Archive for the ‘Language’ Category
The Seven Day Itch
Holy shit cow! I’ve made it seven whole days swear-free! For those of you following along at home, that means I am 50% of the way to reaching my goal of not swearing in front of my wife or son for 2 weeks straight (cue Chris Rock saying, “Whaddya want, a cookie? You ain’t supPOSED to cuss in front of your wife and kids!”).
If you’re not sure what on Earth this has to do with education, technology, or psychology (as stated in the red bar above), go here for the backstory. I swear promise I’m trying to maintain focus and not let this become another e/n blog (this isn’t LiveJournal, after all).
A: Shit.
Q: What did my two-year-old say when one of his magnetic toys fell off the fridge and broke?
I vehemently disagree with those who wish to disarm Taylor and others of their F-bombs (it’s the Internet, people; get a grip), but if I can’t censor myself appropriately around my son, he’ll soon be picking up more than just his broken toys.
Status update: After lots of false starts (hey, the holidays were stressful), I’m three consecutive days “clean”. Oh, and my son? I sat him down and we talked about how when we get frustrated, we should say “Oh, pants!” (first silly-sounding word that came to mind) We practiced it a few times, and he got the giggles so hard he couldn’t say anything for a while. I’ll keep it up with him; I hope it takes like that other word did.
My Behavior Management Plan
A major professional interest of mine is behavior management and support. As a school psychologist (and possible future behavior analyst), I’ll be called upon to figure out why kids engage in certain behaviors and devise behavior management plans for them.
I’m really looking forward to honing my chops in a professional capacity (read: get paid for it), but I’ve already gotten some informal practice in this arena as a teacher and parent. But, at the risk of sounding like a cheesy movie tagline, I’m about to take on my toughest client: myself.
This will shock and amaze people who know me only in a professional capacity, but off the clock, I swear like a sailor. I’m talking straight up blue streak, especially when I drink, drive, and/or get frustrated (but never all three at once; mercy!). Part of me feels like I’m getting too old for this, but a bigger part of me feels awful for my wife, who hates it. My cursing sets her on edge and aggravates her like nothing else I do (and I give her plenty of reasons to be aggravated). I’ve tried to stop, but I give in to old habits too easily. On top of that, my son is getting older, and his vocabulary is growing, mostly via mimicry. I’ve also got a little girl on the way, and neither of them need to hear their dad talking like that. This has got to stop.
I’m trying a real basic token economy approach to this. For each full day (5:30 am – whenever I pass out) I go without cursing, I get to X off a day on our calendar. The deal I struck with my wife (and myself) is this: I hit two straight curseless weeks, I get a major reinforcer, upon which we’ve agreed in advance. I won’t share what that is, but suffice to say it’s something I want badly enough to go two full weeks without swearing (internal monologue notwithstanding). I’m at the end of my first full day; 14 days takes me right up to 2008’s doorstep.
If this seems goofy or stupid to you (really, how hard is it to speak civilly?), think about that one bad habit you have that you just can’t kick: you eat too much junk food and put on too much weight. You procrastinate with your grading. You bite someone else’s your toenails. I enjoy exercise, I’ve been much better about my grading this year, but I can not get this vulgar, profane monkey off my back. I’ve asked teachers to engage in this style of behavior management with students in the past; let me now put my money where my dirty little mouth is and see how well it works for me.
Psychologist, heal thyself.
An English Lesson for the TV Generation
I watched waaaay too much TV as a kid. As such, I’ve not only soaked up mental gigabytes of useless pop culture trivia, but also the every-5-minutes advertising that is pervasive in American television broadcasting.
My first recollection of a TV commercial that really impacted me was for Murphy’s Oil Soap, from 1979 or 1980 (age 2-3). It wasn’t so much the commercial as it was the jingle and the copy shot, “The work is finished and the finish is fine.” Since then, I’ve filed away massive amounts of similar lines. Anyone else remember:
- You deserve a break today!
- Just do it
- Where’s the beef?
- The choice of a new generation
- Food, folks, and fun
- Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is
- I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!
- Calgon, take me away
- What would you do for a Klondike bar?
- He-Man, He-Man, He-Man (jeez, who got paid to come up with that one?)
The Consumerist brought these all flooding back to my conscious mind Monday when they linked to an article by Nick Padmore at A List Apart in which he analyzes the 115 best advertising slogans and catchphrases of the last century (courtesy of The Advertising Hall of Fame).
Anyone interested in the use of language should read Padmore’s article in full, but Consumerist gives us the Cliff’s Notes version with a few interesting take-away notes:
Some of his findings:
- only 50% of the top copy shots mention a brand
- 17% of copy shots are “lexically deviant”—as Padmore puts it, “it’s a weird spelling almost 2wice in every ten whirds”
- 84% of the copy shots contain some sort of rhetorical device, although Padmore thinks this is more than likely simply a reflection of how we naturally speak and write
He also comes up with a theory of how to produce a great copy shot, writing that “nobody else (as far as I know), has attempted to come up with a linguistically determined Greatest Copy Shot, so this is at least a start.”
Nick’s theory is as follows:
All great copy shots should:
1. Be five words in length.
2. Not mention the brand name.
3. Be declarative.
4. Be grammatically complete.
5. Be otherwise standard.
6. Contain alliteration, metaphor, or rhyme.
Read his complete article to see how he narrows the field from 115 to 19 with the first criterion, and then proceeds through the list to arrive at the greatest copy shot ever written.
Lots of potential classroom applications here – perhaps a multidisciplinary lesson in math and English that examines the success rate of slogans with certain grammatic properties or rhetorical devices? What percentage of the top 50 use onomatopoeia? Create a pie chart showing prevalence of alliteration, metaphor, simile, etc.? More advanced classes might just be given the top 10 (20, 25, 50, etc.) and be asked to conduct their own analysis and come to their own conclusions about the impact of linguistic choices on success.
From a media literacy standpoint, a discussion of why I still vividly remember a 28-year-old commercial jingle could lead into a larger discussion on the pervasiveness of advertising and its effects.
Maybe watching all that TV was good for something after all (“Five more minutes, mom! It’s professional development, I swear!”).