Author: Nick Nicholas

You lose linguistic diversity, as the dialects gradually die out, or at least are marginalised. You may not may not care about linguistic diversity, of course. You lose ways of saying things that are specific to non-standard dialects. Cretan dialect for example has a distinct word for “trickle”. (To my annoyance, I don’t remember it.) […]

Remember: language always has a social context. Always. Why do languages borrow words and phrases? Sometimes: consciously, to fill in a gap in the language, by bilinguals who care about the target language. That takes work. Rather more often: as a transferral of prestige and connotations from the source language, by bilinguals who want to […]

I understood the words and the phrases, but I had to be edified by some online links, and I’ve got an advantage in that I know why Jakobson said it the way he did. Roman Jakobson Metaphor Project Jacobson – Metaphor and Metonomy Exec summary: there is one takeaway message for poets: FORM MATTERS The […]

Politeness theory I’m sure I’ve answered this here already. Positive politeness strategies are culturally approved ways of interacting with other people, that involve doing good things for them. They concentrate on eliminating distance between people. Negative politeness strategies are culturally approved ways of interacting with other people, that involve not doing bad things to them. […]