once a phrase becomes memetic enough it can sorta become one chunk all together? like I think “yes in my backyard” is now p much one chunk for people familiar with it—it’s a pretty complex chunk if you were to parse it out (and relies on additional context that’s not actually in those words), but people can slot it into their working memory thoughts without pulling up all of that complexity every time
though, in the process of a slogan becoming a single chunk it probably also gets simplified and overlaid with valence & connotations that are not the same person to person
so I guess there’s an additional steering-step where you can—influence how exactly a given concept gets chunked into people’s heads (this is a thing political pundits do?)
additionally, things take up less working memory if they are mnemonic in some way, like rhyming or being a song. I am not sure how to translate this into “numbers of chunks”—a song is definitely not all one chunk bc you can partially know a song, even a line of a song is not all one chunk bc you can know part of a line, maybe songness ups the number of chunks you can learn?
then there’s also factors like things being easier to parse and remember if they are simpler, less surprising, more internally coherent. less inferential distance from what you already know, but also e.g. if it’s a song it’s easier if the music “fits” the words; it’s easier to remember a five-word sentence than five random words. this also seems hard to translate to the “number of chunks” model but it does matter
(I keep meaning to write up the example of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mury_(song) which I think I’ve told you about—in which a popular Catalan protest song that was originally straightforwardly about overthrowing oppressors was adapted to Polish in a version that also warned against appropriating anti-oppression rhetoric to do new oppression, and then that Polish version was adopted by Polish protestors with the warning bit basically skipped, to the frustration of the author. seems relevant here)
+1 to “a chunk can have multiple words in it”
related thoughts:
once a phrase becomes memetic enough it can sorta become one chunk all together? like I think “yes in my backyard” is now p much one chunk for people familiar with it—it’s a pretty complex chunk if you were to parse it out (and relies on additional context that’s not actually in those words), but people can slot it into their working memory thoughts without pulling up all of that complexity every time
though, in the process of a slogan becoming a single chunk it probably also gets simplified and overlaid with valence & connotations that are not the same person to person
so I guess there’s an additional steering-step where you can—influence how exactly a given concept gets chunked into people’s heads (this is a thing political pundits do?)
additionally, things take up less working memory if they are mnemonic in some way, like rhyming or being a song. I am not sure how to translate this into “numbers of chunks”—a song is definitely not all one chunk bc you can partially know a song, even a line of a song is not all one chunk bc you can know part of a line, maybe songness ups the number of chunks you can learn?
then there’s also factors like things being easier to parse and remember if they are simpler, less surprising, more internally coherent. less inferential distance from what you already know, but also e.g. if it’s a song it’s easier if the music “fits” the words; it’s easier to remember a five-word sentence than five random words. this also seems hard to translate to the “number of chunks” model but it does matter
(I keep meaning to write up the example of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mury_(song) which I think I’ve told you about—in which a popular Catalan protest song that was originally straightforwardly about overthrowing oppressors was adapted to Polish in a version that also warned against appropriating anti-oppression rhetoric to do new oppression, and then that Polish version was adopted by Polish protestors with the warning bit basically skipped, to the frustration of the author. seems relevant here)