Do You See What I See?
Cultural groups throughout the world talk about color differently—some don’t even have a word for color. So is color perception a universal human experience or not?
Do You See What I See?
Language
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The Power of the Dictionary
Dictionaries are typically viewed as being value-neutral. But they are just as steeped in culture and prejudice as the rest of the world—and they have the power to shape what we see as “normal.”
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Is the Term “People of Color” Acceptable in This Day and Age?
The words we use to describe groups of people say a lot about what we’re grappling with as a society.
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Can an iPhone App Help Save an Endangered Language?
As the world’s Indigenous languages fade away at an alarming rate, some people are turning to technology to preserve their ancestors’ native tongues—and the cultural knowledge held in them.
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Trump’s Tactics and Republican Speechlessness
Donald Trump has combined party politics and a familiar nationalist script with a uniquely American interpretation of free speech. The result is a racist rhetoric that has been frighteningly hard to stop.
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Unmanning Space Language
Language matters, as demonstrated by the recent discussion following the discovery of example sentences using sexist stereotypes in the Oxford Dictionary of English. Language about who goes into space also matters, both historically and again now as more people are on the International Space Station for longer-duration missions, and NASA, SpaceX, and others plan to send humans to Mars. When journalists write about a spacecraft, they often use …