21 APR 2014 by ideonexus

 Realism in "A Song of Ice and Fire"

Game of Thrones takes place in a land that feels somewhat post-apocalyptic — there are occasional glimmers of hints that something really bad might have happened to Westeros long ago, and that's the reason for the irregular and attenuated seasons. But even more than that, we know Westeros is on the brink of a zombie apocalypse from the very first moment of the story. And part of the genius of Martin's slow-as-soil-erosion storytelling is that the zombie threat never quite arrives, but we ke...
Folksonomies: fiction fantasy criticism
Folksonomies: fiction fantasy criticism
  1  notes

The engaging storytelling is the result of its connection to how the world works with gray characters and glacial problems.

21 APR 2014 by ideonexus

 History in "A Song of Ice and Fire"

In this, the obvious contrast is with the only work of fantasy to compare in terms of ambition and achievement to Martin's own: The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's Middle-earth, unlike Westeros, is the creation of a dauntingly learned scholar: his ambition was to fashion from the languages, literature and history of the early middle ages an invented mythology that would nevertheless retain the stamp of the period that had inspired it. Martin's approach is infinitely more slapdash. Just as the ch...
Folksonomies: history fiction
Folksonomies: history fiction
  1  notes

ASOIF contains many references to real history.

28 JUN 2013 by ideonexus

 Bilinguals Perform Better at Non-Verbal Tests

When communicating, bilinguals must successfully manage two conflicting languages; one must be accessed whilst the other is suppressed, in order to avoid involuntary language switching. The cognitive demands of this task are thought to be the origin of the bilingual advantage in executive control. A series of studies have demonstrated that bilinguals outperform their peers on tests of non-linguistic interference. Bilingual children, middle aged adults and older adults consistently record fa...
Folksonomies: cognition bilingualism
Folksonomies: cognition bilingualism
  1  notes

Early bilingual children perform better at sensory tasks, while children who became bilingual at adolescence perform better at conflict resolution tasks.