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Bare bones language
Competition Winners!
Mar 16th
Congratulations to J.C and Mark. You’ve both been emailed your prizes – I hope you can enjoy them!
Weekly Roundup
Jan 2nd
It’s been a slow couple of weeks here because we moved house – but I hope you’ll enjoy this pick of our content this week and let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see.
Featured
Where I’ve been and what this means for you
Forensic Linguistics
Wording your New Year’s Resolutions Right
sociolinguistics
Wording Your New Year’s Resolutions Right
Jan 1st
If, like me, you take the time out to make a set of resolutions, or even just one or two, it’s of vital importance that you focus on the intent and the ‘feel’ of the words you use. Though it sounds silly, using the wrong words may cause your perfectly good intentions to fail at the first post, because the language isn’t positive enough.
Setting yourself up to succeed
Positive mindsets aren’t just about harnessing and manifestation – they have a simple underlying key to their use and application – if you go into something believing you will succeed, you’re already one step ahead of where you’d be if you are preparing to fail. Failure is 90% mindset and 10% circumstances in most cases – while there are some things you can’t control, if you’re at least in a position to give your best, you KNOW if something doesn’t work, that you’ve done all you can, and it was out of your control. Placing yourself in control is as simple as creating a ruleset within the language you use to describe your ultimate goal for the year. Do that and you’ll find that you’re in the best position to create the best with your circumstances.
Positive mindsets aren’t about ignoring the possibility of failure – instead, they are about investing enough to give yourself the chance to find out if you WILL fail, instead of believing that you will automatically.
Success is more than just words – it’s attainable
Your success language should be part of your core corpus – in other words, you should use language that you would always, naturally, use. So choose words that you’re confortable using, because it will feed into your ‘can do’ mindset. That can do mindset will allow you to be your best always, which in turn, will allow you to achieve your goals with less confidence hitches.
Setting your words as markers for success
Whether you consider your goals a lighthouse, or a map, a marker on a longer path, or more practical, points to achieve before you reach *your goal*, your language, and the words within it should reflect the feelings within you – so finding your most positive reflections may take longer than January 1st, but if you can, sit down with your goals and edit them like you are submitting them for publication – and the publication’s guidelines insist that you use words that have positive or strong connotations only. And once you’ve polished them, print them and put them on your wall!
Competition Extended
Jan 1st
I thought that because we’d had a bit of a quiet month this month (because we moved) that I’d extend the competition by a month – so feel free to spread the word and earn your competiton entries!
Where I’ve Been and What This Means for You
Dec 28th
The last four months or so have left my world in upheval, because we were working towards moving house. We finally found out on the 17th of December that we got the house, and our move date….of the 18th December!
So that’s why I’ve been a bit quiet these last three weeks – moving house and unpacking at the other end has not only taken it out of me, but has meant that I’ve had no time to write anything.
So what this means for you
Because I’ve been missing in action this month, I’ve chosen to take part in Ezine-Article’s 100 articles in 100 days challenge, and will be writing content for this site. Which means you, as an interested reader, will be getting at least 100 days of content plus all the articles that don’t make the cut onsite, or I just want to share here 
.
I hope you’ve all had a fabulous couple of weeks and are looking forward to the New Year!
Niche Language – Introduction
Dec 15th
Niche language is one of those things that can encompass just about every area of written and verbal communication, so I thought I’d choose a key set of areas to look and run with them. Our key areas here are ‘niche language’, ‘unique language and tags’, and ‘sociolinguistics’.
Sociolinguistics is the hardest of the three to explain, so it’s getting a separate post, later, but basically, its the language of specific groups and discusses the influence of a set of people on language within that group. Niche language is everything around that – wherever a change in language has sprung up, no matter what the reason. Unique language falls in between both – sociolinguistics would explain the why, niche would explain the who, and the application – the unique language and tags themselves would just be a dissection of both.
Later in the week I’m going to post on our first niche language – the language of gratitude – so, I’m curious, what are you thankful for? How do you express it, and how do those words make you feel?
Inclusive Language All Round
Dec 14th
Language is a funny thing – it can open doors – or it can just as easily close them. It can soothe, or incense. It can calm, or it can cause people to jump up and act on your every nuance.
For your message to succeed, your language has to be inclusive. Not only that, but it has to have a degree of portability – for example, if you’re trying to get people to come to your ’cause’, you need to have a way to summarize and explain what your cause *is*. If you are trying to sell something – your USP needs to be easily expressible – if you’re simply trying to teach, your ‘unit of sense’ needs to be the most powerful thing those studying under you will encounter.
The ‘unit of sense’
In poetry, the unit of sense is one line – it should make sense on it’s own, but stand as a broader part of the tapestry of a whole piece – in some ways each unit of sense, each line, should stand as a whole, but have the deeper meaning. It should be a perfect picture on it’s own – which, when placed with other pictures creates more perfect pictures.
When teaching, the unit of sense is much the same – it’s the overall message of that lecture, as taken as a broader whole in the syllabus. It’s the essence of what you’re trying to teach that day – towards the whole exam. Units of sense can be as large, or as small as necessary, but they should be portable. In other words, people should be able to ‘take them away’.
How does that apply to writing?
If you think about it, the ‘unit of sense’ theory extends to everything we do – each post in our blog should be a unit of sense, each paragraph. Down to each sentence, we should make sure that everything we say is both clear, and can stand as part of the message of the piece itself. In blogging this is especially important – most people read webpages, ready to move on – unless you have a devoted readership, you will find that your units of sense need to be especially powerful. And one of the cornerstones of that is inclusive language.
In our next article, we’ll look at the ‘niche inclusion’ theory, and how you can relate that to your own work. Until then though, do you have any questions, comments or thoughts on inclusive language?
Weekly Roundup – 1st Week!
Dec 13th
Our first week has been a BLAST – and I’m delighted to be able to share the first week of posts with you – from our launch competition, and beyond.
Featured
What is a corpus and why should I care?
Forensic Linguistics
Why my passion could make YOU money
Would you like us to talk about anything, or explain something that’s got your stumped? Just ask! I’ll queue it as soon as we can, and drop you an off-blog email to let you know we’ve queued it and when it’s appearing.
The Basics of Language
Dec 9th
There’s lots of different ways you can look at language – and it’s uses. You’d think that, given there are a set of structured, and accepted rules for grammar, that there would be only a few distinct features of language use, and that we’d struggle to create the ability to discuss, or track the use of language.
In truth, based on various reasons, from local dialect and rule understanding to unique features of the way we understand and apply language can create what could be considered a ‘unique’ fingerprint of language use in each of us. I outlined in a previous post, I mix up letters – either because I’m typing too fast, or because I’ve learned to spell it the wrong way round (and will discuss spelling and typographical muscle memory later ), but others substitute words, or mix up common words, like bear and bare. Depending on the spell check you use, they may also slide past – some people think that the mixing up of these words on a regular basis is a sign of intelligence, while others believe that it’s important to look past this – but taking the language as a unit in it’s own right, without the ‘person’ behind it, and that specific feature makes for a unique marker in that body of words.
So this blog, in part *is* about grammar – it’s also about understanding the microcultures that spring up around or from various areas of life – from gangs, to Social Media. But the basics will always remain – the underlying rules that create our language will always be here.
Beyond the rules
Some people might ask – well, what about breaking the rules? What if I know the rules, and my style allows me to break them?
Again, they’re a specific feature of your writing – and as long as you’re not speaking from petulance (that you didn’t realize you were breaking the rules, and are trying to cover for it) and are consistent in the reasons you ‘break’ rules, it’s another identifiable element of your writing. And though, again, it may not be specific to you, it narrows your language use down into an area that could be tagged to you (and others). Find enough features, continue to narrow it down, and we’ll paint a picture of your language use that could be considered as yours, and yours alone.
What do you think? Agree with the idea that each of us have recognizable written or spoken traits? Interested in learning more?
What Is a Corpus and Why Should I Care?
Dec 7th
Key to Forensic Linguistics is the idea that there’s an identifiable set of words in everyone’s language – and those identifiable features are basically unique to ourselves.
An example is that I spell certain words wrong, and reverse several letters – My i’s and my e’s are always the wrong way round, so I have to spell check before posting. But, if you see information that I’ve posted ‘on the fly’, you may find that I’ve spelled because ‘becuase’ or their ‘thier’ among other things.
You might say that it’s simply a spelling mistake, and a very common one at that, but if you identify that as an element of someone’s written style, and they choose not to correct via spell-checking, you can sometimes identify people by simply that.
Other ways include using substituted words – mixed up words with similar definitions, or just completely the opposite words. That’s a basic idea anyway
Corpus = the internal dictionary we all use?
In some ways, you could consider the corpus as your internal dictionary. Each of us should have a unique one, or at least identifiably unique features in our corpus.
A more accepted definition of corpus is one of a wider context – a body of texts that make up a sample of the language that it’s supposed to represent, or similar. But I believe each writer has their own body of work, and therefore, their own comparable ‘corpus’ in some ways.
My first paper on the concept is coming soon, but hopefully this basic definition will help