Understanding the Babble Hypothesis While the concept of the babble hypothesis has been around for decades, it was not until the late 2010s and early 2020s that the concept truly gained traction for further study. The babble hypothesis posits that when a group is missing a leader, the person who speaks the most is also the most likely to fill [...]
The kitchen is a place of community and contentmentโso itโs no surprise that throughout history, itโs also been a haven for tomfoolery. While much of todayโs kitchen slang has arisen as a response to the stressful working conditions back of house and the potential problems guests cause in the front, some remnants of this comical side of the culinary landscape [...]
Social media intro: Have you ever watched a man sweep a woman off her feet, taking her completely by surprise as he proclaims that he โcanโt help himselfโ? Or perhaps youโve heard a girl tell her boyfriend that her life would be meaningless without him by her side. While these utterances can be signs of affection and love, they can [...]
If one thing is certain about language, itโs that it changes. As people develop new ways of expressing themselves, explaining phenomena, and crafting ideas, language must be malleable enough to adapt to these needs. Within this microcosm of change sits slangโoften informal linguistic niches that are primarily constrained to specific groups or contexts. Believe it or not, the kitchen is [...]
What does laughter sound like? If your answer is that it goes, โHahaha,โ then youโre very likely an English speaker (oh the horror). But why would that be the case? Doesnโt laughter sound the same across the world? Sure, in a certain way it does. Human beings always know when another person is laughing, regardless of their cultural or [...]
Writing systems, or scripts, are tools that humans developed to document and transmit ideas that came to us using language. As it turns out, the scripts that weโve developed are quite versatile and can be used to transcribe a variety of languages. Consider, conveniently, the example of this article that youโre reading. Itโs written in the Latin script, which [...]
When people think of cults, it is often common to wonder how the participants ended up buying into the message. From the outside, the flaws of the cult may seem obvious or downright unbelievable. However, there is an often overlooked reason these groups are so compelling: language. Cult leaders who know how to leverage the spoken and written word [...]
Languages come in all shapes and sizes around the worldโbut if thereโs one thing that languages share, itโs swearing. While the curse words (and phrases) of choice will vary based on geographic location, dialect, and more, world languages have a lot more in common than you might think when it comes to swearing. Swears originate with the universal experience [...]
For centuries, human beings have looked around at the creatures with whom we share this marvelous Earth and wondered if they can communicate like we do. Communication, after all, is one of the linchpins of the human project. None of what weโve achieved as a species would be possible without it. Weโve thus deployed significant resources to study how [...]
The influence of the Bible and Christianity in modern culture is difficult to overstate, even for non-religious people. From the beloved Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris to Cristo Redentor towering over Rio de Janeiro, the Western world is steeped in Christian imagery. It can be argued that none of these cultural monuments would have survived into the 21st century if [...]
