From the monthly archives:

March 2009

Today we are going to finish our Crash Course on Linguistic Presuppositions. To this point we have covered what Presuppositions are, where they come from and the different areas in which they are categorized. In this last post we are going to talk about some of the ways in which Presuppositions can be used and I will give you a few examples to illustrate that. Now although Presuppositions are mainly considered a quantum linguistic, it really is their hypnotic capacity that gives them their “effective communication” strength. Presuppositions, when used will do major things to the recipient’s mind when they [...]

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Yesterday we broke into presuppositions by defining the phrase and talking a bit about what they are. Today we are going to create a sharper focus and talk about the categories that presupposition can be broken up into. While we do this, we can also talk about what exactly they “DO” to the mind of the communication recipient when they are use in conversation. So let’s get right into it… Imagine that you wake up one morning and you find yourself in a room… no doors, no windows… nothing but a light at the top. You are hungry, thirsty, scared… [...]

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In the field of professional communication, one of the most important skills that someone can have as a communication expert is the ability to artfully and covertly steer a conversation in what ever direction they determine is necessary to achieve their goal. The complexity of language leaves us with an almost infinite number of possible ways to do this. Some of the most powerful tools in the field of communication come from the field of study known as Pragmatics. To define it, Pragmatics is the study of a natural language speaker’s ability to communicate information other than what they are [...]

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Yesterday we discovered how the brain uses the mental lexicon to determine the literal meaning of the communication that is being presented to it. Today we will finish the segment by talking about how the brain fits that information into its own world to determine the interpersonal meaning of that communication to the listener. This begins with referencing against the categorical information stored in the brain. Categorization: As we stated previously, the lexical activation is dependent on all of the prosodic, syntactic, contextual and phonetic information/components we spoke about above. Once a literal meaning has been placed on the word/s [...]

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Yesterday we discussed the initial exposure to the sound stimulus and phonemes. Today we are going to talk about how the brain turns the phonemes into words via our mental lexicon so let’s get to it… Decoding of a word’s meaning with the Mental Lexicon: The processes that we elaborate upon on this series all happen/occur interactively , so keep in mind that they don’t necessarily occur in a specific order once the initial stimulus is experienced. Aside from the necessity of defining what each word is specifically as the initial activation cue, the following functions happen interchangeably and dynamically [...]

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This one is a bit dense… So although it isn’t terribly lengthy I decided to break it up into three parts so you don’t fry your brain on it Although this is extremely foundational information, I believe it is important to know what exactly is going on in a person’s brain while you are talking to them. Hopefully this will give you a different view of the neurology that is transpiring as you speak… So let’s get right into it. The most renowned and referenced model of the listener is known as the Geschwind-Wernicke’s model which proposes that there are [...]

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