Thursday, April 22, 2021

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Need another opinion on these reading's text analysis

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 10:49 AM PDT

I'm needed to do a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)(meaning we need to look at these texts from these perspectives; power-relation, ethnical, racial, ideologically-laden, discrimination, social power abuse, etc) on these reading's text for two English Language Teaching (ELT) coursebooks, New Headway 4th & Passages 1.

I've written some analysis but I feel like I've just scratched the surface and it needs to be deeper than that. So, I wanted to ask others here to take a look at those texts and things I've written and help me in better refining it,

My writing:

The similarities between them are that the kids are away from their parents. In Headway's text it shows that he has no friends to rely on and learned to "fend for himself" and there was no mention of how he went on to be in the orphanage system that maybe he found some friends there that helped him. In passages 1's text the person is "hundreds of miles away" from his parents. So the needs provided by family are now being taken care of by his friends, like a "modern tribe", however, "not all the groups of friends can turn into tribes". Needs like "offering support without expectation of repayment; sheltering each other from gossip, stress, and attack; and looking out for everyone's overall well-being in life, work, and relationships." In Headway's, although he had no friends mentioned for him to rely on but later on an Australian family adopted him and took him to Australia and that became his tribe, a family that took care of his needs.

These tribes of non-family members though provides most of the needs, they cannot replace the original. The differences are In Headway's further on we learned that his older brother "were found in two pieces on a railway track", this part is a violent bit and might not be suitable for students, whereas in passage's its more positive and student-friendly. Another difference is that in Headway's we see a few direct quotations from the main character whereas in Passage's there isn't any. In Passage's we see that it is in USA and the family dynamics there is much different than the one in Headway's Indian family where the kids should work from the age of 5 though that's not the case in American societies.

First two images are from Headway and the other Passages 1.

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Anti-vax origins of "vaxxed"

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 10:18 AM PDT

The world* is talking about getting vaccinated, and saying "vaxxed" to do so. Here are the first five Google News results for "vaxxed":

  • "Free Joints for Vaxxed People in DC Today"

  • "Please Go Get Vaxxed So We Can Hang Out Again"

  • "The New York Post spent weeks fearmongering about vaccines. Now it's telling them to 'GET VAXXED'"

  • "Get vaxxed and ready"

  • "Vaxxed, waxed and ready to kick off Shot Girl Summer in L.A.? Here are 5 expert tips"

That last one hints at my initial curiosity: vaxxed, waxed – isn't it odd we put two xs in vaxxed? We don't for waxed or vexed or fixed, or any other word ending in -x – except, interestingly, another newly coined, highly politicized word, doxxed.

The subjective experience of living in 2021 reveals the popular preference for vaxxed over vaxed – see the headlines above, social media, etc. Google Trends shows similarly.

Google Ngrams starts to complicate and flesh out tale. Vaxed, the spelling of choice in the 1918 pandemic, predominates usage until 2016, when Vaxxed, capitalized, takes over. Interestingly, lower-case vaxxed makes a single appearance in Google's 1800-2019 English corpus.

The capitalized Vaxxed makes reference to 2016 pseudoscience documentary Vaxxed, about the imagined ties between vaccines and autism – the early core of the anti-vac movement.

Five years later, a world dependent on vaccines is talking about the doses in a flurry, and has appropriated the conspiracist orthography: vaxxed.

So what's going on? Are there non-anti-vax origins to the spelling? Is there a linguistic rationale for the double x? Given the double x's other appearance in recent and charged doxxed, are we observing a change in orthographical norms (perhaps toward duplicate letters, broadly, or a changed pronunciation/conceptualization of x) or is there simply a provocative appearance to xx, encouraging its use in provocative words?

*Particularly the portion of the world with patent-protected exclusive access to vaccines.

What is the proper tense for "listen" in this sentence?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 10:11 AM PDT

I am trying to describe the following:

I listen to a particular podcast. By this I mean that I regularly listen to the podcast when episodes come out.

There was a guest on a particular episode of that podcast. In this case I might say "I listened to the guest on the podcast". No worries yet.

But now, what is the correct tense here:

"There was a guest on a podcast I listen to". By this I mean that the guest was on a specific episode of a podcast I listen to regularly.

Is it right to say "listen", which is present tense, even though the rest of the sentence appears to be in past tense?

Do native english speakers know when to use going to and when to will?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 10:14 AM PDT

Recently, I have come across the meaning of the going to and will, previously I used to use them interchangeably.

I want to know, Do native speakers think before saying?

Subordinate clause with "would" + present perfect

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 09:08 AM PDT

Is the following sentence correct, in particular, is the subordinate clause correct?

You will visit places you would otherwise have never visited?

If it is wrong, how would you say it then?
If it is correct, what is the explanation, i.e., what grammar rules are involved here?

How do you tell a spelling mistake from a grammar mistake?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 09:45 AM PDT

How do you tell a spelling mistake from a grammar mistake? For example:

  1. Your the best.
  2. This iz the end.
  3. I likes music.
  4. She preatend to be asleep.

If we use the pronunciation criterion (if the sentence sounds correct then it has a spelling mistake, otherwise it has a grammar mistake), 1 and 2 have spelling mistakes, and 3 and 4 have grammar mistakes.

If we use the lexicon criterion (if the sentence uses a word that does not exist in the language, then it has a spelling mistake, otherwise it has a grammar mistake), 1 and 3 have grammar mistakes, and 2 and 4 have spelling mistakes.

What is the proper term for the abbreviation of a team name?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 08:48 AM PDT

I've been working with a group to make a custom website for displaying player and team information for an e-sports league, and in my table columns I've been using "Team Abbreviation" for the heading where a team's three-letter abbreviation is displayed, e.g. CHI or SFC.

Is there a proper term for this designation?

antonym for 'culture'?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 08:43 AM PDT

'Culture' is used to indicate something being normalized. For example: "rape culture"

Is there a word/phrase or anything to describe the opposite of this? Is there a word/phrase that I can put after a word to indicate that it's frowned upon, forbidden, condemned, the opposite of 'culture'?

None of the results from my googling have a punch to them or sound just as good.

The variants of asking a question

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 07:48 AM PDT

"Which topic did you write your article about?"

"About which topic did you write your article?"

"Which topic you wrote your article about?"

Which of these variants would be correct for writing? My take is that the first question is right in every situation, and the second and third are acceptable only in informal speech. I know that the rule says that there is the single correct construction of wh- questions, but I am wondering if there are any other ways of asking a question.

What's wrong with these two sentences?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 06:56 AM PDT

The following two sentences are from "10 Seconds Listening", written by Maaya Konishi for Japanese who learn English.

Saunas, once a place for middle-aged men, have shed that image and is now attracting the younger generations, including women.

The new wave of sauna enthusiasts are called saunners.

I think "is" in the first sentence shall be "are" and "are" in the second "is". What is more, the second sentence is funny. If I were her, I would say, "People call these new wave sauna enthusiasts saunners", accepting that people created a word, a saunner.

A to the B to the C: some kind of slang

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 06:12 AM PDT

I've often heard, especially in songs where slang is commonly used (pop, rap, etc.), people use a weird structure: something like "A to the B to the C...", where A, B, C, etc. are usually letters of the alphabet that make up some word. To me it sounds like the speaker is spelling out a word, for example "YOU" would be Y to the O to the U.

What is the real meaning of that structure? Where does it come from? Does it have anything to do powers and exponents (say, n to the third power), or is it related to something else?

Should 'Digital Age' be capitalized in a sentence?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 08:44 AM PDT

Should 'Digital Age' in a sentence be capitalized or spelt in lowercase?

For example:

Option 1: The changing dynamics of education in the Digital Age requires attention.

OR

Option 2: The changing dynamics of education in the digital age requires attention.

(Which is correct?)

What is a collective noun for holy things or objects?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 06:02 AM PDT

I've checked Word Hyppo, but I cant find a synonym for'holy things' that is quite what I want. I feel so sure that there's a word for such things collectively, and I'm looking for a particular one that sounds close to 'acoustics' because that's how I remember it. Any help here, please?

"Do you think it will take?" - how come it means to *succeed*?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 05:17 AM PDT

I'm watching Upload in prime-video. An Actress was doing something (putting someone depressed to bed in VR, hoping that it will make him wake up happy again; but it really doesn't matter), and another actress asked "Do you think it will take?", meaning to ask whether she thinks this will work, will help. Minute 22 if of any help. Both the Hebrew and French translations seem to understand it the same as I did ("Ça marchera, tu crois?", and "?את חושבת שזה יצליח" - again, if of any help), but I've never heard such translation for take.

I just looked up all the entries of take in Oxford dictionary (as well as in Urban), and none refered to even a similar meaning.

So: have you ever used take as to succeed at doing something, how common is that and could you kindly give an example for such usage?

Struggling to look at grammatical modifiers

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 06:47 AM PDT

I have a passion for English, and I am trying to improve my fluency day by day. Today, I am quite confused when my teacher, a non-native speaker of English, tells me that a sentence in my essay is grammatically wrong and does not make sense.

Here it is:

"It is believed that only excellent academic students should attend the university, (which is) to the extent that I beg to differ."

And is "which is" obliged to be there? Can someone help me to get the picture? I am hoping for any contribution from you guys. Thank you.

Which of the two sounds more natural: corestrict or correstrict?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 09:29 AM PDT

In mathematics, one uses the prefix co- to denote something that's dual to an already known object, for instance: limit -> colimit, basis -> cobasis, cycle -> cocycle, tangent -> cotagent, domain -> codomain.

On the other hand, words that arose by adding co- usually have a doubled 'r', for instance: responds -> correspond, relate -> correlate, radiation -> corradiation.

Similarly there's a notion of a restriction of a function, when one restricts its domain. This would naturally be called a corestriction/correstriction. Which of these two spellings sounds more natural and should be preferred? (if you're a native speaker, please state the country you're from)

Both spellings are used in the literature.

Corestriction:

Correstriction:

Is 'game and glee' an English idiom?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 02:48 AM PDT

I learned this phrase in my English class, as in the following sentence: They came back game and glee.

Which is supposed to mean that they came back happily. The thing is, I can't really find any other examples on the Internet. So I highly doubt if this is a legit idiom. Does anyone know anything about it? Your answers are highly appreciated.

Meaning of "in the blur of" [closed]

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 08:46 AM PDT

Example: > Don't lose who you are in the blur of the stars

My two guesses about the meaning of "in the blur of" in this context are:

  1. no uniqueness, these are stars but they are all the same and others want to be like them anyway

  2. hiding flaws, showing only what is good, which makes these stars seem perfect and others feel bad about themselves because of it.

How would you explain this?

Confusion about what the pronoun refers to

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 10:43 AM PDT

What does "it" refer to in the following sentence?

Humans instinctively seek structures that will shelter and enhance their way of life. It is the work of architects to create buildings that are not simply constructions but also offer inspiration and delight.

Why "ing" is use in the folowing sentence?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 04:10 AM PDT

" meaning basically can they prevent the other team from scoring "

Yet I'm sure this is not progressive present. So why do we put "ing" after "scor" ?

Phrase request: describing an open area

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 06:17 AM PDT

I am struggling to think of a phrase to describe an open area. I initially thought of the phrase 'as far as one's eyes could see' or 'vast swathe of land', but it didn't really work in my ABCB rhyming scheme. Please provide a suggestion for how I could phrase this. This is what I have written:

All it took was a few short weeks,

Before the forest was all but debris.

From corner to corner, edge to edge,

There was not a plant you could see.

Is there a word for the process of pairing existing nonsense words with concepts in need of a name?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 02:15 AM PDT

This Perry Bible Fellowship comic coined the word "weeaboo." At the same time, there was a phenomenon of non-Japanese people becoming obsessed with Japanese culture, and at some point this concept was given the name. According to urbandictionary

A word filter for the image board 4chan.org that replaces the word wapanese. Originates arbitrarily from a Perry Bible Fellowship comic strip wherein a man was paddled by a crowd chanting "Weeaboo! Weeaboo!"

Are there any other examples of this?
And does this phenomenon have a name? ("Neologism" comes close, but it's not quite the same.)

Other examples include "blivet," which I've heard defined as "10 pounds of shit in a 5-pound sack," and Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky"'s "galumphing" and "chortle," two things which were previously unnamed. (Although, as Jim points out below, Carroll both coined the words and attached them to a concept needing a name, which isn't the same as someone else pairing a nonsense word with an as-yet-unnamed concept.)

Can you omit the "it"

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 08:31 AM PDT

Can the "it" be omitted in this sentence?

It looks like quite the mess.

Looks like quite the mess.

"Each/every 5 ml contains..." - which is correct?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 05:10 AM PDT

Many drug leaflets for liquid dosage forms state how much of the active ingredient is found in 5 ml of the solution. Would it be correct to state it as "Each 5 ml of the solution contains..." or "Every 5 ml of the solution contain..."?

Here's an example from a British leaflet, and here's one from an American leaflet. Both use "each", but is it correct to refer to a quantity of 5 ml as a single unit?

What adverb can I use to describe a slap that intends to get someone's attention?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 10:10 AM PDT

"Listen to me," Samuel says, swatting the side of Cal's face '_____'.

It's not a playful or deliberately hurtful slap. It's somewhere in the middle - irritated. Considering the character's personalities, it's rather a gentle gesture for them but shocking enough to say 'get ahold of yourself!'

If not an adverb, how would you word this?

How do I use a question as an embedded quotation when it also deserves a comma?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 08:42 AM PDT

  • So I asked "Shall I do the thing?" and he responded with "Yes."

In that sentence, should the ? exist? It kind of feels like it should be a comma, given its place in the sentence. Thing is, if I take away the comma, it loses its identity as a question.

What is the correct way to solve this?

First Lover in the Nighttime? a little bit of bacon?

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 08:38 AM PDT

This is in the drama Psych. I am an English learner and I can't understand why the man suddenly says this.

Juliet and Shawn are couple and they are a kind of policeman. I wonder the bold part. It looks like a joke but I am really confused why Shawn say like that. Please help me.

Juliet: So, why are you so on fire to help Lassiter with this case?

Shawn: It's not just Lassie, Jules.

Shawn: It's "Rufus Sewell". It's "Sophie B. Hawkins". I mean, they're all born in sixty-seven.

Juliet: (sighs) I love me some Sophie "B".

Shawn: Damn, I wish I was your lover.

Juliet: You are.

Shawn: (gasps) Well, then I guess I must be doing this…

Shawn: (cont'd)… for us. Because you'll be bumped up to Head Detective when Lassie gets promoted to Chief. Naturally, I'll get a title bump as well. Something like, uh, First Lover in the Nighttime. Hmm? Maybe a little bit of bacon?

Juliet: You don't know this for sure.

Shawn: Okay, I suppose I don't. We'll workshop the title. But it's moot. Because you are gonna be in and we're gonna get a hot tub. And I'm gonna buy you a dolphin…

Meaning of the word "FOR" used at the beginning of a sentence

Posted: 22 Apr 2021 05:51 AM PDT

I have encountered the word "for" many times. But, even if I use the dictionary, I can not understand the meaning of this word used at the beginning of a sentence.

Here is an example: It would be an excellent match. For he was rich and she was handsome.

Does it always mean because?

Thank you.

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