgate version of the passage from Leviticus concerning dietary restrictions.

Paul's Triumphal Procession Imagery (2 Cor 2.14–16a): Neglected Points of Background

This article seeks a fresh assessment of Paul'spompa triumphalisimagery at 2 Cor. 2.14–16a by probing a number of neglected aspects of both lexical and cultural background. Included are (1) an analysis of the use of θριαμβεύω in the Greco-Roman literature, with special attention given to claims made concerning the word's use with direct objects; (2) a lexicology of ὀσμή and εὐωδία in literatures of the period; and (3) a probing of the language of ‘salvation’ in the passage, with attention given to a feature of the triumphal procession parades that has until now failed to garner attention in investigations of the passage.

The Design of a Reconstructive Hand Surgery Text Database based on a Speech Recognition System in Iran

Speech recognition system (SR) is a tool to create comprehensive, accurate and legible information in the patient's medical records. The present study is a part of a project to create a specialty text database for SR software in the field of reconstructive hand surgery. This project is considered a fundamental work for practical application of the system to enter the healthcare field in Iran. An interventional, quasi-experimental study and fundamental work to create surgical text database in the existing Persian software of "Nevisa". 1863 reconstructive hand surgical descriptions during a 3-month period (March 20, 2012 through June 20, 2012) in 15-Khordad Subspecialty Hospital were used to create database. The statistical population of the study consisted of all patients admitted with hand disorders within this time interval. About 108 dictated voices of physicians were collected after surgery. After the type and required analysis, the reconstructive hand surgery text database was created and tested in a real operating room. In this paper, a reconstructive hand surgery text database was created for Persian SR software. The database contains capital vocabulary and more than1200 words for use in the hand surgical unit in specialty hospitals and clinics. The record of findings and results of surgery in the patients’ medical records is very important. The lack of computerized data recording is one of the reasons for failure and illegibility of medical records in health centers. To solve these problems, software was used for data entry in the medical records and creating comprehensive electronic records. The designed software was tested in the operating room. The obtained accuracy demonstrated the potential for practical applicability of the developed software in Iran.

Teaching English vocabulary through ICT’s

1 IntroductionVocabulary is the first and foremost important step in language acquisition. This paper is an attempt to study and explore the various methodologies that can be incorporated in the teaching of vocabulary items in a language classroom.Teaching English vocabulary by means of the new technologies and the modern learning methods seems to be a most challenging undertaking, mostly because of the variety of vocabulary types to be learned, including single words, phrases, collocations, and strategic vocabulary, as well as grammatical patterning, idioms and fixed phrases.Vocabulary is a necessary ingredient for all communication. Language learners encounter vocabulary on a daily basis, and must be able to acquire and retain it. As a language teacher, one of my main tasks is to help students develop a rich vocabulary inventory.Learning a new language is a great opportunity for a student because it is required in an international world. Learning English has many advantages that help in the economic, cultural, political, and social aspects of life. A larger vocabulary allows you to speak with greater precision with other people. Words are the currency of communication. A robust vocabulary improves all areas of communication- listening, speaking, reading and writing. When students improve their vocabulary, their academic and social confidence and competence improve, too. In my opinion, the greatest tools I can give my students for succeeding, not only in their education, but more generally in life, are a large, rich vocabulary and the skills for using those words.The learner, while learning the vocabulary of a second language can overpass several challenges: making the correct connections, when understanding the second language, between the form and meaning of words; when producing language, using the correct form of a word for the meaning intended. To face these challenges the learners need to acquire a critical mass of words for use in both understanding and producing the new language, remember the words overtime, being able to recall them readily, develop strategies for coping with gaps in word knowledge, including coping with unknown words or unfamiliar uses of known words, and have to take responsibilities themselves for vocabulary expansion.With hundreds of thousands of words in the English language, teaching vocabulary can seem like a very daunting prospect. We have to remember though that the average native speaker uses around only five thousand words in everyday speech. Moreover, students won't need to produce every word they learn, some they will just need to recognize. Selecting what to teach, based on frequency and usefulness to the needs of your particular students is therefore essential. Once you have chosen what to teach, the next important steps are to consider what students need to know about the items, and how you can teach them. Efficiency is achieved only when teachers use the best teaching learning methods.Methods make the material easier to comprehend and assimilate. A teacher would only pay attention towards his methods only when he is completely dedicated his profession and if his profession is his passion.Using modern methods, the students learn the foreign language in the same way as they learn their mother tongue, while in traditional methods they learn English word by word in their mother tongue. But, if the teacher finds the best teaching method for a particular group of students, they are likely to learn more quickly. Furthermore, using a variety of teaching methods will help students from being bored and learn in a new and exciting way.Nowadays, we have great possibilities in terms of teaching methods, visual and listening aids, seating arrangements, etc. With this freedom in teaching, we can use an enormous number of ideas during our classes and we can put into practice a lot of new ideas and activities. One of the teacher's crucial tasks is to compare, analyze and evaluate the methods they use in order to motivate the students and to make the learning process as effective as possible. …

Blood

Blood

Big Ideas for Education

How do you get a big idea into education? Philanthropists, states, districts, business leaders, and even the federal government have been struggling with this idea. A recent Big Ideas Fest sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) was designed to help professionals from diverse sectors work together to create solutions for a host of challenging dilemmas. But this meeting was more than the typical get-together-anddiscuss gathering. It was structured in a unique--and, I think, masterful--process that put learning and the learner front and center. The meeting began with all 150 participants attending a larger session and listening to global entrepreneurs in who could inspire us and give us some key principles around design challenges. Each presenter spoke for 10 minutes with no time for questions. Then, we transitioned into Collabs, diverse groups of 10 to 15 individuals who were educators, administrators, developers, technology people, and college students who would solve a problem together during the Big Ideas Fest. The Action Collabs moved us from brainstorming to designing to testing to creating a tangible solution at the meeting, but we also learned a process we could use in our own organizations. My Action Collab was challenged with to enable teachers to have the greatest impact on learners. Other Action Collabs worked on to create learning opportunities for students pushed out of formal education and to create alternatives for certifying or credentialing learning, as a means of expanding and career opportunities. Brainstorming a Solution Erin McKean, CEO and co-founder of Wordnik.com, a former editor at Oxford University Press, kicked off the day as one of four rapid-fire leaders. McKean shared the story of how she embarked on creating an online dictionary that would be more accessible and relevant than print dictionaries. According to the web site, Wordnik has collected more than 4 billion words of text in order to show examples of words in use. After the rapid-fire presentation, we retreated into our Action Collab groups to ponder how to integrate what we had learned into designing a solution for our problem. This process was repeated over and over again, with a rapid-fire presentation followed by Action Collab time. (For a full list of rapid-fire speakers, go to www.bigideasfest.org/2010/program.) In our first Action Collab, we identified opportunities for addressing a specific central problem (for my Collab, how to enable teachers to have the greatest impact on learners) by conducting research. Unique to this conference, our research included talking with real students who had struggled in their own educational attainment. Nothing fictitious. This conference offered much that was valuable, but providing the authenticity and touchstone of talking to students about their learning was a highlight. Those conversations made the design process real and not just an exercise at a The students gave simple yet profound comments that gave us insight into what needed to be solved. The students were clear: They needed support but wanted to be pushed. They need this not just from school personnel, but from multiple individuals, including such extended family members as grandparents, parent's friends, teachers, other students, employers, and more. Students considered being pushed to achieve as a form of support they desperately yearned for and needed in order to get through. That idea was central to our work at the meeting. After identifying opportunities for our central problem, each Action Collab began to dig deeper into opportunities as a way to design an idea to prototype. Our rapid-fire presenters during this portion of the meeting included Diego Navarro, founder of the Academy for College Excellence, who described how students who had traumatic academic and life experiences needed to connect with a positive learning environment that would set them on a path for and career success. …

SENSORY AND SEMANTIC LANGUAGE MODEL FOR RED APPLES

ABSTRACT This study (1) examines the sensory attributes of a large group of red apples and compares consumer perceptions of them with those of a trained sensory panel; and (2) uses a sensory semantic frame classification to analyze the vocabulary used. Descriptive analysis was carried out with the trained panel, while a simplified version of the repertory grid method was used for one‐to‐one interviews with consumers. The perceptions expressed by the consumers correlated quite well with the terminology used by the trained panel, and the two groups used many identical words when describing the apples' texture, flavor and taste according to partial least squares regression. A sensory semantic frame was constructed based on the vocabulary used by the two groups. The combination of sensory and semantic analysis could be one way of extracting valuable words for use in contexts such as product description for marketing purposes in retail stores. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONTo increase and optimize consumer experiences of fruits and vegetables, it is crucial to use the proper words, both informatively and esthetically, to express these sense experiences. Often, however, it can be difficult to describe the taste, flavor, scent and texture of the food we eat. An agreed‐on sensory and semantic language for apples, for example, could be valuable for effective communication in retail stores, to improve selling statistics, consumption and consumer quality awareness.The key outcome of the study is that the perceptions of the trained panel and the consumers were quite similar, and that the combination of sensory and semantic methodology could be a valuable tool to create sensory characteristics of products to be used in effective marketing communication in grocery retail stores. Future research could investigate consumer decision‐making in relation to sensory and semantic description labels in retail grocery stores.

Glossing Speakers, or bookmaking for amateurs

Speakers: Performance, Photography and the Loud Page is a book made by the performance company These Horses (Emma Bennett, Lucy Cran, Bill Leslie) in collaboration with photographer Anne Tetzlaff, published in 2007 by Bonfire Books as the first in a series of book projects by artists working in the field of performance and time-based media. My article takes the form of an illustrated glossing of this book, proposing the book as performance, as a site, as a labour of love. The article engages with discussions around the definition of artist's book and bookworks, and with questions of reading and reader-response criticism. While avoiding defining an artist's book, in the same gesture the article situates Speakers in relation to works by Ed Ruscha, Bernhard and Hilla Becher, and John Baldessari. The form of the glossary considers particular uses of words in These Horses' text, and plays with the cross-referencing and recurrence of terms through the book. The book is placed in a discursive and critical context, while remaining open to different disciplines and conventions of engagement.

Structural Surprise in the Triadic-Line Poems

William Carlos Williams insisted his triadic-line derives from some evanescent quality of the spoken language and more specifically from the characteristics of American speech.1 This essay will focus on how recent advances in an area of linguistics known as international phonology have helped to vindicate these adamant but impressionistic claims. These advances center on the description of the intonational phrase, a well-defined unit of spoken language quite nearly satisfies Williams's discussions of the variable foot, especially as defined in his verse entry in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.2 A brief overview of the intonational phrase suggests how it may satisfy the desiderata Williams articulates for his measure: 1. The intonational phrase is a domain in language; is, it is a recognizable unit participates in the organization of language and it specifically factors in the organization of spoken language (i.e., unlike meter, it is not inherent to individual words or written language but exists only across sequences of word in use) (Nespor and Vogel 188; Hayes 219). 2. The intonational phrase is the first domain is variable (Nespor and Vogel 1 87-203), meaning the amount of language comprising an intonational phrase - unlike the amount of language constituting a metrical foot - varies greatly depending on a number of linguistic and paralinguistic factors (lnkelas). This variability and its underlying causes are quite close to Williams's discussion of the variable foot as a prosodie pattern [that] is evaluated by criteria of effectiveness and expressiveness rather than mechanical syllable counts (Williams Free Verse 289; SL 326). 4. As the domain at which intonation is assigned, the intonational phrase is responsible for the audible chunks or tunes embody our perception of the significance of our own (Tench 7). The genius of the triadic-line then is it derives its music from the inherent musicality of our and not from the limited rhythms associated with a meter. Or, as Allen Ginsberg called it, what Williams puts down on the page are the squiggly tunes of speech (1 65). 5. Each intonational phrase is defined by a tonic syllable, whose audible intensification (it is distinguished phonologically from other syllables by a combination of factors, involving pitch, volume, and length [Tench 53-55]) is naturally perceived as a beat. Intonational phrases also tend to occur where structural pauses can be inserted within (Nespor and Vogel 1 88). These two tendencies help explain engrained habits of describing triadic-line as well as free in terms of beats or breath units. 6. Finally, linguistic scholarship has substantiated American and British English have distinct intonational contours, thus corroborating Williams's insistence the two are not the same language. Furthermore, specific proof the intonation of American English is fairly monotonous and level helps explicate why his late lacks the irruptive, dynamic feel of the early poems, as it intuitively mimics the shape of a neutral statement in the American idiom (Mencken 322-23; Flexner and Soukhanov 118-19). Let's say we accept these five points. The questions still remain: how to sync up the intonational phrase and the triadic line and what practical benefit this correlation may be in discerning the measure's significance to later poets? This utility may be suggested by listening to Williams reading an excerpt from To Daphne and Virginia, which was recorded in 1955 at UC Santa Barbara. At the start of this reading, Williams propounds his notion of the variable foot; he then reads the beginning of this poem three times, as if to illustrate his points, concluding that is not an iambic pentameter:3 While it is difficult to discern differences between these three readings, the level of excitement seems to vary - is, where the first reading is more level or neutral, particularly in the second complete triadic line, the second reading is more expressive. …

Dr. Johnson and the American Vocabulary

Dr. Johnson and the American Vocabulary L Richard W. Bailey The University of Michigan "n November-December 1754, three anonymous essays appeared .in The World, all of them looking on the completion ofjohnson's Dictionary with eagerness and affirmation. The first two were written by Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield, and dealt mainly with the "authority" of a dictionary to improve the language. They are famous because they elicited a querulous letter from Johnson in which he alleged that Chesterfield should have provided financial support for his work and had not done so. Later published in Boswell's Life ofJohnson, the letter came to be seen as a milestone in the evolution from patronage in support ofscholarly works to support from commercial publishers who could hope to profit from the books they commissioned and sold. The third of the essays published in The World was written by Richard Owen Cambridge, a boulevardier and man ofletters, then at work on a history of the British in India (never completed). Chesterfield had suggested, in jest, that a "small supplemental dictionary" might be produced that would contain the words in use among the bon ton. Cambridge began his essay by agreeing that a "neological dictionary" might be published as an appendix to each year's almanac to capture new words. Cambridge's idea was more expansive than Chesterfield's and pointed to new terms in use in discussing the "East Indies." In his list, he included joss, pagoda, pafonquin, nabob, mandarin, junk, and sepoy. If he had expectedJohnson to have included these words, he would be disappointed when the Dictionary finally appeared in April 1755. Of them only junk 'a small ship of China' would appear. Johnson supposed it was a word from India; junk is now believed to be from Malaya, reaching English through Portuguese and Dutch. Dictionaries:Journal ofthe Dictionary Society ofNorth America 30 (2009), 130—135 __________________Dr. Johnson and the American Vocabulary131 Cambridge then turned his attention to the Americas, reproducing what he claimed to be an extract from a letter "from one of our colonies." Doubtless he fabricated it in order to display a dense thicket of Americanisms: The Chippeways an Orundaks are still very troublesome. Last week they scalped one of the Indians: but the Six Nations continue firm; and at a meeting of Sachems it was determined to lake up the hatchet, and make the war-kettle boil The French desired to smoak the. calumet ofpeace; but the half-king would not consent. They offered the speech-belt, but it was refused. Out governor has received an account of their proceedings, together with a string ofwampam, and a bundle ofskins to brighten the cliain (The World, n. 102 [December 12. 1755]). Cambridge speculated that "? guide to the New English tongue" would have a great sale. But if he had imagined thatJohnson would include words like these, he would have been disappointed. Nonetheless it is worth asking what words of American origin appeared in the Dictionary and whereJohnson might have obtained information about them. The foundational document forJohnson's dictionary was Nathan Bailey's 1736 Dictionarium Britannicum, a substantial and excellent reference work that was reprinted in abridgements throughout the eighteenth century. In fact Bailey's work outsold Johnson's until it ceased to be published and Johnson's fame increased with the publication of Boswell's Life in 1791. Like Johnson, Bailey was a somewhat eccentric definer, but he showed a definite interest in American words. Among the Americanisms Bailey defined were these: AcouiY, [in America] a little Beast of the Shape and Size of a Rabbet , which has no more than two Teeth in eachjaw, and feeds like a Squirrel. But is a fierce Greature, and when irritated, will stamp with its Hind Feet, and erect its Hair. [Modern English agouti] Assapa'nick, a little creature in America, a sort of flying Squirrel. Boicini'nga, an Animal [in America] call'd the Ratde Snake, whose [b]ite is deadly, except a speedy Remedy be applied. GlJCHOV'os, A Fly in America, which shines in the Night so brightly that Travellers are said to be able to travel, read or write by its Light. Ja...

T05-O-02 A new penis pathogen: soap

Hygiene is defined in dictionaries as the science of health. This definition, though formally correct, hides a long history of change in the word's use, from its holistic classical meaning of individual regimens to preserve health to its nineteenth-century connotations of social medicine (including lethal eugenics programs), to its current limited construal as -personal cleanliness - or -germ removal. Andrologic, Dermatologic and Sexologic guidelines do not provide any document about penis hygiene either in the past centuries or in more recent time excluding circumcision counseling. This topic is considered interesting only by cosmetic industries often forgetting that a couple, by definition, is formed by male too. Recently, the introduction of a variety of new aggressive body soaps and bath foams caused an increase in penis pathologies.

The cases of non-equivalence between English and Lithuanian: a corpus based solution

Šiame straipsnyje pristatomas leksinių ertmių reiškinys bei jo potipis – morfologinės ertmės. Morfologinių ertmių, kurios atsiranda dėl tam tikrų dviejų kalbų derivacijos potencialų skirtumų (šiame straipsnyje – neigiamos reikšmės perteikimas priešdėlių pagalba anglų ir lietuvių kalbose), analizė parodė, kaip tokia morfologinio pobūdžio sąvokų leksikalizacijos stoka įtakoja vertimą, t. y. domėtasi, kaip morfologinės ertmės perteikiamos vertimo kalboje. Straipsnyje pirmiausia aptariami vertimo atvejai dvikalbiame anglų–lietuvių kalbų žodyne. Pastebėta, kad tokiais atvejais dažniausiai vartojami vertimo metodai yra vertimas sinonimų grupe bei aprašomasis vertimas. Aptariamos su tokiu reikšmės perteikimu susijusios problemos. Žodynų vertimai palyginti su vertimais tekstuose, kurie gauti pasitelkus Lygiagretųjį anglų – lietuvių kalbų tekstyną. Tokių dviejų šaltinių vertimų palyginimas užbaigiamas diskusija apie išplėstinio vertimo vieneto sąvoką ir tekstynų medžiagos panaudojimą vertime bei šiuolaikinėje leksikografijoje.

Johnson and the OED

This paper is introduced by a brief comparison of the differing contexts in which Samuel Johnson and James Murray worked, and thus their differing perspectives towards lexicography. Johnson's dictionary is considered as an influence upon the Oxford English Dictionary (OED): it served as a word-list; it prompted Murray and his team to include otherwise unsubstantiated senses; it served as a model for elegant defining text, and provided a source for the borrowing of numerous definitions; it offered contemporary information and perspectives for Murray to include in notes within the entries; and, most significantly, it served as a rich mine of quotation evidence, both from Johnson's own definition- and meta-text, and from the numerous works he cited as illustrative examples of words in use. The paper discusses the OED's findings on the accuracy of these illustrative quotations in Johnson's dictionary, with examples, and explains the reasons why it has been decided, during the current total revision of the OED, to check them all in their original texts. The concluding paragraphs comment upon the significance of Johnson's dictionary in the writing of OED1.

Confidentiality performance of spectral-phase-encoded optical CDMA

Enhanced security has often been cited as an important benefit of optical code-division multiple-access (O-CDMA) signaling but has seldom been analyzed in detail. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the degree of confidentiality that can be provided by spectral-phase-encoded O-CDMA. Two eavesdropping detector structures are presented that can theoretically break the confidentiality of spectral-phase-encoded signals by detecting the code words in use by a specific user. One of them, an optical beat detector, is quantitatively analyzed to determine the probability of correctly detecting user code words. The confidentiality of user signals is shown to be vulnerable to such a detector if an eavesdropper can isolate a single user signal with a sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). At lower SNRs, combining multiple bits is shown to dramatically increase the probability of an eavesdropper correctly detecting user code words; even for codes long enough to strain implementation capabilities (e.g., 2048 code elements), the probability of correct detection is shown to rise from negligibly low values to virtually 100% by the combining of less than 100 transmitted bits at the eavesdropper's receiver.

若年層向け音楽感性検索システムに使用するための感性語選択

We aim to select several pairs of kansei words for use in a kansei-based music retrieval system. In order to evaluate kansei for music, we collected 530 kansei words from music magazines and a related work. Forty pairs of kansei words were selected out of them according to the results of 2 questionnaires. Using the those pairs, we conducted an evaluation test in which 76 subjects listened to 12 pieces of instrumental music through stereo speakers, and they rated the degree of their impression on each piece based on the 7-level semantic differential method. Factor analysis revealed that the psychological space of impressions was composed of 8 factors: There were uplift, mosso and so on. Next, we conducted simulation of retrieving. It was shown that many subjects often used 8 pair of kansei words for system input. Finally, we selected 19 pairs of kansei words, which were important to build a kansei-based music retrieval system

Economics and English: Language Growth in Economic Perspective

This article examines systematically the growth of the English language from the year 252 cc through 1985. Using a data set collected from the CD‐ROM version of the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, we characterize the time series of new words added to the language, by year, calculate rates of growth and obsolescence, and disaggregate the data by parts of speech. Economic models of language growth over a modern period (1830‐1969) are then estimated. We report evidence that language is a “network” good (the number of new English words is negatively related to population and to gross national product), that additions to the language are retarded by government growth, that the stock of words in use is strongly influenced by foreign trade, and that causality runs from economics to neology but not the reverse. Some suggestive evidence on the relative “efficiency” of English also is presented.

Champagne, beer, or coffee? A corpus of gender-related and neutral words

A list of gender-related and gender-neutral words for use in testing gender stereotyping and memory was created and evaluated. Words were rated by samples of undergraduates at universities located in the northeast, southeast, and south-central United States. A substantial list of masculine, feminine, and gender-neutral words was identified. These lists allow researchers to construct large lists of gender-associated words while being able to control for extraneous variables, such as word frequency and word length. In addition, the high reliability across the samples suggests that gender ratings are a fairly stable phenomenon. Applications for this list are discussed. The word lists presented in Tables 1-3 and the raw data analyzed in this article may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive/.

Wörter im Zweifel. Ansätze einer linguistisch begründeten kritischen Semantik

Within the framework of pronunciation, morphology, and syntax, linguistic doubts and uncertainties belong to the everyday business and everyday life of linguists and public speakers. Cases of lexical semantic doubts, however, have been brushed aside by post-Saussurian and all the more by post-Bloomfieldian linguists so far. This paper deals with such lexical semantic doubts and uncertainties which not only rise from language use within "parole" but are caused by a conflict of opposite or even contradictory language norms of different "langue"-varieties (e.g. the adjective positive as a medical term and in everyday colloquial language). Proceeding from an intensive discussion of the relationship between language use, language norms, and language system with special reference to Saussure, Hjelmslev, and Coseriu, the paper presents a theoretical approach to linguistically founded criticism of semantic norms by way of embedding lexical semantics into a framework of "Existenzweisen" (focusing on language use, norms, and system), "Existenzformen" (in particular norms of special discourses and varieties), and "language history and social stratification" (in particular age-based vocabularies and semantics). Finally, the paper turns this theoretic approach into practice by way of describing, explaining, and solving semantic doubts of the German word Zigeuner (gipsy). This example taken from the discourse on "political correctness" is investigated in the broader context of the word's historical, semantic, and pragmatic dimensions in different German discourses and varieties. The systematic relations between the various usages are presented in the form of a pragmatic and semantic network displaying the interconnections and borders between the meanings and gives recommendations to the word's use.