The role of linguistic components of brand names in advertising efficiency

One of the most important factors in product marketing is the brand name. Success is largely dependent on the ability of the brand name to convey a positive image of the product and to raise customer awareness. The brand name is what customers encounter the most frequently in advertisements – it must be created to leave an impression in prospective buyers, to make them associate the name with certain desirable qualities peculiar to certain products. It must be distinctive in order to remain in the customers’ memory among the many other brands in the global market. This research examines how language components aid memorability and association to certain product characteristics, and whether even the smallest components of language, the sounds play a significant role in creating meaningfulness within a brand name.

Klink, R. R. (2000, February). Creating Brand Names with Meaning: The Use of Sound Symbolism. Marketing Letters, 11(1), 5-20. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40216555

Klink conducted two interrelated studies in order to detect the effect of sound symbolism on the meaningfulness of brand names. In Study 1, 31 hypotheses were tested: 13 hypotheses in front vs. back vowel sounds, 6 in stops vs. fricatives, 6 in voices vs. voiceless stops, and 6 in voices vs. voiceless fricatives – the study focused on synesthetic sound symbolism and tried to determine whether sounds in brand names are accompanied by meaning. Study 2 explored whether brand names are able to transmit information on particular products in the presence of related marketing communications.

Klink used only visual cues for his research in order to exclude natural deviations in pronunciation, avoid bias through alteration of intonation or tone, and to save time and thus enable the testing of more word-pairs. Study 1 concluded that brand names containing front vowels, fricatives, voiceless stops and voiceless fricatives generally indicated a smaller, lighter, faster, prettier and more feminine product as opposed to their counterparts. Vowels provided stronger evidence for sound symbolism than consonants. Klink notes that although the use of semantic appositeness is the most favourable practice in brand naming, sound symbolism may prove more efficient in global marketing, as the perception of sounds is relatively a general, unified phenomenon, while semantics is more dependent on a particular language, and therefore is less international.

Lowrey, T. M., Shrum, L. J., & Dubitsky, T. M. (2003). The Relation between Brand-Name Linguistic Characteristics and Brand-Name Memory. Journal of Advertising, 32(3), 7-17. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4622164

This study aims to find out whether certain linguistic factors in certain brand names foster the ability of customers to recall and recognize those brands. 480 brand names were examined in terms of 23 linguistic properties, including properties without any prior research able to show their effect on memory. Interaction between each linguistic feature and brand name familiarity, and the relation of properties to meaningfulness or distinctiveness were also taken into consideration.

The research found that 5 variables had evincible effect on brand-name memory. In case of 4 variables (unusual spellings, semantic appositeness, initial plosives, paranomasia) the connection of the variables and brand-name memory were stronger for less familiar brands. The effect of the fifth one, blending, was proved to be more powerful for more familiar brand names, however, the effect in both familiarity conditions was negative, and therefore blending inhibits the recognition of a brand name.

Tests were targeted at female consumers between the ages 18-65 in the United States. In my opinion using solely women has a restrictive effect on findings – the researchers themselves acknowledge this. Moreover, I also find that the examined age group is too broad – age determines the ability to recall certain things, and this effect could have been taken into consideration by the research group. Apart from these, they put great efforts into the research; I particularly liked the part about coding process, which was thoroughly and carefully executed. The researchers have successfully deepened earlier studies, and they have discovered the negative effect of blending on brand-name memory.

Keller, K. L., Heckler, S. E., & Houston, M. J. (1998, January). The Effects of Brand Name Suggestiveness on Advertising Recall. Journal of Marketing, 62(1), 48-57. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1251802

The study conducted by Keller et al. focuses on the suggestive ability of brand names. They examined whether inherently meaningful brands had more efficiency at initial product positioning as opposed to nonsuggestive brand names, and whether they could maintain their strong effect on customer recall even after brand repositioning. Emphasis was put on the importance of product context: a brand name might evoke different meanings when applied to different kinds of products. Two hypotheses were formed: (1) suggestive brand names have a better performance in customer recall if their advertised benefits are consistent with meaning, (2) nonsuggestive brand names reach higher recall of benefit claims that are unrelated to meaning during subsequent advertising (after brand repositioning).

The research has found that suggestive brand names are more efficient indeed in customer recall when semantic associations with certain related benefits are required. However, both suggestive and nonsuggestive brand names were perceived as equally effective cues to unrelated benefits when there had been no prior advertising. Suggestive brand names were more likely to evoke the original benefit claim after brand repositioning, which provided support for both hypotheses. Nonsuggestive brand names provided a better performance in customer recall after brand repositioning as opposed to suggestive names. The authors argue that customers either find it difficult to accept new positioning or they fail to remember new benefit claims if the brand name continues to remind them of original benefit claims – a careful research must be conducted by marketers in order to detect the backwash of brand repositioning.

Using pop songs in Second Language Acquisition

The theory of establishing SLA via the same pattern as First Language Acquisition is one of the oldest concerns of applied linguistics. One of the possible solutions is learning via pop songs (PS), which is a method originating in Stephen D. Krashen’s theory, that distinguishes subconscious LA from Second Language Learning. According to Krashen, the former is responsible for one’s fluency in SL, while the latter serves as monitor or editor in speech producing.

Murphey observes different theories of subconscious language acquisitions, and based on his findings, he describes the potential of language acquisition via PS. He also emphasizes the role of the instructor in the process, as, just like in the case of Krashen’s theory, for making the Language Acquisition Device to work, one has to provide sufficient and appropriate input.

Lastly, Salcedo refines the ideas of Krashen and Murphy, providing examples of how the music and lyrics of pop songs have a beneficial effect on LA. She also establishes an interesting comparison between the actions that PS provoke in the learners (such as involuntary humming and repeating phrases) and the children’s behavior during the acquirement of their first language. Furthermore, she reports about an experiment that compares the effectiveness of text recall between a group that learned it in spoken form, and another one that learned it through PS.      

The aim of the research is to establish a connection between the involuntary LA and learning via PS, and, by introducing theories such as the (music) din and the SSIMH (song-stuck-in-my-head) phenomenon, find out how language learners can benefit from the latter.

Krashen, S. (1983). The Din in the Head. Input, and the Language Acquisition Device. Foreign Annals, 16, 41-44.

Krashen cites his own Second Language Acquisition Theory which distinguishes subconscious language acquisition from conscious learning. This is the  introduces the theory of the “din”, a phenomenon familiar to many language acquirers, an involuntary rehearsal of second language words, sounds and phrases due to the stimulation of the Language Acquisition Device. According to his “Din Hypothesis”, to experience the din, that is to make acquisition possible, one has to understand and use structures that one didn’t use before, for example, when i is the current stage of development and one proceeds to stage i + 1 via comprehensible input (Input Hypothesis).

According to Krashen, the “din” has two corollaries, first, a sufficient amount of comprehensible input, and second, significant quantities of the acquirer’s i + 1. Current second language acquisition theory as well as case history reports of the “din” are consistent with the hypothesis that the din in the head is a result of stimulation of the language acquisition device and is “set off” when the acquirer receives significant amounts of comprehensible input. The next two articles will show how the carefully chosen PS material can facilitate the din and help acquisition.

Murphey, T. (1990). The song stuck in my head phenomenon: a melodic din in the LAD?. System, 18(1), 53-64.

Murphey refines the idea of the din by describing its similarity to different ideas of early language acquisition. He cites two examples to describe “the language in the crib”, the involuntary language acquisition PS helps to imitate. One of them is Piaget’s egocentric language (which is a child’s involuntary repetition of different speech constituents), which is described as an external manifestation of the din. Vygotsky’s inner speech is a development of the former idea, stating that egocentric language does not disappear at older age, just becoming a kind of verbal thinking. The external repetition becomes an internal vocalization, which helps mediating between thought and speech production.

He introduces the SSIMH-phenomenon (song-stuck-in-my-head), which borrows qualities from all the theories discussed above and acts as kind of a synthesis between them. The musical qualities, that is, the rhythm and the melody help songs to be memorized easily, why the relatively simple language structures and slow pace (in average, a song has half the pace of everyday speech) provides the comprehensible and appropriate input for the din to work. Murphey describes the possibilities of involuntarily acquiring previously unused structures and words, suggesting that these are “tricking” the LAD into operation.

It is the language instructor’s responsibility that the songs are carefully chosen, to provide the adequate input to listeners. Furthermore, Murphey emphasizes that although Krashen predicted that the din takes at least one hour to start up, a song may drastically reduce this time. The simplicity, the affective and dialogic features and the vagueness of pop lyrics make them easily internalized by listeners, which affords great possibilities in pedagogy.

Salcedo, C. S. (2010). The effects of songs in the foreign language classroom on text recall, delayed text recall and involuntary mental rehearsal. Journal of College Teaching & Learning, 7(6), 19-30.

Salcedo investigates several aspects of music’s possibilities in language acquisition, but also she delivers the most convincing experiment concerning the topic. She enumerates certain relevant aspects that can ameliorates LA as well. Among them are the listening to classical music, which makes the brain receptive to inputs and thus reduces learning time, the simplicity of pop songs that helps it to retain and recall information and the promotion of involuntarily rehearsal and mental processing of underlying language principles.

She elaborates further on Krashen and Murphey’s theories by creating the term of “musical din”. She also emphasizes the possible interactions that follow the SSIMH, for example humming and extensive repetition, which again is similar to how children acquire language.

Finally, she reports about an experiment that compares recall of a text learned in spoken form with the same text learned through song and the occurrence of the din under such circumstances. Her focus group consisted of 94 persons, 33 male and 61 female students with ages ranging from 17 to 41, participating in beginner level college Spanish classes. The results varied in terms of text recall and it seemed that the choice of songs affects the outcome to a great extent, as the musical class produced significantly better results for 2 out of the 3 songs.

In terms of dim occurrence, there was a significant difference. In the musical class, two third of the students reported experiencing the din, while only one third of the text class reported the same. Participants of the music class also reported on the SSIMH-phenomenon.

The study concluded with the positive effects that the use of PS in the classroom. It proved to be especially useful in promoting the din, the involuntary LA by providing comprehensible and adequately challenging input, nourishing the actions that helps memorizing speech constituents and speeding up the start of the LAD.   

Analysis of Új Ember

by Horváth Gyula

This analysis will be concerned with the newspaper Új Ember, a weekly catholic magazine. I frequently encounter it at the entrance of the church, on a table dedicated to newspapers and postcards, where it can be bought for 195 HUF. One can also subscribe to it, and get the paper and a detailed television programme, for 15,400 HUF for a year, 7,800 HUF for half a year, and 3,900 HUF for quarter of a year. Its founder is not known to me, but from what I gathered, it was founded by the Catholic Church, its first issue being published on August 9th, 1945. It was banned for half a year after the suppression of the 1956 Revolution. It is distributed to about 6,000 temples and 3,000 vicarages. It and its television programme, Mértékadó, are the only printed, weekly Catholic newspapers in Hungary.

The title of this newspaper is an obvious allusion to The Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians, 4.24, “öltsétek magatokra az új embert, aki az Isten szerint igazságosságban és az igazság szentségében alkotott teremtmény.” Or in English, “And that ye put on the new man, which after god is created in righteousness and true holiness” (King James Bible). It is an appropriate title for a Catholic newspaper, and implies that one will get closer to God and be a better catholic if they read it.

The front page is moderately colourful. Around three fifths of it is taken up by coloured pictures, with the picture of the lead story, distinguished by the yellow colour of its title, taking up the top half of the page. It shows the topic of the article, the symbols of the World Youth Day (WYD); the WYD Cross, also called the Jubilee or Pilgrim Cross, and the WYD Icon, an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which were gifted to the youth of the world by Pope John Paul II. Both symbols came to Budapest that week, and were brought to the Országúti Templom, where the picture was taken during the mass celebrating the fact. The bottom half has two more articles, each with an image, one short and another which is continued on page 4. To the side is a yellow box which lists three more articles, all of which talk about Catholics who made some kind of sacrifice; one about a martyr, one about the Catholics who helped rescue Jews during the holocaust, and one about a Pakistani woman who is facing possible execution (her case for being a Catholic before the high court). The masthead of the paper looks like it has been written with a brush, and the subtitle says, “Magyarország katolikus hetilapja” (Hungary's Catholic weekly), but no other indication is given on what the newspaper's topic is.

The paper has 16 pages, including front and back page, which are also used for articles. The language of the articles is relatively formal, as it has some Catholic terms, like encyclical, and absolutely no slang unless they quote someone who uses it. The reader is never addressed directly, though there are instances where the writer writes in the plural, giving one a feeling of belonging and strengthening the feeling that the entire Catholic community is of that opinion. The overall tone is factual with a flavour of common opinion.

Advertisements are not really prominent in the paper, except the last two to three pages. About three and a quarter pages out of the 16 is advertisement, mostly concerning Catholicism in some way, for example Catholic radio channels or Catholic books, except for one Béres Csepp advertisement and one advertisement about a digital newsstand.

All in all, given the information above, it can be safely deduced that the target audience is middle-aged Catholics with at least a high-school education, and is trying to strengthen their faith and give them role models to look up to and follow, as well as familiarising them with the various aspects of faith and the history of the different Catholic organisations.

Difficulties of Japanese learners of English in identifying English /r/ and /l/ sounds and possible methods to teach them to differentiate between the two phonemes.

The Japanese language has only one of the two phonemes /r/ and /l/, which in articulation is in between the two. Therefore, since the two sounds bear no distinctive feature in differentiating between two words, it is difficult for Japanese people to hear the difference between pairs such as lead and read. The topic is a widely researched one, so there is an abundance of materials to be found. The aim of this bibliography is to find out how improvement on the perception and production of the above-mentioned sounds are achieved with the help of special trainings and what causes the difficulty for Japanese learners. Listed below are the articles I have read in the matter.

Strange, W., & Sibylla, D. (1984). Effects of discrimination training on the perception of /r-l/ by Japanese adults learning English. Perception & Psychophysics, 36(2), 131–145.

The study argues that although intensive conversational instruction (with native speakers, for example) is connected with improved perception of the minimal contrasts, perception is still not native-like, even for the most advanced students. It suggests that modification of phonetic perception of phonemes appears to be slow and effortful in case of adults, and it is characterized by great variation among individuals. In the case of Japanese learners, the difficulty is true for the production and the perception of the /r-l/ sounds, as well.

After that, the study elaborates on the details of a training session, which included eight native speakers of Japanese who received pretraining and posttraining tests of natural speech minimal pairs that contrast /r/ and /l/ in different positions, and categorical perception tests as well, which included synthetic speech series containing the two sounds in word initial position. During the trainings candidates had to listen to minimal pairs that contrast the two phonemes (such as ‘rock’ and ‘ lock’) multiple times, by the end of which sessions their abilities of perceiving have increased. The mean number of correct identifications on the minimal-pair pretests was 69% and on the speech series tests with word-initial /r-l/ was 64%.. The study concluded that while one of the subjects showed no improvement over the training sessions, the other candidates did show improvement, which meant this time 75% of their answers were correct on the exercises during the post-tests.

Bradlow, A. R., Pisoni, D. B., Akahane-Yamada, R., & Tohkura, Y. (1997). Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/: IV. Some effects of perceptual learning on speech production. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 101(4), 2299-2310.

The article investigates the effects of training in /r-l/ perceptual identification on the production of the same two phonemes by adult Japanese speakers. The work refers to authors of other works, so called ‘motor theorists’ (Liberman and Mattingly, 1989), who claim that listeners perceive speech in terms of their own articulatory gestures that would produce the perceived sound. Motorist theorists claim that there is a phonetic module that represents speech units in terms of articulatory gestures, and that this module mediates both speech perception and production. In accordance with this view, the authors of the present study carried out a test in which they trained subjects (native speakers of Japanese) in the perception of the /r-l/ sounds and then investigated whether it improved their production of the same two phonemes.

During the training candidates were exposed to minimal pairs similarly to the previous training described above, i.e. they had to listen to such words repeatedly and they had to pronounce them.  The results showed that mean 65% correct identification on pretests improved to an 81% correct identification rate in the posttests, which were conducted after 3-4 weeks of training. Right after the posttest and right before the pretests recordings of the candidates producing words containing the two phonemes were made, and these records also testified a substantial improvement in their ability of producing the sounds. The improvement in production can be attributed to the improvement in perception. However, results also showed that only subjects who performed better on the perception tests underwent a significant improvement on the production tests. Candidates with poor performance on the perception tests did not show better results on either the perception posttests or the production tests. The cause of such individual differences still needs research, however.

Lively, S. E., Logan, J. S., & Pisoni D. B. (1993). Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/. II: The role of phonetic environment and talker variability in learning new perceptual categories. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 94, 1242–1255.
Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3509365/

This study is a report based on a training and series of tests, carried out similarly to the previous ones. Native speakers of Japanese were pretested and posttested and during the exercises they had to identify the /r/ and /l/ phonemes in different positions in different words. However, the authors managed to find evidence and conclusions that were not discovered or highlighted in earlier but similar tests.

Important observations of the conductors were the following. They found that the degree to which candidates managed to identify the phonemes was dependent upon the voice of the speaker. That is to say, if a new speaker started to pronounce the same words to them during the tests, they were less likely to recognize the phonemes /r/ and /l/ than in cases when an old speaker who already used to pronounce the words for them during previous tests did so with new words. The study also proved results of earlier studies which claimed when speakers acquire new phonetic constraints, they develop abstract, content-invariant units, such as phonemes in their long-term memory. Studies have shown that some mental representations seem to serve as the ‘best’ representatives of the category. Good category members are close to the prototype of the category and ‘poor’ category members are further away. This means that ‘better’ category members are better perceived and seem to have a more stable representation in the long-term memory. The conductors of the tests thought that training listeners with tokens that contrast /r/ and /l/ in initial position would allow them to form a prototype in their heads that could be applied to other phonetic environments. However, this generalization ignored the fact that phonemes have different spectral and durational differences during their realizations in different phonetic environments. Results have shown that the sounds in final singleton position had the longest contrast in duration; therefore, it was the easiest position for listeners to differentiate them in. Accordingly, the most difficult position was initial singleton position in which the contrast in duration was the shortest between /r/ and /l/. The study highlighted many different factors and positions influencing the degree of identification, but it failed to suggest possible training methods that work equally in every situation. 

The influence of code-switching on the message in a conversation

            The research of bilingualism has always been an exciting field both for psychologists and linguists as well. Even if it may seem, that a person says the same thing in another language when switching code, the message conveyed can be very different.

            This annotated bibliography will aim at presenting the evidence supporting the influence that code-switching has on the meaning of a bilingual speaker’s message. Three papers will be presented, all three looking and the bilingual message from a different perspective: the language mixing of bilinguals, the effect of code switching in advertising and the interpretation of code-switching in legal cases.

            The evidence brought about by these papers suggest that code switching in fact influences the message of a speaker to the extent that in can entirely change the outcome of the conversation.

Heredia, Roberto R., and Jeanette Altarriba. "Bilingual Language Mixing: Why Do Bilinguals Code-Switch?" Current Directions in Psychological Science: 164-68. Print.

            The authors of this paper point out the main misconceptions connected to the code switching of bilingual speakers. These misconceptions are presumption that speakers who code-switch are trying to make up for lack of language proficiency, the priority of one language over another and the assumption of first language priority. The writers present proof that contradicts these misconceptions allowing more room for further research.

            This paper is a great help for those researching the psycholinguistic reasons behind code-switching as it proves some of the most common presumptions about code-switching untrue. The writers arrive at the conclusion that probably language accessibility has the main influence over code switching, and that it is a time-related process.

            The reason why this paper is useful when examining the changes of messages behind languages in bilingual speakers is that it gives explanations for the occurrence of code-switching. The paper also gives evidence against misconceptions, helping the researcher not to presume anything that hasn’t been proven with reliable research.

Luna, David, and Laura A. Peracchio. "Advertising To Bilingual Consumers: The Impact Of Code‐Switching On Persuasion." Journal of Consumer Research: 760-65. Print.

            This paper examines the effect of code switching on persuading bilingual speakers in advertisements. Luna and Peracchio present an in-depth study on how bilingual speakers are influenced by words inserted in a first language text from the second language and vice-versa. They argue that minority language has a more negative associations than the majority language. From this the authors conclude that by inserting majority language words into minority language texts, it is more probable to influence the subjects in a positive way. The reason for this is because the majority language speakers associate negative values to the minority language which the minority group adopts to some extent.

            This writing is a well-developed and well based research on the influence of the code-switching on bilingual readers. It has a clear structure, and every claim is supported by facts from research and statistical data.

            In researching bilingual code-switching, this piece of writing is a great help, as it shows how code-switching can influence bilingual speakers. This in turn supports the idea that when switching codes the speakers themselves communicate meaning that is different from the meaning of the other language.

Jongh, Elena M. De. "Interpreting in Miami's Federal Courts: Code-Switching and Spanglish."Hispania: 274. Print.

Clark and Correa argue that it is essential for an interpreter to have profound knowledge of both languages in an interpreting situation. They exemplify the statement by bringing actual court cases and citing conversations when code-switching happened. The writers argue that code-swthing s unconscious, and the in-depth knowledge of the language is needed in order to faithfully interpret the meaning behind an utterance.

The paper is well grounded and backed up by actual examples. For instance, in US courts with Spanish witnesses, the code-switching usually occurs unconsciously, when the speaker wants to make himself understood and knows that the other speaker knows both languages. The actuality of the problem research gives more credibility to the writing.

In the research of the influence of code-switching on the message of one’s speech this paper is a great help as it exemplifies with real life examples, how testimonies can be changed by a switch of language, and misinterpretation of these can lead to faulty verdicts.

Pragmatics in the ESL classroom

Pragmatics in the ESL classroom

In the ESL classroom, from early on the main focus of teachers’ and learners’ attention alike is forming grammatically correct utterances. But outside the walls of this artificial environment grammatical accuracy is not enough. In real-life situations choosing the right or wrong word often decides whether communication is successful. In the cases where ESL learners do encounter pragmatics, it is usually the subject of higher-level courses (intermediate level and above), which might be too late. In this paper I intend to find the earliest point of language acquisition when knowledge of grammar is strong enough that correcting the students on the basis of pragmatics is no longer harmful. From that point on, concentrating solely on grammar hinders the learner’s progress, and should be avoided.

Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Mahan-Taylor, R (Eds.) (2003). Teaching Pragmatics. Retrieved from http://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/teaching-pragmatics

The book is a collection of fully detailed exercises for teachers. In their introduction, the editors assert the importance of pragmatics in the classroom, and emphasise that for a native speaker, the rules of pragmatics are applied without consideration, but non-native speakers must be made aware of the rules for them to be used consciously. Awareness of possible contexts and the appropriate forms for them is key. The editors also stress that the book has a wide range of exercises as there is no singular correct way of teaching pragmatics, and they encourage teachers to experiment with the resources given.

This book is the cornerstone of my paper, probably more important than any other on the list. It contains exercises for all levels, from simple forms of greeting to convoluted conversational situations. Some of those that are for higher level students, can be easily adapted to lower-level students. It is my intention to use these exercises in an actual classroom of beginner, elementary and pre-intermediate level students and record how the results vary.

Félix-Brasdefer, J. C., & Cohen A. D. (2012). Teaching Pragmatics in the Foreign Language Classroom: Grammar as a Communicative Resource.  Hispania, 95(4), 650-669. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41756418

The article focuses on grammatical forms which have pragmatic significance. It also states that pragmatics should be used from the beginning of the course, and presents a way to amalgamate teaching grammar with teaching pragmatics. It also outlines a pedagogical plan to carry out its goals, pairing up grammatical functions such as the conditional and their communicative function besides the primary meaning, like showing politeness using conditional forms.

This article is about teaching Spanish as a second language, but its principles are above teaching a specific language, it describes an approach to teaching languages in general which is very useful. This means that its general points are worthwhile, but the exercises it proposes need to be checked whether they work in English or not. Its proposed plan of teaching pragmatics also recommends the use of online resources and activities, which emulate real-life situations, and can even be performed in the course, like reviewing example e-mails and rewriting them in the appropriate manner.

Huth, T. (2007). Pragmatics Revisited: Teaching with Natural Language Data. Teaching German,40(1), 21-33. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20479916

Huth talks about the importance of using the right kind of data when teaching language, and especially pragmatics. He stresses that pragmatics as a communication strategy must be made conscious, because the learners often use their L1 strategies in communication, even when they are not appropriate. Similarly, when interacting with L2 speakers or situations, lacking correct information, they fall back on stereotypes, which can be worse than using no backround information at all. His suggestion is a curated list of empirical studies and resources describing the behaviour of different cultures in similar situations – his example is listing differences between American and German responses to receiving compliments.

Huth’s paper serves as a good reminder and guideline when devising the exercises intended to be recorded in the paper. If the exercises use the internet as Marda, Félix-Brasfeder and Cohen suggest in their article, it must be considered carefully, what the learners are given access to. If not, their incorrect stereotypes might be ingrained inadvertently.

Marda, R. (2012). Grammar in the Real World: Enhancing Grammar Lessons with Pragmatics. Hispania, 95(4), 670-680. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41756419

This article starts from the perspective that the learning of any language can be aided by the use of “metapragmatic” strategies, ones that are independent of language. In accordance with this, it suggests the use of approaching teaching from an alternate perspective. It proposes that traditional grammar lessons can be enhanced with the use of its methods. The example it gives is actually for lower level students, teaching the imperative, reviewing its use through practicing ordering drinks, understanding the difference between polite and impolite forms. It makes the point clear with reading and understanding a joke together that is set in this situation.

Similarly to the Félix-Brasdefer – Cohen article, this one suggests the use of online resources, which seem promising. Learners’ independent use of the Internet and their research into original texts might be too high-level for this paper. This approach would need modification to suit lower-level students.

The Islamic State in the social media

The Islamic State in the social media

The Islamic State (IS) is the latest, evolved form of terrorism. It differs significantly from any terrorist group known in the history. First, the goals of the IS are more ambitious than that of al-Qaeda, for example. Second, IS state consciously use the social media and Internet in general to make people know they are out there. In this essay I will elaborate on this latter.

First of all, however, there must be a brief summary of the IS and its goals. The group was founded in 1999 and became known later as the al-Qaeda in Iraq. In 2006, the group became Islamic state of Iraq (ISI). Their real breakthrough was the Syrian civil war and the US leaving of Iraq. At that time, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was their leader and he sent troops to aid the Syrian rebels. Later the various fighting cells united and the Islamic State of Levant and Iraq was formed. The last step was pronounciation of the Islamic State (IS) as a worldwide caliphate. The IS conquered vast territories in Iraq and Syria and keeps most of it still under control.

The IS imposed the sharia law in its territories immediately. This means they don’t tolerate anything that is not Sunni Islam. They might overlook people for being shia or christian if they are paid, but there is no guarantee for complete safety. Whoever shows a slightest hint of resistance, is homosexual, or just have an unlucky day will be tried and executed by the IS.

This is the first thing people know the IS for. They always publish footages of executions, be those beheading of Western journalist, shooting of supposed Russian spies, stoning or burning alive and so on. Sometimes executions are performed by children to give a more dramatic effect. IN the beginnings, IS used to publish this footages on the biggest social sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Luckily, the operators of the sites reacted in time and accounts spreading material from the IS are instantly banned.

Of course, execution tapes are not the only thing IS spreads. They create memes, often using popular Wester memes as a base. Their videos are not exclusively execution videos.The footages are often war scenes which bear a strange resemblance to (mostly American) war movies as they borrow scenes from those. These videos are created professionally. There is a professional staff, equipment and lots of money behind it. All of those are in order to maximize the effect on the audience.

It is important to note, however, that not all of IS’s content is violent. Sometimes they post videos or pictures of giving aways food to people or just cute things, such as kittens. Nevertheless, these things hardly balance the overall image if the organization. Most people identifies them with as a vicious, violent group.

To sum up, IS uses the social media in a  professional way. They achieved their goal in that that most people has heard of them, however, the image they created is extremely violent and alienates most potential supporters as well as urges everyone to intervene.