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AWADmail Issue 484A Compendium of Feedback on the Words in A.Word.A.Day and Other Tidbits about Words and Language
From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Documenting Endangered Languages
Klingon Language Helps Man Deal With Dyslexia
From: Cheryl Lezovich (ccrock mindspring.com) Previously, I had no way of describing the behavior of my soon-to-be 15-year-old daughter with whom I live 24/7 on a sailboat. That truly is hebephrenia.
Cheryl Lezovich, Atlanta, Georgia
From: Charles Fox (cafox513 gte.net) Pace College, New York, 1960s. Professor lecturing about psychology. After describing one kind of schizophrenia, he ends the lecture by saying, "Next time I'll discuss Jewish schizophrenia," closes his notes on the lectern, turns, and leaves. When he opens the next week's session with "Hebephrenia is ...", the entire class collapses in laughter.
Charles Fox, Santa Monica, California
From: Ron Dick (dickr mcmaster.ca) It was disappointing to read this AWAD entry, especially with this being Mental Illness Awareness Week (October 2-8, Canada and USA). Your definition and example both reflect and perpetuate the stigma people feel when living with mental illness.
Lisa Carver's prose is that of a freewheeling dunce high school junior
who's given to frequent attacks of hebephrenia mixed with suffocating
narcissism." Sally Eckhoff; Zine But Not Heard; The Village Voice (New York); Sep 3, 1996. Medical professionals have long stopped using the term "insanity", and its casual use now, quite frankly, is only an indicator of the user's ignorance. People experiencing mental illness are not "dunces", operating at a junior high school level (except for the junior high school students with mental illness, who you are particularly insulting). Nor are people "given" to frequent attacks of mental illness. Your presentation of this disorder as a sort of immature tantrum is shameful. What journalist would ever humorously liken a poet's work to "the addled musings of a brain cancer survivor" or "something an end-stage AIDS victim with neurological impairment would pass off as poetry"? Sadly, mental illness is still largely hidden, shameful, and misunderstood, and quips like Ms. Eckhoff's quotation are rampant. Through AWAD, you had an amazing opportunity to improve understanding, but you simply made things worse. To help rectify the damage you've done, I suggest you devote an upcoming week to words relating to mental illness, starting with "stigma".
Ron Dick, Occupational Therapist, Community Psychiatry Services, St. Joseph's Healthcare, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
From: John E Mack (jmack49168 aol.com) One way of confirming a scientific hypothesis is to retrodict a fact which was previously unknown. Many claims about facts of evolution, for example, are retrodictions, even if they can be considered "predictions" about what is yet to be discovered.
John E Mack, New London, Minnesota
From: Harold Hyman (shandhh verizon.net) Subject: Onomastico In Italy (and probably other Latin countries as well) every day is a Saint's Day. Consequently, people can celebrate not only a birthday (compleanno) but also their name day (onomastico) corresponding to a particular Saint. You can even buy cards wishing "Buon Onomastico!"
Harold Hyman, Acton, Massachusetts
From: Richard Alexander (alexander triton.net) We college teachers are very familiar with a variant of anosognosia: the Dunning-Kruger effect, named after the psychologists whose 1999 journal article was entitled, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessment". Dunning later called this phenomenon "the anosognosia of everyday life". Successful college students are less subject to this effect. They can acknowledge their own weaknesses and knowledge gaps and make adjustments accordingly. Unsuccessful ones might continue to blame the teacher, the material, the system, or bad luck for their lower-than-expected grades. Not that college professors are immune to anosognosia. A cousin of the Dunning-Kruger effect is sometimes called the Lake Wobegon effect, after Garrison Keillor's fictional town where "all the children are above average". For example, in a classic 1977 study by K. Patricia Cross, 94 percent of surveyed professors rated themselves as above-average teachers; two-thirds rated themselves in the top quartile. But unfortunately for all, professors' performance evaluations usually are much less comprehensive and stringent than their students'.
Richard Alexander, Grand Rapids, Michigan
From: Pete Saussy (bujinin netzero.com) Think Beowulf: there was much keening from the results of the those whose names are kennings: Red-Hand, Blood-Drinker, Dragon-Slayer, Arm-Ripper, Sea-Stallion?
Pete Saussy, Pawleys Island, South Carolina
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The words of some men are thrown forcibly against you and adhere like burrs.
-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
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