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“Why didn’t they understand me? I was as clear as I could
be.” Everyone has had this thought at one time or another.
Research from the fields of psychology and cognitive science can
provide concrete answers to these questions. In Failing to
Communicate, Dr. Roger Kreuz explores the answers to these
questions We are exposed to the dangers of miscommunication early
in life. As children, we play the Telephone Game and learn an
important lesson about the fragility of long communication chains.
And as adults, we are constantly on the lookout for
misunderstanding. People interrupt each other, on average, about
every ninety seconds in order to check their understanding. Despite
such vigilance, however, a great deal of what is said and written
is not understood as intended. Miscommunication has led to military
defeats, the loss of spacecraft, and even more tragically,
accidents that cost human lives. It plays a role in road rage and
social media feuds. It haunts the courtroom, the boardroom, and the
singles bar. Failing to Communicate includes dozens of such
examples and explains them in light of what researchers have
discovered about how communication works—and why it so often
fails. Research from psychology and cognitive science has revealed
a host of specific factors that contribute to misunderstanding.
Some of these have to do with how our minds make sense of what we
hear and read, while others are the result of cognitive, social,
and cultural factors. The very structure of a given language can be
problematic as well. In short, there is no one reason for
miscommunication: there are a host of underlying causes. Issues of
misunderstanding have only multiplied as new mediums for
communication have arisen. Emails, texts, and social media posts
are even more problematic because they are impoverished modes of
communication. Without facial cues, tone of voice, gestures, and
even the creative use of silence, our intentions in these text-only
mediums are even more likely to go awry. Failing to Communicate is
intended to appeal, from beginning to end, to the general reader
who wants to know more about why our attempts at communication fail
so often
How adult learners can draw upon skills and knowledge honed over a
lifetime to master a foreign language. Adults who want to learn a
foreign language are often discouraged because they believe they
cannot acquire a language as easily as children. Once they begin to
learn a language, adults may be further discouraged when they find
the methods used to teach children don't seem to work for them.
What is an adult language learner to do? In this book, Richard
Roberts and Roger Kreuz draw on insights from psychology and
cognitive science to show that adults can master a foreign language
if they bring to bear the skills and knowledge they have honed over
a lifetime. Adults shouldn't try to learn as children do; they
should learn like adults. Roberts and Kreuz report evidence that
adults can learn new languages even more easily than children.
Children appear to have only two advantages over adults in learning
a language: they acquire a native accent more easily, and they do
not suffer from self-defeating anxiety about learning a language.
Adults, on the other hand, have the greater advantages-gained from
experience-of an understanding of their own mental processes and
knowing how to use language to do things. Adults have an especially
advantageous grasp of pragmatics, the social use of language, and
Roberts and Kreuz show how to leverage this metalinguistic ability
in learning a new language. Learning a language takes effort. But
if adult learners apply the tools acquired over a lifetime, it can
be enjoyable and rewarding.
A biography of two troublesome words. Isn't it ironic? Or is it?
Never mind, I'm just being sarcastic (or am I?). Irony and sarcasm
are two of the most misused, misapplied, and misunderstood words in
our conversational lexicon. In this volume in the MIT Press
Essential Knowledge series, psycholinguist Roger Kreuz offers an
enlightening and concise overview of the life and times of these
two terms, mapping their evolution from Greek philosophy and Roman
rhetoric to modern literary criticism to emojis. Kreuz describes
eight different ways that irony has been used through the
centuries, proceeding from Socratic to dramatic to cosmic irony. He
explains that verbal irony-irony as it is traditionally
understood-refers to statements that mean something different
(frequently the opposite) of what is literally intended, and
defines sarcasm as a type of verbal irony. Kreuz outlines the
prerequisites for irony and sarcasm (one of which is a shared frame
of reference); clarifies what irony is not (coincidence, paradox,
satire) and what it can be (among other things, a socially
acceptable way to express hostility); recounts ways that people can
signal their ironic intentions; and considers the difficulties of
online irony. Finally, he wonders if, because irony refers to so
many different phenomena, people may gradually stop using the word,
with sarcasm taking over its verbal duties.
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