Category 1: Meanings of Words
What is the denotative meaning of a word?
The literal dictionary definition.
What is vague language?
Language with unclear meaning.
What is emotive language?
Language designed to trigger emotions.
What is metacognition?
Thinking about thinking.
What is conformity?
Following group behavior over judgment.
What is connotative meaning?
The emotional or personal association of a word.
Why is vague language problematic?
It causes confusion and ambiguity.
What is the purpose of emotive language?
Persuasion rather than information.
How does negative thinking affect outcomes?
Leads to pessimistic results.
What is groupthink?
Faulty decisions caused by group pressure.
Which meaning depends on sentence structure?
Syntactic meaning.
Give an example of a vague word.
Nice” / “Interesting” / “Old”.
Why can emotive language mislead?
It influences feelings instead of facts
How does positive thinking influence actions?
Encourages positive results.
Who coined the term groupthink?
Irving Janis.
Which meaning depends on context or situation?
Pragmatic meaning.
Give an example of precise language.
Triangle” / “Prime number”.
Example from the lecture of emotive language.
Relatively small classes”.
Why is thinking important in critical thinking?
Actions follow thought patterns.
What do Rationalists believe about knowledge?
Knowledge comes from reasoning.
What four elements create total word meaning?
Denotation, connotation, syntactic, pragmatic.
What skill reduces vagueness?
Critical thinking.
How can you detect emotive wording?
Replace words with neutral terms.
What phrase describes internal self-sabotage?
People are their own worst enemy.
What do Empiricists believe about knowledge?
Knowledge comes from sensory experience.