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Sex, food, and words: the hidden meanings behind everyday language

Published: 16 October 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Language is a subtle and powerful tool for communication. But the words we use also provide a rich mine of information for the social scientist. The history of words like "ketchup", "ceviche", or "dessert" tells us about the relationships between the superpowers who dominated the globe 500 or 1000 years ago. The words on the back of potato chip packages can demonstrate popular attitudes toward social class. And the names we give ice cream flavors may be an evolutionary reflex of the attempt by early mammals to appear larger than their competitors. The language of dating is just as informative as the language of food. In experiments with speed dating, work in our lab shows that we can detect flirtation or other stances in men and women on dates, just by looking at linguistic features like their pitch, their use of negative words like "can't" or "don't", or how often they use hedges like "sort of" or "kind of". The language of these two popular topics of conversation, food and dating, can teach us a lot about history, culture, and psychology.

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  • (2024)What monarch butterfly waystation names and characteristics can reveal about program participantsPeople and Nature10.1002/pan3.105866:2(775-791)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2024

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    UIST '11: Proceedings of the 24th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology
    October 2011
    654 pages
    ISBN:9781450307161
    DOI:10.1145/2047196

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    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

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    Published: 16 October 2011

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    1. dating
    2. food
    3. language

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    UIST '11 Paper Acceptance Rate 67 of 262 submissions, 26%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 561 of 2,567 submissions, 22%

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    The 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
    September 28 - October 1, 2025
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    • (2024)What monarch butterfly waystation names and characteristics can reveal about program participantsPeople and Nature10.1002/pan3.105866:2(775-791)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2024

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