Archive for the ‘language’ Category

Sarcasm Isolated

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

Magnetic resonance scan of sarcasm angel.

Perhaps there’s something to the idea that designers are more prone to sarcasm than the average person. According to Katherine P. Rankin’s new study of Alzheimer’s patients, the part of the brain we use to appreciate sarcasm is not  in the left brain where most of us process our primary language, but in the right hemisphere. As explained in the New York Times:

…the magnetic resonance scans revealed that the part of the brain lost among those who failed to perceive sarcasm was not in the left hemisphere of the brain, which specializes in language and social interactions, but in a part of the right hemisphere previously identified as important only to detecting contextual background changes in visual tests.

The Stuff of Thought

Sunday, September 23rd, 2007

“THE STUFF OF THOUGHT: Language as a Window Into Human Nature” is a new book by Steven Pinker reviewed by William Saletan in today’s New York Times.

The medium isn’t just reason; it’s language — and language isn’t the manifestation of one mind; it’s the joint manifestation of millions. The reason language works is that it reflects the world as we jointly experience it.