How Illiteracy Shaped Seafaring Language Anyone who has enjoyed literature and films portraying life at sea may have quickly noticed that the ship environment is alive with unfamiliar jargon. Words such as “bosun” and “stays’l” might fill the air, but upon looking in a dictionary, no such words seem to exist! The reason for many of the warped pronunciations [...]
One of the often overlooked features of language is that it’s constantly evolving and adapting. A fascinating aspect of this evolution is the incorporation of "untranslatable" words from various languages into English. These loanwords fill lexical gaps, offering nuanced expressions previously lacking in English. There’s an important reason for these additions. At any given time, a language can adequately [...]
Controlled Natural Languages Seaspeak was created in 1985 to standardize how sailors and others on naval vessels communicated with each other. When a ship from an English-speaking location such as the United States would like to ask for assistance from a passing ship from, for instance, Brazil, the language barrier can quickly become a problem. Seaspeak allows these ships [...]
Cliches are the lynchpin of one particular linguistic maneuver that works in subtle but impactful ways. Thought termination, also called the thought-terminating cliche, can end conversations instantly and even keep people beholden to an ideology. How do these innocent phrases carry such an effect? It all comes down to how people relate to each other. What Is Thought Termination? [...]
The psychology of marketing has been a fascinating area of study for over a century. One crucial aspect of marketing psychology (particularly when looking at luxury brands) is the use of language. Detecting the unique vocabulary choices and tone of a luxury advertising campaign or sales pitch can be meticulous if you’re unfamiliar with these techniques. However, once you’ve been [...]
What Is Jargon? Jargon is a type of language microcosm; its own linguistic choices are tied directly to a particular group. Jargon does not need to reference complex issues (although it can). It must only encapsulate niche-specific ideas in words that most people outside this niche do not understand. The medical field, for instance, is ripe with jargon. Have [...]
When people think of sailing today, they often think of iconic franchises such as the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Jack Sparrow's irreverent and smarmy portrayal contributes to the image of sailors as little more than uneducated laborers, but their language belies something more: a specificity that can only come from carefully crafted jargon that keeps a ship functioning [...]
In-Groups and Out-Groups When people think of the pronouns us, them, and you, they tend to think of basic conversations: did you go to the store? Do you want to come with us? While it’s true that many uses of these words crop up in everyday conversation, they hold more power than you might think. Studies repeatedly show that [...]
Kitchen staff need to be able to communicate not just about who is doing what but also how the clientele are behaving. Because language adapts to its speakers’ needs, this has resulted in a vocabulary tailored toward obscuring meaning from those not familiar with the culinary environment. In this way, restaurant workers can convey valuable information without stirring up [...]
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 [...]
