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John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!
John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!
Does texting mean the death of good writing skills? John McWhorter posits that there’s much more to texting — linguistically, culturally — than it seems, and it’s all good news.
Linguist John McWhorter thinks about language in relation to race, politics and our shared cultural history.
WHY YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO HIM?
John McWhorter studies how language has evolved — and will evolve — with social, historical and technological developments, in addition to studying and writing about race in America.
In recent work, he’s been urging grammarians to think of email and text messages not as the scourge of the English language but as “fingered speech,” a new form between writing and talking. These digital missives, despite their “shaggy construction,” represent an exciting new form of communication in which “lol” and “hey” are particles, he suggests, and written thoughts can be shared at the speed of talking. Should we worry that knowing how to parse “haha kk” means we’ll lose the ability to read Proust? No, he told the TED Blog: “Generally there’s always been casual speech and formal speech, and people can keep the two in their heads.”
McWhorter teaches at Columbia, where his students, including Yin Yin Lu, Sarah Tully, and Laura Milmed, teach him all about the world of texting. He’s also a contributing editor at The New Republic and TheRoot.com. Among his books on language and on race, a selected list:What Language Is (And What It Isn’t and What It Could Be); Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English; and Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America.
“The man changed my mind about texting. I love to gripe about it, but John McWhorter made me rethink how I felt.” Ginette Evans on TED.com
I Don’t Believe in Genius – Fritz Grobe
I Don’t Believe in Genius – Fritz Grobe
Fritz Grobe went from studying math at Yale to winning 5 gold medals at the International Jugglers Championships and touring with a Cirque du Soleil spinoff. He and Stephen Voltz are the cofounders of EepyBird, creators of the Coke & Mentos viral video phenomenon. They’ve been on Letterman, the Today Show, Mythbusters, and more. From their first online video that Advertising Age called the most important commercial content of the year, to their viral campaigns for OfficeMax, ABC Family, and more, EepyBird’s videos have been seen over 150 million times.
A taste of leadership: Alf Rehn
A taste of leadership: Alf Rehn
The theme of the speech will be creativity, and that what we normally label as creativity in fact is nothing near what creativity actually is. Alf will take his examples from the world of restaurants, where chefs manage to stay at the cutting edge of creativity. At the same time, they deliver a dish to a customer at top quality and with top performance every time. This is something the rest of us can learn from, and through Alf’s speech, we might do just that.
Keith Chen: Could your language affect your ability to save money?
Keith Chen: Could your language affect your ability to save money?
What can economists learn from linguists? Behavioral economist Keith Chen introduces a fascinating pattern from his research: that languages without a concept for the future — “It rain tomorrow,” instead of “It will rain tomorrow” — correlate strongly with high savings rates.
Keith Chen’s new research suggests that the language you speak may impact the way you think about your future.
WHY YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO HIM?
Does the future look like a different world to you, or more like an extension of the present? In an intriguing piece of research, Keith Chen suggests that your attitude about the future has a strong relationship to the language you speak. In a nutshell, some languages refer to the future using verb helpers like “will” and “shall,” while others don’t have specific verbs to refer to future actions. Chen correlated these two different language types with remarkably different rates of saving for the future (guess who saves more?). He calls this connection the “futurity” of languages. The paper is in the process of being published by the American Economic Review, and it’s already generated discussion. Chen says: “While the data I analyze don’t allow me to completely understand what role language plays in these relationships, they suggest that there is something really remarkable to be explained about the interaction of language and economic decision-making. These correlations are so strong and survive such an aggressive set of controls, that the chances they arise by random lies somewhere between one in 10,000 and one in 10^32.”
Chen excels in asking unusual questions to yield original results. Another recent work (with Yale colleague and TEDGlobal 2009 speaker Laurie Santos) examined how monkeys view economic risk–with surprisingly humanlike irrationality. While a current working paper asks a surprising, if rhetorical, question: Does it make economic sense for a woman to become a physician?
Before you speak- THINK
Before you speak- THINK
What is the difference between giving up and surrendering?
What is the difference between giving up and surrendering?
Are you sure you really know how much you hurt someone?
Are you sure you really know how much you hurt someone?
