Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Up and Down Metaphor in Speech Sound

From Echoes, the newsletter of the Acoustical Society of America:
Language is largely symbolic, but how we say something can be as important as what we say, according to an article in the 21 July issue of Science Now Daily News. Twenty four college students were asked to describe a dot moving across a screen. The students were told to use one of two sentences: “It is going up” or “It is going down.” The team found that when students described the dots going up, the pitch of their voice was, on average, 6 hertz higher than that of those describing the dot going down. The same thing happened when another 24 students read the sentences from a computer screen, indicating people change the sound of their voice according to directional information contained within words. Listeners readily caught these cues.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Hypocrisy on my Mind

For reasons which won't appear here, I have thoughts about hypocrisy rolling around in my head, and recent reviews of Mel Gibson's latest bloodbath, Apocalypto, have struck a resonant chord. One might wonder if he intends to draw some kind of parallel between the brutal, gore-loving Mayan crowds and our modern, educated, but still unenlightened culture. Indeed, Mark Stephenson of the Associated Press tells us:

Mauricio Amuy, a non-Maya actor who participated in the filming of "Apocalypto," says the production staff discussed the theory on the set. "We know the Bible talks about prophecies, and that the Mayas spoke of a change of energy on Dec. 22, 2012, and it (the movie) is somewhat focused on that," Amuy said. "People should perhaps take that theory and reflect, and not do these things that are destroying humanity."
How illuminating, to me, that Gibson chooses to offer this high-minded lesson by creating a relentless gore-fest perfectly suited to the entertainment of today's youngsters, raised on Grand Theft Auto and Halo. And how convenient that he stands to make boodles of cash from the movie, if box-office returns from his previous effort, The Passion of Christ can serve as any predictor here. Sounds like hypocrisy to me.

I also use the word hypocrisy to describe the behavior of a person who makes an adamant statement on one side of an issue while taking personal advantage of the other side of the issue. A person who, for example, says in private he will vote one way on an issue that I care about and then publicly votes the other way. This hypocrite has not only lied to me (or "changed his mind") about his intention, he has failed to set an example for others who look to him for leadership.

My abstraction, as the bible tells us to say....