Language
Can we think without language?
Do you hear voices in your head? I do. I don't think I'm alone when I say I talk to myself. It's usually not out loud, but I hear the voice in my head as I type this. The words echo in my head, pinging around before coming out on the keyboard, like some mental pachinko machine. I know that I use language to think, but to what extent?
Do you hear voices in your head? I do. I don't think I'm alone when I say I talk to myself. It's usually not out loud, but I hear the voice in my head as I type this. The words echo in my head, pinging around before coming out on the keyboard, like some mental pachinko machine. I know that I use language to think, but to what extent?
To what extent is it possible to define words with words?
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How do we make sense of ideas through language?
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What is language?
How do we define language? Is it simply a pattern of symbols and sounds that communicates meaning? Is it still a language if no one speaks it? What if one person speaks a language but no one else understands. Is it still language? The video to the left explores the role of created languages and explores the connection with the way languages have evolved over time. |
Does language influence action?
Navigation and Pormpuraawans In Pormpuraaw, an Australian Aboriginal community, you wouldn’t refer to an object as on your “left” or “right,” but rather as “northeast” or “southwest,” writes Stanford psychology professor Lera Boroditsky (and an expert in linguistic-cultural connections) in the Wall Street Journal. About a third of the world’s languages discuss space in these kinds of absolute terms rather than the relative ones we use in English, according to Boroditsky. “As a result of this constant linguistic training,” she writes, “speakers of such languages are remarkably good at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes.” On a research trip to Australia, Boroditsky and her colleague found that Pormpuraawans, who speak Kuuk Thaayorre, not only knew instinctively in which direction they were facing, but also always arranged pictures in a temporal progression from east to west.
Gender in Finnish and Hebrew In Hebrew, gender markers are all over the place, whereas Finnish doesn’t mark gender at all, Boroditsky writes in Scientific American (PDF). A study done in the 1980s found that, yup, thought follows suit: kids who spoke Hebrew knew their own genders a year earlier than those who grew up speaking Finnish. (Speakers of English, in which gender referents fall in the middle, were in between on that timeline, too.) |
It's not just money...
Here's an excerpt from http://blog.ted.com/2013/02/19/5-examples-of-how-the-languages-we-speak-can-affect-the-way-we-think/ Blame and English Speakers In the same article, Boroditsky notes that in English, we’ll often say that someone broke a vase even if it was an accident, but Spanish and Japanese speakers tend to say that the vase broke itself. Boroditsky describes a study by her student Caitlin Fausey in which English speakers were much more likely to remember who accidentally popped balloons, broke eggs, or spilled drinks in a video than Spanish or Japanese speakers. (Guilt alert!) Not only that, but there’s a correlation between a focus on agents in English and our criminal-justice bent toward punishing transgressors rather than restituting victims, Boroditsky argues. Color among Zuñi and Russian Speakers Our ability to distinguish between colors follows the terms in which we describe them, as Chen notes in the academic paper in which he presents his research (forthcoming in the American Economic Review; PDF here). A 1954 study found that Zuñi speakers, who don’t differentiate between orange and yellow, have trouble telling them apart. Russian speakers, on the other hand, have separate words for light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (siniy). According to a 2007 study, they’re better than English speakers at picking out blues close to the goluboy/siniy threshold. |
Is all communication language?
Say What?
Are other systems of communication language? Is body language actually a language? What about music or math? Computer code? What distinguishes language from a more general idea of communication?
Are other systems of communication language? Is body language actually a language? What about music or math? Computer code? What distinguishes language from a more general idea of communication?
When a table is not a table
If I show you a picture of a table and say, "This is a table," I would technically be incorrect, as it is a picture of a table. The representation of a thing or idea is not the thing itself. The same would apply for language. The word is not the thing itself. In fact, there is absolutely no connection between the word and the thing or idea beyond the connection that we create or agree upon. This inherent gap between the meaning and the symbol allows for a huge range of interpretations and misinterpretations, such as the one that Calvin pokes fun at above.
Our common agreement about a word is conditional upon a shared experience--at least at a basic level. For example, if I say that I am in pain because I have appendicitis but the worst pain that you have encountered is a stubbed toe, you may be able to understand the concept of my pain but not to the degree that I would be encountering it. We can attempt, however, to explain non-shared experiences through metaphors to give another person a vague idea of our knowledge.
- What may be some strengths or limitations to using metaphors?
- To what extent is the understanding of language an extension of our own experiences? What is the overlap of personal and shared knowledge when it comes to language?
There may also be limits to what words can describe. Examine this website for limits in language and some connections to emotions.
- To what extent are emotions able to be articulated through language?
- Are there words that can only be understood if experienced within a particular culture?
- To what extent is knowledge and perhaps emotion shaped by culture?
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In the scene from the Star Trek episode on the left, Captain Picard attempts to communicate with a newly encountered race of people. Their language, though is comprised of complex allusions to events in their own cultural past.
To what extent does our own cultural past influence our understanding of language, especially with allusions, but also with slang, jargon and idioms? |
In a more contemporary example, the article linked below tells of the cultural role language played in the crash of the Asiatic flight.
Inherent or Created Meaning?
If you can read the message to the right, what does that say about how much language and meaning are constructed within your own brain. Being able to read the message may be just the beginning of the questioning. If you transpose the 'words' on the right into a logical sentence, what other things does your brain add because it makes supposedly logical connections? How much of what you read is interpreted and how much is inherently there? How much of the author's original intent can be transmitted through words? "The trace I leave to me means at once my death, to come or already come, and the hope that it will survive me. It is not an ambition of immortality; it is fundamental. I leave here a bit of paper, I leave, I die; it is impossible to exit this structure; it is the unchanging form of my life. Every time I let something go, I live my death in writing." |
"We can learn a lot about a person in the very moment that language fails them. In the very moment that they have to be more creative than they would have imagined in order to communicate. It’s the very moment that they have to dig deeper than the surface to find words, and at the same time, it’s a moment when they want to communicate very badly. They’re digging deep and projecting out at the same time.
[…] The idea is that the psychology of people is going to live right inside those moments when their grammar falls apart and, like being in a shipwreck, they are on their own to make it all work out." --Maria Popova |
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Language changes and morphs with each group and each generation. Shakespeare is celebrated for the numerous words he brought into the English language. At the time, his art form of drama, especially in the commoner language of English (as opposed to Latin or French spoken by the learned) was not considered 'high brow' entertainment. Is hip hop in a similar position now? How might they be similar or different in artistic form and skill? Examine the site link to the left for some interesting data.
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