Pragmatics refers to the study of signs, sentence structure, and symbols. It focuses on the meaning of utterances. It is what people say in terms of spoken speech or by the use of signs and symbols. It is a fundamental component in human speech because it establishes meaning and intention hence establishing a better understanding. It also helps in establishing what to say, the people we pass the information to as well as how to say or out it. It helps to ensure that information reaches the right people and in the right manner.
People feel better in a conversation if they are in a position to understand each other well. Pragmatics makes it possible to understand the meaning of information and this helps build and maintain relationships among people. Pragmatics is, therefore, very essential in our daily interactions for healthy and long-lasting relationships. Pragmatics is used in schools, especially in group discussions. Normally group discussions are popular in schools. In group discussions, the student shares their different ideas and opinions. Pragmatics helps the students to understand each other by making it possible for them to understand sentence structure, and signs, and also in understanding the meanings of different ideas shared by students.
In pragmatics, words used can have different meanings depending on the context. For example, when someone says ‘I am okay,’ normally, okay expresses agreement meaning someone or something is fine. In pragmatics, okay can be used to bring out different meanings depending on the context. When someone says that they are okay but we know that they are going through a difficult situation, it simply means the opposite. Another example of pragmatics is ballooning. Ballooning means flying a balloon but, in this context, it brings the message that someone is growing fat. This explains how people interpret language and the meaning of utterances, signals, and symbols depending on the manner, place, and time it is used.
Pros and cons of different ideas about the origin of language.
Language is said to be the only distinguishing feature that highly differentiates human beings from other species. Animals and plants interact and pass information to each other in different ways (Ulbaek1998). They breathe and excrete the same way humans do but the difference comes in the way of communication. Only humans have a distinct and most developed way of communication and that is language. The ideas about the origin of language have established insights into understanding the origin of language. Another advantage of the ideas is that they have demonstrated the efforts of different researchers in the pursuit of establishing where the language originated. The problem with the ideas about the origin of language is that most of them lack proper research and are based on personal understanding rather than real facts.
The 4 stages of creativity
Creativity means the use of ideas to come up with something to invent or innovate something (Zhang et al, 2020). Creativity is one of the best ways of maintaining a mentally healthy body with its benefits having a great positive impact on a person’s health. It has been shown that creativity promotes happiness in an individual as well as triggers the production of dopamine. The feel-good chemical in our bodies. The human brain goes through various stages for it to execute a creative idea. The stages include the following:
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Preparation stage. People’s brain does not create ideas from a vacuum. It uses the information it is fed with to create ideas. When people think about creative thought in their minds, they form a basis for a creative idea, for instance, when one tries to come up with ideas on how to transform his or her tires into planters. The brain then starts using reasoning and planning for the formation of a creative idea. The next stage is the incubation stage. In the incubation stage, the person with the creative idea discovers that they are not maybe going to succeed and so they dismiss the creative thought. So, at this point, it is evident that nothing comes up in terms of identifying the right paint to use on someone’s tires, and how to lay them off to bring an appealing appearance for my garden. Researchers have discovered that when creative thought is dismissed from thinking about it, it is during this time that people’s minds become most creative. So, the brain subconsciously gets into the process of figuring out the whole creative project idea.
The third stage is the illumination stage. Creative thoughts and ideas collide unconsciously then proceed to consciousness. At this stage, the creative ideas have reached to people’s conscience. For example, one can consciously see the tires having been painted in the right color paints. However, creativity is not done at this stage so the process proceeds to the final stage which is the verification stage. Kaufman states that at this stage, critical thinking skills are employed to help think about the target audience as well as figure out how to craft the message. At this point, everything about the whole creative ideas such as, how to lay them, and the pattern of planting am going to use among other relevant ideas. At this stage, one’s creative idea of transforming tires into beautiful planters is ready to be put into action.
Confirmation bias is a type of bias that involves information processing and interpretation of information in such a way that it is in line with what someone believes (Rossmo et al, 2019). It is simply interpreting information in a biased manner. In our daily lives, confirmation bias is demonstrated in various ways. For instance, a woman who does not love her husband due to prolonged misunderstandings would easily trust false and mean-spirited rumors about her husband to suit what she already has in mind about him. In confirmation bias, people make a biased interpretation of information to suit their own beliefs of self-interest. The wife would believe the false rumors without even doing her research to establish the truth in the rumor.
Confirmation bias can be used in society to create harm and destroy relationships or sometimes it can help establish and improve behavior. There exist people in life who are quite reserved and have a limited sense of humor. Most people end up thinking that this kind of person is not good-hearted. The judgment is mostly arrived at without even having interacted with the person to establish the kind person the kind of person she is. People end up making conclusions based on what they believe is right.
Another case of confirmation is where a doctor assumes or misdiagnoses a certain illness based on the symptoms given by the patient. The doctor would prescribe medication based on what they know about the symptoms of a certain disease. The doctor may not even run lab tests to establish whether there could be a possibility of another illness. Preconceived knowledge based on personal beliefs can adversely lead to great damage on part of the recipient of the confirmation bias.
Confirmation bias is not only used to harm society but also good at some point. For example, if a student gets expelled from school due to irresponsible behavior, when he gets admitted to a new school looking all good and calm then teachers compliment him, this creates a positive impression of themselves and will end up changing their behavior to suit people’s expectation. Therefore, confirmation bias should be used in society to promote behavior rather than causing harm to people and ruining relationships.
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