Exercises in negotiating meaning

Exercise 1:

You are at the grocery store, and someone asks you:

Paper or plastic?

This can mean one of two very different things, depending on who is asking you the question.

Can you guess the different meanings and the people involved?

Exercise 2:

Consider the following sentences:

a. With a powerful motion, the man drew his chair up to the table.

b. Drawing on his power, the Chair tabled the motion.

1. How many words do the sentences share (different forms are okay)?

2. How many of their meanings are the same?

Exercise 3:

1. Can you match the items in the two lists?

Jerusalem                    The Windy City

Los Angeles                  Horeb

New York City                 Zion

Chicago                      Xela Hu

Sinai                         The Big Apple

Quetzaltenango              The City of the Angels

2. What do the terms in each list have in common?

Exercise 4:

Notice the change of emphasis in the following sentences:

John only watches MOVIES.

John only WATCHES movies.

Can you explain what the difference in meaning is, using examples from each context?

Exercise 5:

Look at each of the columns. Can you tell the context from the list?

Achohol               Alcohol                     Alcohol                     

Tobacco                Tobacco                    Tobacco

Firearms              Perfume                  Playing cards

Exercise 6:

This exercise combines ritualized behavior, embodied cognition, and cultural reproduction. As a speaker of Spanish, I frequently end my emails with the sign-off "abrazo," (hug, embrace) even when (or especially when) addressing male friends. This corresponds to the ("manly") embrace I would give when greeting or leaving them in person. But not only would I not normally embrace male English-speaking friends in general (except perhaps when around a mixed group of Spanish and English speakers), I would never end an email to a male friend or colleague in English with "hug(s)" or "embrace(s)." In fact, neither "hug" nor "embrace" captures what an abrazo is (that is, what it represents in action). It simply cannot be translated without an explanation as far as I can see.

For you Spanish speakers, can you come up with a straightforward translation of abrazo into English without depending on an explanation? For everyone: can you come up with another example of an "untranslatable" term/phrase/embodied action from one language you speak into another?

Exercise 7:

In my dialect of English, the term "cute" can be used by anyone to describe a baby, but other than that it has a more circumscribed usage according to who is the speaker. Can you guess what the differences are? This takes some familiarity with idiomatic English, so don't worry if you don't get this one. Extra credit: are their terms in a language you know that are restricted to use by one or another demographic (social group, gender, ethnic group, etc.)? For example, there is a word (called the "N-word") used to refer to African-Americans, which is pretty much taboo for anyone to use other than African-Americans.