Marcel Danesi

This book shows how language can be used strategically to manipulate beliefs. From Machiavelli to P. T. Barnum to Donald Trump, many have perfected the art of strategically using language to gain the upper hand, set a tone, change the subject, or influence people's beliefs and behaviors. Language--both words themselves and rhetorical tactics such as metaphor, irony, slang, and humor--can effectively manipulate the minds of the listener. In this book, Marcel Danesi, a renowned linguistic anthropologist and semiotician, looks at language that is used not to present arguments logically or rationally, but to "move" audiences in order to gain their confidence and build consensus. He demonstrates that through language techniques communicators can not only sway opinions but also shape listeners' very perception of reality. He assesses how the communicative environment in which the art of the lie unfolds--such as on social media or in emotionally-charged gatherings--impacts the results. Danesi also investigates why lies are often accepted as valid. Artful lying fits in with an Internet society that is largely disinterested in what is true and what is false and in which attention is often given to speech that is entertaining or persuasive. Have we become immune to lies because of a social media discourse shaped by untruths? In an electronic age where facts are deemed irrelevant and conspiracies are accorded as much credibility as truths, this book discusses the implications of lying and language for the future of belief, ethics, and American democracy itself.

Give your brain a test. Give your eyes a rest.Looking for a way to keep your brain on its toes? Well, there is nothing more mentally stimulating or fun than good old-fashioned brain teasers. And since everyday life doesn't throw perplexing riddles at us very often, Brain Teasers for Adults offers a variety of tricky, yet "doable" puzzles to help build your logic, math, and wordplay.The unique skills derived from solving brain teasers helps put you in a better position to resolve important problems from work to daily life. Go in order of difficulty or skip around-the decision is yours Solve all 75 brain teasers and stand tall, knowing you have outsmarted the puzzle-maker himself.Inside Brain Teasers for Adults, you'll find: Choose your difficulty-Moving from simple Duck Soup Puzzles to Head Scratchers, engage your brain on different levels, with each riddle labeled by difficulty.5 Categories-Filled with brain teasers categories such as Wordplay, Logic, Card puzzles, and more are meant to stimulate your thoughts in different ways.Clues to use-An optional clues section has been provided for each question in case a little extra help is needed Time to discover how fun and rewarding puzzle-solving can be with Brain Teasers for Adults

The Semiotics of Love brings together work on early symbolism, literary practices, and contemporary communication on the theme of romance and the idea of love to forge an understanding of the semiotic-cultural side of romance. Moving beyond psychological and neuroscientific scholarly analyses of love, Marcel Danesi works to interrogate the cultural constructions of love across societies. This book analyzes romantic love from the general perspective of semiotics—that is, from its more generic interpretive angle, rather than its more technical one. The specific analytical lens used is based on the notion that we convert our feeling structures into sign structures (words, symbols) and sign-based constructions (texts, rituals, etc.), which then allow us to reflect upon something cognitively, rather than just experience it physically and emotionally.

Pop culture emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century as a reaction to the restrictive social traditions of colonial America. It spread quickly and broadly throughout the bustling urban centers of the 1920s—an era when it formed a partnership with technology and the business world. This coalition gave pop culture its identity, allowing it to thrive and form alliances with artistic and literary movements. But pop culture may have run its course with the rise of meme culture. This publication revisits the social, psychic, and aesthetic roots of pop culture, suggesting that meme culture has fragmented its historical flow, thus threatening to bring about its demise.

This book looks at classic puzzles from the perspective of their structures and what they tell us about the brain. It uses the work on the neuroscience of mathematics from Dehaene, Butterworth, Lakoff, Núñez, and many others as a lens to understand the ways in which puzzles reflect imaginative processes blended with rational ones. The book is not about recreational or puzzle-based mathematics in and of itself but rather about what the classic puzzles tell us about the mathematical imagination and its impact on the discipline. It delves into the history of classic math puzzles, deconstructing their raison d’être and describing their psychological features, so that their nature can be fleshed out in order to help understand the mathematical mind.This volume is the first monographic treatment of the psychological nature of puzzles in mathematics. With its user-friendly technical level of discussion, it is of interest to both general readers and those who engage in the disciplines of mathematics, psychology, neuroscience, and/or anthropology. It is also ideal as a textbook source for courses in recreational mathematics, or as reference material in introductory college math courses.

An Anthropology of Puzzles argues that the human brain is a "puzzling organ" which allows humans to literally solve their own problems of existence through puzzle format. Noting the presence of puzzles everywhere in everyday life, Marcel Danesi looks at puzzles in society since the dawn of history, showing how their presence has guided large sections of human history, from discoveries in mathematics to disquisitions in philosophy. Danesi examines the cognitive processes that are involved in puzzle making and solving, and connects them to the actual physical manifestations of classic puzzles. Building on a concept of puzzles as based on Jungian archetypes, such as the river crossing image, the path metaphor, and the journey, Danesi suggests this could be one way to understand the public fascination with puzzles. As well as drawing on underlying mental archetypes, the act of solving puzzles also provides an outlet to move beyond biological evolution, and Danesi shows that puzzles could be the product of the same basic neural mechanism that produces language and culture. Finally, Danesi explores how understanding puzzles can be a new way of understanding our human culture.

Media semiotics is a valuable method of focusing on the hidden meanings within media texts. This new edition brings Understanding Media Semiotics fully up to date and is written for students of the media, of linguistics and those interested in studying the ever-changing media in more detail. Offering an in-depth guide to help students investigate and understand the media using semiotic theory, this book assumes little previous knowledge of semiotics or linguistics, avoiding jargon and explaining the issues step by step. With in-depth case studies, practical accounts and directed further reading, Understanding Media Semiotics provides students with all the tools they need to understand semiotic analysis in the context of the media. Semiotic analysis is sometimes seen as complicated and difficult to understand; Marcel Danesi shows that on the contrary it can be readily understood and can greatly enrich students' understanding of media texts, from print media right through to the internet and apps.

Media semiotics is a valuable method of focusing on the hidden meanings within media texts. This new edition brings Understanding Media Semiotics fully up to date and is written for students of the media, of linguistics and those interested in studying the ever-changing media in more detail. Offering an in-depth guide to help students investigate and understand the media using semiotic theory, this book assumes little previous knowledge of semiotics or linguistics, avoiding jargon and explaining the issues step by step. With in-depth case studies, practical accounts and directed further reading, Understanding Media Semiotics provides students with all the tools they need to understand semiotic analysis in the context of the media. Semiotic analysis is sometimes seen as complicated and difficult to understand; Marcel Danesi shows that on the contrary it can be readily understood and can greatly enrich students' understanding of media texts, from print media right through to the internet and apps.

This book looks at classic puzzles from the perspective of their structures and what they tell us about the brain. It uses the work on the neuroscience of mathematics from Dehaene, Butterworth, Lakoff, Núñez, and many others as a lens to understand the ways in which puzzles reflect imaginative processes blended with rational ones. The book is not about recreational or puzzle-based mathematics in and of itself but rather about what the classic puzzles tell us about the mathematical imagination and its impact on the discipline. It delves into the history of classic math puzzles, deconstructing their raison d’être and describing their psychological features, so that their nature can be fleshed out in order to help understand the mathematical mind.This volume is the first monographic treatment of the psychological nature of puzzles in mathematics. With its user-friendly technical level of discussion, it is of interest to both general readers and those who engage in the disciplines of mathematics, psychology, neuroscience, and/or anthropology. It is also ideal as a textbook source for courses in recreational mathematics, or as reference material in introductory college math courses.

For courses in popular culture, media and society, and sociology of the media. Pop culture surrounds us. Its products are the movies we watch, the music we listen to, and the books we read; they are on our televisions, phones, and computers. We are its fickle friend, loving to hate it and hating to love it. Danesi’s text shows us how popular culture validates our common experiences and affects our daily lives. The fourth edition of Popular Culture: Introductory Perspectives features a fully updated text with new material on celebrity in the digital age. Marcel Danesi delves into the social structures that have led to the emergence and spread of pop culture, showing how it validates our common experiences and offering a variety of perspectives on its many modes of delivery into our everyday lives. The text expands the illustration program and adds teaching ancillaries on an accompanying website. Features of the Fourth Edition: -The most accessible popular culture textbook on the market -Helpfully organized by technology and medium -Provides new material tracing pop culture from medieval performances and texts, to the role of opera and carnivals and circuses to our present media rich culture -Adds new sections on nature of popularity and a new section on nano-celebrities -Features 50 illustrations -All new ancillary site with power points for instructor use

This book provides a fundamental reassessment of mathematics education in the digital era. It constitutes a new mindset of how information and knowledge are processed by introducing new interconnective and interactive pedagogical approaches. Math education is catching up on technology, as courses and materials use digital sources and resources more and more. The time has come to evaluate this new dynamic, which transcends all previous use of ancillary devices to supplement classroom math instruction. Interactivity and interconnectivity with the online world of math and math texts (such as television programs and internet sites) can be integrated with our traditional modes for delivery of math instruction.This book looks at how this integration can unfold practically by applying these relevant pedagogical principles to elementary topics such as numeration, arithmetic, algebra, story problems, combinatorics, and basic probability theory. The book further exemplifies how mathematics can be connected to topics in popular culture, information technologies, and other such domains.

This book deals with one the most interesting aspects of human life—the search for meaning. It discusses how the science of semiotics is equipped to provide insight on what meaning is and how we produce it. Why is it that certain people routinely put their survival at risk by smoking? Why is it that some women make locomotion difficult for themselves by donning high-heel footwear? Are there unconscious forces at work behind such strange behaviors? This book will attempt to answer such questions by claiming that these behaviors are meaningful in culture-specific ways. The discipline that studies such behaviors and their relation to meanings is called semiotics. Semiotics probes the human condition in its own peculiar way, by unraveling the meanings of signs, which motivate not only the wearing of high heel shoes, but also the construction of words and art forms. Now in its third edition, this landmark introduction to semiotics has been updated with a wealthof new content, focusing on the many developments in digital culture since the previous edition. With the addition of topics such as memes, Selfies, social media profiles, and even Mafia discourse, the new edition comprehensively covers new trends in culture while streamlining treatments of basic semiotics contents.

Put your noggin to the test with the most famous brain games of all time Puzzles and brainteasers can be found throughout history and around the world. This book collects 125 of the most popular and challenging mind benders for hours of fun-filled entertainment that helps sharpen your logic, language, and problem-solving skills. Fun for everyone-You don't need any special skills to solve these puzzles, and clues and answer keys help you if you get stumped. 5 Challenge levels-Each section gets harder as you move through the book, so you can push your limits, or find puzzles the whole family can try. Hints of history-Every time you tackle a new puzzle, you'll learn fun facts about where it comes from and how long it's been around.Get ready to sharpen your mind with the ultimate book of mind-blowing brain teasers.

Adopting a historical-critical perspective, From Flappers to Rappers traces the origins of youth in the Roaring Twenties, a distinct form of culture that was revived by the rock and roll rebels of the 1950s, to an increasingly inclusive Digital era at the turn of the 21st century. Positioning youth culture as a 20th century social experiment that is coming to an end, Marcel Danesi discusses the various musically-defined eras that saw rise to hippie culture, punk, disco, and the hip-hop movement, among other social groups. The chapters explore how these generations were instrumental in the fight against racial discrimination, gender discrimination, and sexual repression. This assessible book analyzes how society is evolving in an age of globalization and new technologies that threaten youth culture, and questions what this shift implies for the world today. This textbook is an invaluable resource for students and teachers of sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies.Features:includes an accompanying workbook for studentstimely content that is relevant internationallyfeatures sections on iconic artists such as Elvis Presley and The Beatles

The novel The Godfather (1969) and the movie of the same name (1972) entrenched the myth of the Mafiosi as valiant knights, men of honor, and defenders of the traditional concept of family. As a result of this movie and other popular portrayals, the image of mobsters as “men of honor and tradition” has become iconic throughout America. Yet the truth of the matter belies this more noble image. The Mafia is a ruthless organization. Their concept of family is a twisted one. But viewed through the lens of popular culture, it is often difficult to separate the fiction from the reality. Made Men demystifies this image by dismantling the code of honor that Mafiosi live by, including its attendant symbols, rituals, and the lifestyle that it demands. Since the end of World War II, the Mafia in Italy and America has undergone major changes, which are charted by the authors through the present day. Nicaso and Danesi also consider all kinds of related organizations, not only the Italian ones, including the Yakuza, the Triads, and the Russian Mafia. The authors look at organized criminal culture in general, attempting to explain why its symbols, rituals, and practices continue to draw people in, both as literal members, or as consumers of the pop culture that glorifies them. This story traces and decodes the origins, history and success of the mafia in the U.S., bringing a better, and more accurate understanding of this ultimately brutal, violent, and corrupting “family business.” It is a story that has rarely been told in this way, but which is believed, nonetheless, important to tell.

This book examines the use of cryptography in both real and fictional crimes—a topic that is rarely broached. It discusses famous crimes, such as that of the Zodiac Killer, that revolve around cryptic messages and current uses of encryption that make solving cases harder and harder. It then draws parallels with the use of cryptography and secret writing in crime fiction, starting with Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, claiming that there is an implicit principle in all such writing—namely, that if the cryptogram is deciphered then the crime itself reveals its structure. The general conclusion drawn is that solving crimes is akin to solving cryptograms, as the crime fiction writers suggested. Cases of cryptographic crime, from unsolved cold cases to the Mafia crimes, are discussed and mapped against this basic theoretical assumption. The book concludes by suggesting that by studying cryptographic crimes the key to understanding crime may be revealed.

This brand-new puzzle book features 200 logic questions of varying types and difficulty. Mental workout warriors and logic lovers will adore The Everything Book of Logic Puzzles Volume I. You'll learn ten different kinds of puzzles and how to solve each, with the difficulty slowly increasing from basic to expert as you go along. And every single puzzle is specifically designed to improve memory, vocabulary, and logical reasoning. With increasingly difficult puzzles ranging from introductory to fiendish, and comprehensive answers to explain each puzzle, this book is perfect for puzzlers of all ages and skill levels

The Concise Dictionary of Popular Culture covers the theories, media forms, fads, celebrities and icons, genres, and terms of popular culture. From Afropop and Anime to Oprah Winfrey and the X-Files, the book provides more than just accessible definitions. Each of the more than 800 entries is cross-referenced with other entries to highlight points of connection, a thematic index allows readers to see common elements between disparate ideas, and more than 70 black and white photos bring entries to life.