How do actors bring Shakespeare’s lines to life so that modern audiences immediately understand the text? One way is to emphasize the names of people and places at certain points. That technique is called billboarding. And: Anyone for an...
Many of the top entries in Wordsmith.org’s pangram contest had to do with science, including this one: In Kuiper belt, Pluto is judged as dwarf planet, vexing the status quo by making size count. This is part of a complete episode.
If an older man and woman spend lots of time together, going to family gatherings and the like, but they’re NOT dating, what do you call their relationship? Best friends? Dear friends? Or . . . something else? And a marathon runner who’s...
The term less-than, often written in quotation marks, is an increasingly common way to denote status inequality, especially when it comes to gender. This is part of a complete episode.
Contrary to what you might think, new research by psychologist James Pennebaker suggests that people who use the pronoun I a lot actually tend to occupy the lower status in a conversation. In addition, Pennebaker and his associates found that people...
What do your pronouns say about your own psychological makeup? If you use the word I a lot, does it mean you’re a leader . . . or a follower? A surprising study suggests that people of lower status in a group tend to use I the most. Also, a...