The Language Observer blog is aaaaalive!! Well, not actually “alive” in the strictest sense, but at least it is up and running thanks to the magical click of a button. Anyway, WELCOME!
Feel free to sit back and relax (or stand up and do so if that’s more your “thang”) from time to time and spend a few minutes reading something interesting about language.
Reading is an activity which usually involves taking in word after word after word after word, and so on and so forth, and in doing so one will at times inevitably come across new words. Now, it is not always so that this activity is deemed to be especially interesting in itself (arguably it is usually what you read that is interesting), but research has actually shown that learning new words may feel as enjoyable as sex, drugs and rock & roll!
A recent piece of research published in the journal Current Biology explained how a specific part of the brain (the ventral striatum) that is active while processing things experienced as rewarding is also active when you learn a new word! This could help explain why you and I find it so satisfying when we pick up new words – words which we subsequently at times flaunt as best as we can! For example, who doesn’t want to explain to the waiter during their next restaurant visit that the taste of the food is very piquant?
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Sources:
- Ripolles et al., 2014. The Role of Reward in Word Learning and Its Implications for Language Acquisition. Current Biology (online), Vol. 24 (21), pp. 2606-2611.
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Language Observer 
