The Gift of the Gab

"Never trust a salesman" people tell you, but why do people do anyway? What is it that sales people do in order to 'twist your arm' into buying certain upgrades or attachments to your original product or needs?

 

Language and technology has a rather peculiar relationship, as both evolve constantly the library of technology as a lexical field grows yet many people refer to many parts of technology with their own idioms, in order to understand what the aim of the technology is.

 

In my job I experience the "dumbing down" of technology daily, for example a processor suddenly becomes "the brain" of the computer and with that people will understand more clearly. In my job as computer salesman, convergence is a very useful skill; it allows you to match your customer's mood, background and level of knowledge - all of which allows you to create a rapport with almost anyone.

 

A huge part of my job requires you to be able to judge people and adjust your lexical choices accordingly. This is shown by the idea of a good salesman having the "gift of the gab" as they are able to convince people to agree with them without the individual even realising.  This then relates to Brown and Levinson's politeness theory of the positive and negative faces. A sales colleague must utilise a positive face in order to create a rapport with the customer, but they must also implement negative face threatening acts on the customer by suggesting and advising they choose a different product or to add something else to their sale. Another negative face threatening act sales people employ is 'offers'; by doing this the pressure is put on the customer to decline or accept, but who would decline 'such a great offer'?

 

Selling a product to someone follows a question and answer discourse structure, with the sales person and customer swapping roles in asking questions, the customers asks genuine questions in order to improve their knowledge, but the sales person asks questions in order to use their negative face threatening acts on the customer; yet while still using a positive face to seem they are intrigued about their customer and their life.

By Rob Viles

The Language of television and radio football commentary

For my language investigation I will investigate the language used by football commentators on Television and Radio and how they use lexical, syntactic and technical features to commentate the audience. Rhetorical questions are a big part of the lexis used by commentators such as "How did he miss that?!" and "Is this a chance?" this is a way for commentators connecting with the fans watching game bringing excitement to what they're listening to.

 Metaphors are widely used in commentary, especially radio commentary to add a more vivid image of the match as radio uses cannot see the match for them nor have any visual aids. "Real Madrid forming a wall at the back of their defence" is an example of this because without it, it would be nothing but boring factual information. This is obviously nothing new; newspapers and various other media companies use them every day; however with football commentaries it's a bit different. It's not in writing it's in conversation, but in our everyday conversations there are fillers, hesitations and incorrect grammar use, but commentators are experienced and perhaps practised the spontaneous speech. When commentators are commentating on action, present tense is used to create drama as its happening as we speak, it's called play-by-play commentary.

Radio and television commentary both have linguistic features available by commentators to convey the action on the pitch to the viewers and listeners without them being there.

By Jack Towers 

 

Legal Words

Have you ever seen a court case and heard something about the law you didn't understand?
 
The legal language has their own field specific lexis such as; the legal lexis, this is words with technical meaning. For example: acquittal, this means the discharge of a defendant following verdict or direction of not guilty. Lawyers still use historical lexis. This can be traced back to the Anglo Saxons, they thought of the phrase 'the truth, the whole truth nothing but the truth.' We used to speak the same language as lawyers so you could say it's strange how we don't understand their confusing and complicated words!
 
Our English British has been mixed with other language such as Latin and French. Lawyers still use Latin phrases today because it gives lawyers that sense of authority as Latin language is more morphemically complex. They use phrases such as; actus reus, which means a guilty act and animus revetendi, this means with intention to return. They also use French and most people would of heard these words. They are words like sentence, jury, court and defendant. The law French originates from Latin. Lawyers still use the law French today as French is seemed higher class and descriptive. For example; parliament comes from the old French word 'parlement' and that means 'speaking, talk.'
 
The legal language is based around a lot of interrogative words. These are; who, what, where, why and when. This is because lawyers are always asking questions to find out what the clients claim is. Lawyers are trying to find the information they need to help defend their clients case therefore the 5 W's are used.
 
Lawyers language is also based around the use of metaphors. This is because it's their use of persuasion in court as the thing they are talking about is something specific. This is shown in Woolington V Director of Public prosecution.
 
By Megan West
Source: www.languageandlaw.org/NATURE.HTM

"Who's a beautiful ickle bubba den?"

Isn't it strange that as soon as we are in the company of a baby or young child our lexis completely changes? I'm sure we can admit that as stupid as baby talk can sound we all do it, a car becomes a broom broom, a dog becomes a doggy, stomach becomes tummy and a horse becomes a horsey. The thing that I find interesting is why we use baby talk and does it have an effect on the child's development of language.

David Crystal says that most people produce baby talk without any conscious awareness of it, but some people argue that by using baby talk we are providing the child an inaccurate version of 'normal' speech and that it interferes negatively with their development. For example parents who regularly substitute pronouns with nouns, "Mummy wants Sophie to drink her milk,"as a pose to "I want you to drink your milk," may put a temporary damper on the child's development of pronouns. When children make mispronunciations we often giggle and imitate them as they sound cute, but actually between the ages of three and six children are most vulnerable and so in the study by Lotte Henrichs, she explains that speaking academically with your child instead of simplifying your speech patterns actually helps a child do better in school later in life. Therefore we all feel like we have to talk slowly, loudly or with a singing voice to children but this doesn't challenge them to learn new language skills.

However, there is no evidence that baby talk hinders a child's development. Baby talk in a language actually bears a close resemblance to the adult language, from this they can learn the many human sounds that are in their parents language as the distribution of phonemes is so similar. The grammar of baby talk can also be similar to one of an adult for instance the subject of a sentence usually comes before the verb and we often teach children this by saying things such as "Mumma's here" and "Dadda's coming." It also gives the child a repeated chance to hear the nature of particular sounds and syllables like "choo choo," for train which helps develop the child's knowledge of language.

Baby talk is also used by family members to show affection and relationships and in some cases this stays with them past childhood. For example, when learning my name instead of saying "Amy," my little brother would pronounce my name "Mamy," and even now at the age of almost five when he knows how to pronounce my name properly he continues to call me "Mamy," as that's what we have always used, but it is something that only family will understand. As I mentioned before baby talk is mostly high pitched, drawn out, repetitive and sometimes in a sing song. Research by Chicago Tribune actually shows that this is the type of speech that infants in their first year of life not only hear better but is also the language to which they are most responsive to, this is more important than using 'proper' adult grammar.

To conclude this blog we mainly use baby talk without being aware of it and there are interesting arguments as to whether we should use it or not but it is a personal decision that everyone can make for themselves. However the language of baby talk will always fascinate many people along with making them laugh!

References:
(1)http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2006-04-11/features/0604110245_1_babies-sign-language-dear-abby-infants (2)http://www.davidcrystal.com/?id=2802 (3)http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200305/baby-talk-hinders-learning
(4)http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/child-myths/200909/more-talking-about-baby-talk
(5)http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-9215/baby.htm

Amy Cann