First of all, yesterday, I saw Tom Brokaw walking down 6th Avenue and talking to someone. The voice was unmistakable – it was the former NBC Nightly News anchor. Not long after, I also saw Bravo TV’s Tim Gunn (Project Runway; Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style) walking down 6th Avenue by 44th Street. He’s definitely a meticulous person. Both men were somewhat shorter than I would have imagined.

Second, I am introducing a new word to the English lexicon. I cannot find the label for a linguistic semantic part of speech that is an affirmative of a negative statement. In English, responding “yes” to a negative statement signifies that one agrees with the negative statement; responding “no” signifies that one is negating the negative and thus, agreeing with the positive. The result can often be confusing and misleading to the interested parties.

The French use the word ‘si’ to affirm a negative statement, the Germans use the word ‘doch,’ and the Swedes/Danes use the word ‘jo.’ As such, I am proposing to use the word ‘nep’ as an English-language affirmation of a negative statement.

Thirdly, I have renamed my thesis: Corporate Social Responsibility Marketing Communications of American and Western European Multinational Enterprises: A longitudinal study of stakeholder engagement

This is more encompassing of what I am doing, part of which is looking at CSR reports from a marketing communications perspective. Before, it was almost like what I was doing was too focused for the scope of my paper. If I want to expand my research for a doctoral dissertation, I would want to focus purely on advertisements. However, I’d also be able to obtain research grants and devote all my time and study to become an expert on that field. But in this Master’s thesis, I’m finding myself looking not just at advertisements, but at CSR reports as well, since they’re used as marketing communications tools to engage stakeholders. This new title gives me a little breathing room to expand my research in fitting in with a Master’s level paper that is beholden to time and financial constraint for original research.