{"id":238,"date":"2006-12-11T08:48:36","date_gmt":"2006-12-11T12:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/?p=238"},"modified":"2006-12-11T09:46:06","modified_gmt":"2006-12-11T13:46:06","slug":"words-as-paint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/?p=238","title":{"rendered":"Words as paint"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even as a young child, I wondered if words created the same images for all people, and if those images were based on anything real, or just randomly associated.
\nWatching Harry Potter movies the other night (we’ve read all the books until the spines are worn and limp), I noted to Delta that some of J.K. Rowling’s made-up words actually look sort of like other words — words that create a specific picture. Diagon Alley, the mythical shopping place for wizardly books and school supplies, brings to mind something not quite on the straight and narrow — diagonally, to be precise. Even the characters’ names seem to fit, with Snape sounding like “snake” (fitting, for the headmaster of Slytherin) and the evil Malfoy family: Draco, looking and sounding like a little blond dracula; Lucius, with a name reminiscent of Lucifer; even the last name itself, beginning with “mal,” a prefix meaning bad.<\/p>\n

Reading about reactions to the Iraq Study Group<\/a> report prompted a slideshow of mental images as well… somehow, someone with the last name Talabani<\/a> doesn’t elicit any feelings of trust. Neither does Al-Maliki<\/a> (which sounds like Malachai, the name of the most evil character in Children of the Corn<\/a>).
\nIn Freakonomics<\/a>, Steven Levitt explores the relationship between children’s names and their professional prospects. The reasoning is likely along the same lines: we associate images — good or bad — with the printed and spoken word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even as a young child, I wondered if words created the same images for all people, and if those images were based on anything real, or just randomly associated. Watching Harry Potter movies the other night (we’ve read all the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}