Jasmine’s English Language Blog

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24132190-100-how-neuroscience-is-exploding-the-myth-of-male-and-female-brains/ In this article, Gina Rippon discusses whether stereotypes men and women face are actually realistic and whether differences found in men and women’s behaviour are due to the brain or other parts of the body. She starts the article by stating common stereotypes faced by men and women. These include ‘men are good at map-reading’ and ‘women can multitask and do empathy and intuition better.’ She also goes on to say that most people believe in these stereotypes as it is not only their sexual characteristics that distinguish men and women, but also their brains, which influences their behaviour.  Many people agree with these stereotypes, including ex Google employee, James Damore who said that ‘women’s high level of empathy and lower interest in coding made them less suited to Google-type work.’ Rippon disagrees with this way of thinking, saying that ‘if you want to k...

https://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk/up-next?language=en#t-800903 This TED talk discusses people’s opinions of texting ( mainly the misconception that texting is destroying language ) and whether they are true or not. John McWhorter explains that texting is not writing - it’s speech which has been around for 80,000+ years (way before writing was conceived.) People used to talk like how they would write, and texting is basically writing like how we speak, which is colloquialism. McWhorter informs the audience that you can do things with writing that you cannot do with speaking and therefore it is natural to want to write how you speak. The ability to write how you speak ( i.e. texting ) has only been possible for humanity recently as previously we didn’t have the technology for it, but as we now have access to phones in our pockets that allow the other person to receive the message instantaneously, it has become much easier. When we write the way we sp...