Unit 1 Slang: Talking Cool
T EACHER:OK, let's get started . . . Today we're going to be looking at a really interesting phenomenon, slang. We'll be looking at where slang comes from, who us it and why. We all u it more often than you might think—every day of our lives, in fact. And we u it for a reason.
You know, most of us are fascinated with slang. We con-tinually hear new words and phras enter the language and replace old, and we e familiar words take on new meanings. We feel a need to keep in touch with the changes, to be aware of the latest street talk. Fact is, we love slang. But what is it exactly? What is slang? Anyone like to suggest a definition?
程序设计报告S TUDENT 1: Isn't it basically kind of casual talk? TEACHER: Can you say a bit more?
STUDENT 1: You know, the sort of words we u with friends ... in relaxed situations.
TEACHER: Good. You're pretty much there with your idea
of casual language. We can say that slang is language that's found only in the very informal speech of particular groups
of people. It can help to identify the communities, the groups
of people, who u it. And this brings me to the first important point of the lecture—why people u slang.
A lot of slang comes from not wanting to be understood by outsiders, people outside your circle. In other words, people exploit slang to give their group an identity, by making their language exclusive, or at least private. Through this private language, they can tea one another, enjoy shared experiences, and keep everyone el at a distance. All cultures contain groups or subcultures with different interests and priorities, and each group tries to establish a parate identity. They want people to know who they are, what they stand for—and slang helps to construct and cement that identity. We can say, then, that slang reflects the experiences, beliefs, and values of its speakers.
Now let's look more cloly at this relationship between slang and community, slang and identity. A nice example of this is, uh, student language, sometimes called "youth-speak." Young people u a lot of slang, and many of the words they u are ud by both xes, often metaphorically rather than literally. That is to say, the conventional meaning of the words change. For example, words that have traditionally had strong negative literal meanings that are ud as insults have taken on, uh, gentler, and in many cas even positive meanings in conversation. We'll look at some examples later. Now, if you ask college students why they u slang,
they'll tell you it's cool, and that's true in veral different ways. First, it's cool becau it's in style, in fashion. Using current slang shows that the speaker is in tune with the times . . . you know, that he or she knows what's in fashion and is pan of that fashion.
Second, slang is cool in the n of showing that the speaker is knowledgeable . . . the speaker is "in the know," the speaker knows when slang is acceptable. People don't u slang all the time, only in situations and with people who accept the u of slang—a point I'll return to later. Rearch tells us that although young people often deny that they u slang intentionally, in fact they clearly choo whether or not to u it depending on the situation they're in. As we've already said, slang's typically ud in informal rather than formal ttings, and this is certainly true among college students: They usually avoid using it in the class-room or a work environment, for example. Anyone like to suggest why?
S TUDENT 1:People won't understand them.
STUDENT 2: Yeah, so it's like a waste of time. TEACHER: Well, that may be true, but it's not the main reason. They don't u it simply becau it could make them look bad. And everyone hates looking bad, right?
So, to review, we've said that students u slang only in certain situations. But they also only u it with certain peo-ple, usually friends. When they u slang, they are showing that they share social and emotional experiences—so slang reinforces their relationships. But ... it also gives special meaning to what they say. For instance, to say "That party was the bomb" is more than merely saying it was a very good party. It shares an emotional experience that might otherwi take veral ntences to explain. In other words, it's a kind of. . . shorthand.
The third and final way slang's cool is that it's fun; it's very creative in the same way that poetry is, and it's often humorous. In other words, it's a form of play, a way of entertaining.
So . . . uh, let me repeat: I've said that slang's cool for three reasons: One, it shows the ur's fashionable and in tune with the times; two, it's a way of reinforcing relation-ships and communicating efficiently; and three, it's fun and entertaining. Got that?
孝敬父母All right then, let's now take a look at different kinds of slang, in particular three types of slang words: tho that are currently most ud, tho that linger year after year, and tho that have become unfashionable.
留学So . . . now what is the most ud slang? Well, rearch tells us that over the past few years, in the
number one posi-tion is "dope," which basically means very good, great,
excellent, attractive, or nice. So somebody might say, for example, that his friend's new motorbike is really dope; in other words, it's very good. Other words that feature in the top twenty include "chill out" (to calm down or relax), "the bomb" (meaning the best or most excellent), "whack" (which means bad, unfair, crazy, or foolish), and "dude" (meaning person—usually a man, actually). Any other examples? Yes? S TUDENT 1: Hella.小宝宝拉肚子
T EACHER:Meaning?
S TUDENT 1: Very, a lot.
T EACHER:OK, yep. Luis?
STUDENT 3: "Kick it," which means, like, to hang out, uh, relax, you know, sit around doing nothing.
TEACHER: Right. And it's interesting, isn't it, how most slang terms indicate approval or disapproval; they show what we feel positive or negative about. So, like "dope" and "the bomb," we have "sweet," "phat"—spelled P-H-A-T, not F-A-T—"cool," and "tight"—all meaning good, excellent, nice, or attractive.
And then you have words like "bad" which really mean good; so "That new CD is bad" actually means it's good! So you e, slang does strange things with language. Like I said earlier, it's certainly creative. As a matter of fact, some slang words have many different meanings, sometimes as many as nine or ten. For instance, the word "trip" or "tripping" has various meanings, but they all reflect the idea of unusual, strange, or extreme. When a word's ud a lot or has a num-ber of different meanings like this, we sometimes say it "works hard." The word "trip," then, is a word that works hard.
Uh . . . now, the cond type of slang consists of words that linger from decade to decade and never em to go out of fashion—and the words also work hard, that is, they have a lot of meanings. A great example is the word cool— forever popular, it ems! Other terms in this category are "nerd," "cheesy," "chick," "the man," "toasted," "wasted," "what's up," "blow away," and "gross." And once again, most of the show approval or disapproval.
And . . . now, finally, there are slang terms that come and go; they disappear almost as quickly as they appear. Examples include "gimme five," "how's it hanging," and "core." Words like the often disappear becau they're cloly associated with famous personalities who similarly come and go—they're popular, in the spotlight for a while, and then em almost to disappear. And when they dis
appear, the slang associated with them tends to disappear as well.
Now, today, public tolerance of slang is at an all-time high—just look at how widely it's ud in newspapers. But how do college teachers and academics view slang? Well, some persist with the idea that its u will degrade . . . uh, you might even say "pollute" academic discour. However, among themlves students tolerate words their teachers might consider taboo. Students are actually very good at code-switching; that is, they're very good at using different styles or codes of communication in different situations. Do you agree? Do you u slang in your essays or when you speak with a teacher?
悲愤
STUDENT 3: Personally I never u slang in essays. It just doesn't feel right. It's true, you know, most students know when to u slang, and when not to.
STUDENT 2: I agree. I sometimes u it with teachers, though; it just depends on who the teacher is.
TEACHER: Why, I imagine most people do the same. Here's something you may find surprising: A recent study on stu-dent conversation suggests that students don't in fact u slang that often but instead they choo more ordinary col-loquial vocabulary.
OK, to finish up, now let me say something about the history of slang. Many years ago, slang was cloly associ-ated with underground, criminal organizations, groups that deviate from mainstream society . . . uh . . . with notions of outcasts and socially unacceptable behaviors. A look back in time shows, for example, that in the venteenth century more than twenty words were ud to refer to vagrants, that is, to someone who has no home or job. Today, of cour, the associations are much weaker and slang's ud much more widely. As underground culture has become more mainstream, there's not the same need for the kind of cret code that slang offered. Today, most of us u slang and aren't ashamed of using it. It may still have negative connotations, but like it or not it's here to stay, and increasingly it's become the subject of rious academic study. And why not? As I've tried to show, it's a fascinating social as well as linguistic phenomenon. So, any questions? . . .
Unit 2 Murphy's Law
TEACHER: Good afternoon, everyone. More than 200 years ago, the Scottish poet Robert Burns said that "the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry." I'm sure we all have firsthand experience with what Burns means; no matter how carefully we plan a project and no matter how carefully we try to, uh, anticipate problems, we're likely to, uh encounter something unexpected and unwelcome that will throw our plan off cour.
Well, class today we'll be looking at how plans can go right and, uh, how we can make n of this. Are you all familiar with Murphy's Law? Well, according to Murphy's Law, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. So we'll be looking at everyday examples of Murphy's Law—uh, things like why toast falls buttered-side down, why it always ems like we choo slow lines at the supermarket, and why it is so difficult to win when we gamble.
As you may know, we now have many different versions of Murphy's Law, and today I'd like to look at the science behind three of them. I'll try to show you that some things
which have happened to you, and which you may have thought were simply bad luck, had nothing to do with luck at all. What I'm saying is that there are some very good sci-entific reasons for many of the things that happen to us, and we're not victims of bad luck as often as we might think. When we consider some basic science and probability theory, we can more clearly understand why some "bad" things happen the way they do.
All right. Let's begin with a very commonplace situation. Let's say you've just gotten up. You're still sleepy, and you make your way to the breakfast table. In your half-awake state, you accidentally hit your piece of toast, which has butter on one side. The toast begins to fall to the floor. Now what are t
10月7日是什么星座he chances that you'll be lucky and the toast will land buttered-side up? Well, the toast has only two sides, so most people think that the answer is fifty-fifty. Fifty percent. Right? Do you think that there's a 50 percent chance that the toast will land with the buttered-side up?
STUDENT 1: Well, this sounds like a trick question, but, uh, yeah. Logically, 50 percent sounds about right. TEACHER: Yes, 50 percent does em right, but, in this ca, Murphy's Law of Falling Toast says: "Toast which falls from a table will land buttered-side down." Actually, the probabil-ity of this happening is extremely high. It's clo to 100 per-cent. Now, here's why. When something like a piece of toast falls from a table, its behavior is not random. The rate of spin is controlled by the laws of physics. This is the problem. The rate of spin, that is, how fast the toast spins, is too low for the toast to make a complete revolution. It's too slow to turn completely around and hit the floor buttered-side up. The rate of spin is determined by the force of gravity. So in a very real n, the laws of physics, and specifically the rate of spin, make sure that our toast lands buttered-side down almost all the time. So the point is that simple probabilities—for example, the probability that toast has a fifty-fifty chance of landing buttered-side up—can be greatly affected by other more fundamental factors, such as the laws of physics. So, in this ca, we believe that we have bad luck becau we don't understand that the natural laws of physics are in effect. The toast should land buttered-side down. OK? Let's look at the next point.
Now we come to one of my most frustrating situations in life—the supermarket line. In this ca, Murphy's Law of Supermarket Lines says: "The line next to you will move faster than yours." Now everybody wants to get into the fastest line when they go to the supermarket, right? OK, so let's say that you're at your local supermarket and there are five lines, but each of the five lines looks pretty much equal in length. Now, of cour, you want to try to anticipate which one of the five lines will move the fastest. Well, this is where simple probability theory enters the picture. The chances that you have chon the fastest of the five lines is one divided by the number of lines, which is five in this ca. So mathematically, the formula is one divided by N where N is the total number of lines. So in this example, one divided by five gives us what? STUDENT 2: One divided by five is one-fifth or . . . uh . . . 20 percent.
TEACHER: Right. Twenty percent. There's only a 20 percent chance that we have chon the fastest of the five lines. Now even if we reduce that to three lines, our line and the lines on each side of us, the chances we've chon the fastest line are still only what?
S TUDENT 2: Uh, 33 percent. One out of three.
TEACHER: Sure. One divided by three is 33 percent, so it's not just your imagination that one line ne
ar you almost always moves faster than yours. Simple probability theory shows that the odds are against you. If there are very many lines, the chances that you'll choo the fastest one is quite low. So, you e, it has little to do with luck, but w e perceive that it does.
All right. Now let's look at a final situation that shows how we commonly misunderstand the laws of probability. We've come to Murphy's Law of Gambling that says simply: "You will lo." Now in the ca of the supermarket lines that we've just talked about, probability theory applied very nicely. And actually, as we go through life, most things are fairly predictable becau they follow the basic laws of probability. Weather is an example. Let's say that it's been raining for a week, and a friend says to you "I think it's going to be sunny tomorrow." Is that an unreasonable statement? Well, no. Clouds move, and they are of limited size, so if it's been raining for a week, it's likely that the rain and clouds will end soon. In other words, the next sunny day is more likely to occur after the venth day of rain than after the first, becau the storm front has what is called a life history. Now this is important, so let me explain that term. Events with a life history have changing probabilities of certain events occurring over time. For instance, uh, if you plant flower eds, you can predict with reasonable accuracy when the plants will come up, when they will bloom, and how long they will bloom. For instance, with some types of flowers, there's a 90 percent chance that they will come up fifteen to tw
enty days after the eds have been planted. In short, the growth of a flower follows a clear predictable pattern, and we call this pattern a life history. But this is the trick with many gambling games. The casino owners want us to believe that dice also have a life history and that we can therefore estimate the probability of events related to the dice. However, gambling devices like dice are different becau they don't have life histories. Now . . . what do you think that means?
STUDENT 1: There aren't any reliable patterns? Um, just becau I rolled a ven last time doesn't tell me anything about the next roll.
TEACHER: Right. You can't look at the past rolls of the dice and predict what the next roll will be. Now many people, especially gamblers, think that they can, but this is what's called the gambler's fallacy. The gambler's fallacy is expect-ing to roll a ven with a pair of dice becau a ven hasn't come up recently. So, in other words, there's a widespread belief among gamblers that dice have a life history. In the
real world, that's not a bad way to reason, but in a casino, it's the path to financial loss. Dice have no memory, no life history. Now you can predict that if you roll one dice many, many times, the number five will come up about 16 percent of the time. That's one divided by six. But that's not what we're co
ncerned with here. We're concerned with the next roll of the dice. As a result, the element of arbitrariness or randomness makes prediction of the next roll impossible. Statisticians who work with probability theory call the roll of a pair of dice a single-event probability, and many of the same statisticians believe that the probability of a single event can't even be computed mathematically. So, the same probability theory that works well with supermarket lines won't help you win a million dollars in a dice game in Las Vegas. It could, in fact, lead to a catastrophe!
So, to sum up, we have looked at three cas involving Murphy's Law and our perception of "bad luck." The first ca was the toast, right? Our toast lands buttered-side down far more often than we would predict becau the basic laws of physics have a strong effect on normal probabilities. The cond ca was the supermarket line, remember? Another line moves faster than ours becau the laws of probability are behaving normally, even though we might perceive them as behaving unfairly. And the third ca was the dice game. People lo at gambling games like dice becau the laws of "life history probability" simply don't apply in tho situa-tions, even though gamblers think they do.
So, as you can e, in some cas, Murphy's Law is not just some form of bad luck. There are some very real, scien-tific explanations for the events. OK, that's about it for today. For next class I'd like you to take a look at Chapter 7 and be ready to talk about the discussion questions on page 255. Se
e you then.
Unit 3 Types of Memory
TEACHER: Good morning everyone. Um . . . today, I have the pleasure of introducing you to the basics of what I think is one of the most fascinating topics in the field of psychology—memory. What is memory? How does memory work? The rearch in this field is fascinating and dates back to the late 1800s, so it's been going on for more than a century. I'll begin today by saying a few things about three types of memory that we all have, and then we'll look at how memory is measured.
All right. First of all, let's begin by looking at types of memory. One of the most common ways to classify memory is bad on time . . . bad on time and duration of u. So typically, memory is divided into three types: nsory memory, working memory (which is also referred to as short-term memory), and long-term memory. Again, that's nsory memory, working memory, and long-term memory.
Let's talk about nsory memory for a minute. Sensory memory holds information for only an instant, say, less than half a cond. This is just long enough to register an impression on one or more of our five ns—sight, hear-ing, touch, smell, or taste. Let me give you an example of a phenomenon c
oncerning visual nsory memory that I'm sure you've all experienced. Imagine that you're holding up a flashlight on a dark night. You start to move it in circles slowly, watching it carefully the whole time. Pretty soon you aren't just eing you can e a full circle of light! Of cour, it's actually just one point of light being moved around, but your memory of the visual nsation of the light fills in the rest of the circle. That's one example of nsory memory. So remember, you can hold something in your nsory memory for just a fraction of a cond, up to around half a cond, then it fades away.
Now if you want to keep the information for longer than a cond, you have to put it into your working memory. Working memory, the cond type of memory, allows us to hold on to things for as long as we think about them, that is, as long as we're paying attention to them. It's something like a kind of temporary storage place. Let me give you a simple math problem. Are you ready? Here goes ... 18 plus 44 plus 9 plus 19. . . I'll say that one more time. OK? 18 plus 44 plus 9 plus 19. ... All right? . . . Do you all have the answer? Maya? S TUDENT 1: Uh, I think it's 90. Yeah, 90.
T EACHER:Let's e . . . 18 plus 44 is 62 . .. plus 9 is 71 .. . plus 19 is 90. Ninety is the answer. Now, to figure out this problem, you had to u your working memory. As you did the problem, you had to continue holding the numbers in your memory until you got the final answer. If you stopped concentr
ating on the numbers, that is, you stopped saying them to yourlf, or stopped visualizing them, you would have forgotten them and then you wouldn't have been able to solve the problem. Do you e how that works?
Here's one more example of working memory involving reading. Look at the ntence: "Honey is the only natural food that is made without destroying any kind of life." It's written down in your textbook. Why, you may wonder, do we need working memory to understand such a simple n-tence? Well, the answer is becau working memory holds the first part of the ntence, "Honey is the only natural food ..." while our eyes move on to the last part, that is, "made without destroying any kind of life." Without our working memory, we would forget the first part of the ntence before we got to the end. So reading even short or simple passages would be impossible without our working memory.
OK, I think you can e how important working memory is, but our working memory is very limited, and it can only hold information temporarily. It usually lasts only one and one half to two conds and then it begins to fade. So if working memory were all we had, we would be very limited. Esntially, working memory mediates between how we experience the environment and our long-term memory. This brings us to the third type of memory that we'll talk about today, long-term memory.
Now, long-term memory is involved with information that's stored for considerable lengths of time. For example, do you remember the name of your best friend when you were ten years old? I bet you do, becau this information is certainly in your long-term memory. Actually, memory that's tested after about one minute behaves in a very simi-周笔畅身高
lar way to memory tested after a day, a week, or even years, so many scientists believe that any memories more than one minute old are part of our long-term memory. Interestingly, the memories em to change over time in the n that we tend to add information to them. In a n, our memo-ries become somewhat distorted. The reason behind the changes is that our memory is designed to keep or prerve meaning, not to keep impressions or images, but to keep meaning. For example, try to remember a conversation you had yesterday with a friend. Now if you're like most people, you can't remember the exact words that you or your friend said, but you can remember the ideas that you discusd. Your memories of the points that were most important to you will be the clearest. So the esntial feature of long-term memory is that it specializes in holding meaning. OK, are there any questions about that? Yes?
STUDENT 1: Yeah. Can you explain why we don't remember all of the details of our past conversations? TEACHER: So the question is, "Why do we forget?" Well, most experts believe that if
we remembered all of the details of our past experiences, our memory system would be filled with a lot of trivial information, a lot of trivial and generally uless information. Secondly, it is conceivable that we would find it extremely difficult to sift through such a . .. a mass of detailed information and find the really important information that we need. Um ... in other words, memory arches would proceed a lot more slowly.
S TUDENT 1: OK, I e. Thank you.
TEACHER: OK, let's move on to ways of measuring memory. Just as we distinguished three types of memory, there are three main ways of measuring how much a person remembers. The first of the methods is called recall. You u recall many times every day. Here's what I mean. . . . Take out a sheet of paper. . . . OK, now look at the word list in your text: drum, band, studio, and so on. . . . Read it silently to yourlf. . . . OK? . . . Have you looked at all of the words? . . . OK, you should be finished by now. Now, clo your book. Write down the words you saw, as many as you can, on your paper. . .. Go ahead.. .. OK, that's a simple recall test. Now, most of you probably remembered most of the words, but not all of them. Our memories, of cour, are not perfect, and of cour forgetting is natural.
The cond method of measuring memory is recognition. OK, for this you need another piece of paper, or just turn that one over. . . . All right. Number the page from one to eight. . . . Now look at the word list again. OK, now clo your book. I'm going to say eight words. You have to write "yes" or "no"—"yes" if the word I say was on the list, "no" if the word I say was not on the list. Ready? Here I go. 1. stu-dio. 2. guitar. 3. stage. 4. recorder. 5. wiring. 6. song 7. vocalist. 8. drum. . . . OK, everybody finished? The answers are 1. yes, 2. no, 3. yes, 4. no, 5. yes, 6. no, 7. yes, and 8. yes. . . . How did you do? Anyone get all eight correct? . . . Good! That's what we call a recognition test. In contrast to the recall test, recognition is more receptive and doesn't require you to produce anything. For this reason, recognition is a lot easier for most of us than recall. In other words, asking yourlf "Have I en this before?" is easier than remembering everything you saw.
Now the third basic method ud to measure memory is relearning. Let me give you an example of a relearning test. First, you try to memorize a list of words. Then you don't look at the list for a period of time, maybe a week. If you're like most people, you won't be able to remember all of the words. After a week, you then look at the list a cond time and try to relearn it. As you would guess, most people relearn information somewhat faster than they learn it the first time. By measuring the time people need to relearn information, we can calculate how much information they have stored in their long-term memories the first time.
So, let's stop there for today. Uh ... I hope that you'll put today's material in your long-term memory ... or you're going to have a hard time with the test. See you next week. Unit 4 Actions Speak Louder than Words
TEACHER: OK, class, OK . . . let's begin. What do we mean when we say that actions speak louder than words?
STUDENT 1: Uh . . . that means we believe people's actions more than we believe their words.
TEACHER: Yes, exactly right—and, uh, in a n, actions are more important than words. That's becau we usually judge speakers' intentions by the nonverbal signals they nd us. And that's what our subject today's all about, nonverbal communication—how we communicate through our actions— facial expressions, eye contact, tone of voice, uh, body movement, and so on. And if any of you doubt the importance of the things, you might like to consider a couple of statistics I've got here in front of me. Some communication specialists estimate we spend about 75 percent of our waking hours communicating. And, more to the point, words account for only, mm, 10 to 30 percent of that communication—the bulk's nonverbal. That's food for thought, uh?
Now although people clearly understand its importance, nonverbal communication—I'll call it N.V.C. f
or short—is actually a rather recent field of study and owes a lot to an American anthropologist named Raymond Birdwhistle— spelled B-I-R-D-W-H-I-S-T-L-E. Easy name to remember, right? Birdwhistle began studying nonverbal communication in the 1950s and, um ... one of his main ideas was that the meaning of nonverbal behavior depended on the context in which it Uh, it depends on the context. So, he looked at the whole context of nonverbal behavior— how and, uh, where certain types of nonverbal behavior appeared—and not just one particular behavior in isolation. Facial expressions, for example—frowns, smiles, raid eye-brows, and, uh, so on—we all u the to convey many dif-ferent meanings. But tho meanings are largely determined by the situations we're in and the relationships that we have with the people we're communicating with. So, the same
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