What's in a Word?

Do you know what servo or katana means? How about doula or damask? A recent study into word recognition among English speakers has found that how recognisable a word is to you may depend on contextual factors, such as nationality or gender. In this week's podcast, we discuss words and language. Is there a difference between understanding a word and understanding how it is used? Does our recognition of certain words tell us something about where we fit into society? We discuss the Shy Tory effect, Urban Dictionary, and debate the differences between American and British English. Finally, we share a few words of our own to see how recognisable they are (or not). - Word prevalence norms for 62,000 English lemmas https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13428-018-1077-9#Tab1 - Words known better by males than by females and vice versa https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13428-018-1077-9/tables/2 - Words known much better in the US than in the UK and vice versa https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13428-018-1077-9/tables/1 - Urban Dictionary https://www.urbandictionary.com/ - Shy Tory Factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Tory_factor For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email podcast@alephinsights.com Image: Zemleanichnaya via Wikimedia Commons