I will propose that Internal Family Systems is intuitive because it is an elaboration of our current metaphorical conception of self--and that where it differs structurally is in replacing the binary, or hierarchical aspects of our current model--resulting in a more compassionate self-conception.

As English language teachers well know, the current formal model of grammar cannot account for every common utterance in the English language. Currently, grammar is taught to language learners in a prescriptive manner. It begins with verb tenses, making mention of a few standard idiosyncrasies, like the varying semantic entailments of different verbs and the appropriate context in which to use them. There is a certain group of standard grammatical constructions that are taught to language learners, such as conditional sentences, comparative statements, and at the higher levels, even inversion. But it frequently happens in the classes of the higher levels, that a student will be able to produce a coherent utterance that is either (1) completely unexplainable by the grammatical construction being taught, or (2) seemingly adherent to a different set of rules which is not stated by the construction being taught. Oftentimes, these exceptions will come in the form of strangely acceptable sentence fragments. Consider examples (1.1) - (1.4) below.

(1.1) I am going to the store after school.

(1.2) *I am going to the home after school.

(1.3) *I am going to home after school.

(1.4) I am going home after school.

Second language learners often make this mistake. With almost any other noun phrase and the verb “go” in the present continuous tense, this general structure applies:

[Subject] + [be verb] + [go + ing] + [to] + [noun phrase, sometimes introduced by “the”].

Using this template, students understandably assume that (1.2) or (1.3) is the correct grammatical construction. But in reality, the phrase modern language users hear, speak, and write, is “I am going home after school.” The reason for this, is that “go home” is a type of idiomatic expression, which must be memorized on its own, the same way a new lexical item would be. These didactic observations are evidence of a deeply rooted inconsistency in the traditional conceptual model of language comprehension. Since the mid 1980’s, there has been a growing movement among linguists to revise the current understanding of grammar and create a new model to properly accommodate such exceptions.

. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “face” dates back to the 12th century in Anglo-Norman and Old French, and today the noun sense alone “occur[s] between 100 and 1000 times per million words in typical modern English usage. [It is part of the semantic] substance of ordinary, everyday speech and writing.” (Oxford University Press, 2009, para. 1) But this frequency cannot be accounted for based on the literal instances of “face” alone.

In the time of the Coronavirus pandemic, the communication President Trump had with citizens has become a source of interest and inquiry around the world. In the midst of a social and economic crisis unmatched for at least the past hundred years, the president spoke to the public at length nearly every day. Throughout the pandemic this communication saw shifts in tone and rhetorical strategy, a key part of which occurred between late February when Trump was still on the campaign trail, and mid-April, when numbers of infected patients and the public’s demand for answers from the federal government ballooned drastically. This paper aims to deconstruct the moral and political ideology that informs Trump’s rhetorical choices, both conscious and unconscious, and how the President attempts to save face in order to bolster his image.

In 2015, Vyvyan Evans launched a veritable grenade into the linguistic community with the publication of his book, The Language Myth: Why Language is Not an Instinct. This response was somewhat predictable, as his aim was to discredit and dismantle the theory of “Universal Grammar,” which had largely been dominant since it was set out by Noam Chomsky in the 1950’s and ‘60’s. While Chomsky’s theory holds that language arises from a sort of preprogrammed knowledge of one underlying “human” grammar, Evans’ theory is that language develops in tandem with, and as a result from, other cognitive abilities of the human mind (2015: 3).