Sunday, 2 Mar 2008
Toolan, M. J. (1996). Total speech: an integrational linguistic approach to language, Post-contemporary interventions., 337. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press.
- Read Ch. 4: Further Principles of Integrational Linguistics, or, On Not Losing Sight of the Language User
Sunday - Friday, 2 - 7 Mar 2008
Aitchison, J. (2003). Linguistics, Teach yourself. (6th ed), 257. Chicago, Ill: McGraw-Hill.
- Ch. 1: what is linguistics?
- Ch. 2: what is language?
- Ch. 3: the study of language (Mon)
- Ch. 4: deciding where to begin (Mon)
- Ch. 5: sound patterns (Mon)
- Ch. 6: words and pieces of words (Tue)
- Ch. 7: sentence patterns (Tue)
- Ch. 8: meaning (Tue)
- Ch. 9: using language (Wed)
- Ch. 10: language and society (Wed)
- Ch. 11: language and mind (Wed)
- Ch. 12: language and style (Thu)
- Ch. 13: language change (Thu-Fri)
- Ch. 14: comparing languages (Fri)
- Ch. 15: attitudes towards change (Fri)
This book is great fun. Not great fun as in to read it, but as in to make fun of it and to explicitly see how strictly orthodox and, thus, simplistic (and wrong) textbooks and textbook-like texts are as they follow the party line.
Here’s a nice absurdity:
In fact, it is quite impossible for anybody to form sentences and understand them unless they realize that each one has an inaudible, invisible structure, which cannot be discovered by mechanical means such as counting (20).
All I can say to that is “Seriously, what the hell!” So a 5-year-old child learning their native (or even a 2nd) language must “realize” that each sentence “has an inaudible, invisible structure” before they can form or understand any sentence in their language? What kind of idiot makes a claim like that?
Human bigotry gets us this comparison:
Human language is innately guided. Human infants are not born speaking, but they know how to acquire any language to which they are exposed. They are drawn towards the noises coming out of human mouths, and they instinctively know how to analyze speech sounds. Bees present a parallel case: they are not born equipped with an inbuilt encyclopedia of flowers. Instead, they are pre-programmed to pay attention to important flower characteristics … (21-22, emphasis mine).
Humans know, bees are programmed. What a crock! This may be the opposite of anthropomorphizing, but it is just as bad.
Thursday, 6 Mar 2008
Solomon, P. (2002). Discovering information in context, Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 36(1), 229-264. Retrieved March 6, 2008, from http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aris.1440360106.
Friday, 7 Mar 2008
Ellis, D. (1992). The physical and cognitive paradigms in information retrieval research, Journal of Documentation, 48(1), 45-64.
Saturday, 8 Mar 2008
Sundin, O., & Johannisson, J. (2005). The instrumentality of information needs and relevance. In F. Crestani & I. Ruthven (Eds.), Context: Nature, Impact, and Role: 5th International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Sciences, CoLIS 2005, Glasgow, UK, June 4-8, 2005 ; Proceedings, Lecture notes in computer science., 3507 (p. 250). Berlin: Springer.