We conducted three experiments to assess the hypothesis that mindlessness could be prevented with a simple linguistic variation. This amounts to teaching in a conditional rather than an absolute way. Accordingly, subjects in the first two experiments were either introduced to new objects conditionally (e.g., this could be an X) or unconditionally (e.g., this is an X), and the objects used were either unfamiliar or familiar. In each study a different need was then generated for which the object in question was not explicitly suited but could fulfill. Only those subjects in the conditional-unfamiliar group gave the creative response and met the need. When subjects were asked explicitly to generate novel uses for the target items, they had no difficulty doing so. However, given the way we are traditionally taught, it simply does not occur to us to think creatively unless explicitly instructed to do so. In the third experiment we introduced an unfamiliar item in one of three ways. In addition to the groups used in the earlier experiments, we added a group that was led to believe that the object was identifiable (unconditional) but was currently unknown. We also added a second need to determine whether the original conditional group truly learned conditionally or if they were in search of an absolute understanding of the target object. Significantly more of the subjects in the conditional group gave the creative response to both needs. A conditional understanding of the world seems to prevent mindlessness.Many studies conducted over the past decade have revealed the potential deleterious effects of mindless information processing. These consequences seem to be physical (e.g.

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This article examines and interprets the linguistic behaviour of `individuals' and `people' in the official literature of lifelong learning, in the light of theories of individualization in late modern culture and society, particularly those of Beck and Giddens. Using a 950,000-word corpus of recent government and academic publications on lifelong learning, it presents a concordance-based analysis of `individuals' as members of institutionalized collectivities, as agents, as rational citizens, and as consumers. It compares `individuals' with `people' and, for reference, presents a comparison with both words as they occur in the British National Corpus. The study concludes that close analysis of a corpus can provide valuable evidence for the constituent potential of language in theories of society and culture, and that the differences between `individuals' and `people' demonstrate that the discourse of lifelong learning has close affinities with contemporary sociocultural models of individualization, consumption and production, and with the risk society.

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The article demonstrates how a linguistic analysis of a cultural keywordlifelong learning-can be carried out in the context of a particular socioeconomic model with which it is associated-human capital-so äs to shed light on the dynamics of their relationship. The data of the study consist of a 900,000-word specialized corpus of recent British and EU literature on lifelong learning and a very large Standard corpus which is used for reference. Using corpus linguistic methods to study its collocational behavior, key features of the syntax and semantics of learning in the specialized corpus are compared with its behavior in general use, and these features are interpreted and compared with the assumptions of human capital theory. The results of the study suggest that 'lifelong learning', while a managed and commodified socioeconomic process inseparably entangled with other such processes, is most particular ly related t o human capital theory by its linguistic participants, especially by its association with individuals. In theoretical terms, the study demonstrates that the recurrent wordings which occur in the environment of learning are extending its meaning äs a socioeconomic activity, making it possible to show how linguistic categories become social categories' (Stubbs 1996: 194).