Footnote

Footnote is an Israeli film that was nominated for a 2012 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. I was finally able to watch it yesterday and even though I had a feeling ahead of time that I would enjoy it, I was surprised about how much I enjoyed it and for what reasons.

Here is the Netflix summary of the film:

Long-buried tensions erupt in this witty drama, which follows the strained relationship between a reserved Talmudic scholar and his ambitious son -- both professors at the same university -- when the father wins a prestigious award the son covets.

I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone so I won't go into many details other than to say that authorship analysis and word frequency analysis play more of a role in the plot than I would have initially expected.

As I am currently studying investigatory and evidential linguistics for a forensic linguistics MS course at Aston University, this film fit right in with my studies in a most entertaining way. Which is not to say that linguistics is the sole focus of the film.

The film is incredibly well done and should appeal to anyone who is interested in academia, family relationship issues, witty humor, and creative cinematography. I could go on and on...but, just watch the movie.

Hot Coffee and Book Reviews with George Lakoff

Last week I saw the movie “Hot Coffee” and was pleasantly surprised that George Lakoff made a couple of appearances. It was a very entertaining, informative and thought-provoking documentary with plenty of discussion about the role language plays in the legal system and in political advertising campaigns. It rates ʌ ʌ in my book (2 carets up).

Here is a summary from IMDb:

Most people think they know the "McDonald's coffee case," but what they don't know is that corporations have spent millions distorting the case to promote tort reform. HOT COFFEE reveals how big business, aided by the media, brewed a dangerous concoction of manipulation and lies to protect corporate interests. By following four people whose lives were devastated by the attacks on our courts, the film challenges the assumptions Americans hold about "jackpot justice."

For those unfamiliar with George Lakoff, he is a well-known Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He has taught there since 1972 and previously taught at Harvard (1965-69) and the University of Michigan (1969-1972). In linguistics, he is most associated with his work on metaphor and human thinking.

Two of Lakoff's academic books that I have read and highly recommend (2 carets up each) are: "Metaphors We Live By" written with Mark Johnson and "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things".

Here are the summaries from George Lakoff's website:

METAPHORS WE LIVE BY (1984)
People use metaphors every time they speak. Some of those metaphors are literary – devices for making thoughts more vivid or entertaining. But most are much more basic than that – they’re “metaphors we live by”, metaphors we use without even realizing we’re using them. In this book, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson suggest that these basic metaphors not only affect the way we communicate ideas, but actually structure our perceptions and understandings from the beginning. Bringing together the perspectives of linguistics and philosophy, Lakoff and Johnson offer an intriguing and surprising guide to some of the most common metaphors and what they can tell us about the human mind.

WOMEN, FIRE, AND DANGEROUS THINGS (1990)
Focusing on studies of how humans categorize objects and ideas, this classic cognitive science book examines the new understanding of human thought which proposes that human reason is imaginative, metaphorical, and intrinsically linked with the human body.

Make No Bones About Linguistics

I just finished watching the May 5 Bones episode titled "The Signs in the Silence" and I was thrilled to see the science of linguistics called upon to help solve a crime (specifically, dialect analysis) (more specifically, sign language dialect analysis).

Bones is one of the better shows on network television (save for a few annoying characters and silly side-stories) and this episode, in particular, is worth the watch. After all, it probably does not occur to many people that sign languages have dialects too.

This link will take you to all of the episodes that are currently available for online viewing.