Interestingly, the inspiration for this paper came from one of my softball practices a few months ago. We had a special day of practice in which we underwent “vision training”, a process that was meant to help us see the ball better and in turn improve our hitting.
The man who was teaching us the new vision skills had been involved in his job for several years. He claimed that it is harmful to continuously stare at the ball when it is in the pitcher’s hand because the receptors in the eyes tire out and do not see as clearly after a while. To avoid this problem, he recommended a skill called scanning, in which the batter uses their eyes to scan back and forth across the field before focusing on the pitch. This method is supposed to keep the batter’s vision clear.
Despite the fact that scanning is possible to do in any direction, the trainer claimed that nearly all of the athletes he had ever worked with scanned the field from left to right before looking at the pitcher. He suggested that this was a result of the athlete’s reading habits. He had worked mainly on the east coast with athletes who spoke English (and therefore read in a left to right direction).
I found this to be extremely interesting because many languages other than English are not written or read in a left to right direction but in the opposite way, or even from top to bottom. I questioned whether the famous Japanese baseball player, Ichiro, would scan from right to left because that is the way in which Japanese is often written. Can the structure of a language really influence the way that we think? To what extent can our language impact the way we look at the world around us?
The concept that native language influences the way in which people think about concrete objects dates back to the Whorf hypothesis (sometimes also called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis). In this hypothesis, the grammatical categories of a language influence how a person understands and views the surrounding world. In a sense people are “mental prisoners”, whose minds are restricted and defined by the constraints of their languages (Stafford, n.d.). The Whorf hypothesis is based on two theories: (1) linguistic relativity and (2) linguistic determinism. Linguistic relativity proposes that the languages of distinct cultures create different representative systems; language essentially molds culture. Linguistic determinism suggests that language influences a person’s thought process; what a person thinks is determined by the language that he or she speaks and in turn influences how he or she acts (Singh et al., 2003).
Whorf also suggested that the impact that language has on thought is not conscious. He claimed, “the forms of a person’s thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which he is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived intricate systematizations of his own language....every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationships and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness” (as cited in Singh, 2003, p. 24). In this way, speakers are unaware of both the differences in their language relative to others, and how their language alters their perceptions.
Essentially all psychologists and linguists agree that the Whorf hypothesis in its strongest form is too extreme to explain cross linguistic differences, as many note the significant impact of culture, environment, and other factors on how people think (3). Language is not the single determining factor of a person’s cognition. However, studies have demonstrated that although the language spoken by an individual does not determine everything about the way he or she thinks, it can clearly influence the individual’s world view in several important ways. Through examining different realms of research relating to the influence of language on thought, this paper will attempt to confirm that differences between languages in grammar, written form, and structure cause speakers of different languages to experience different perceptions of visual stimuli and in some situations even acquire distinct aesthetic preferences.
How does the directionality of written language influence our visual preferences?
Can the way we read and write really change how we see the world? Studies have shown that the way in which language is written can have a notable effect on visual tendencies. A study comparing French readers and Israeli readers demonstrated that the manner in which people read may influence their aesthetic preferences (Chokron, De Agostini, 2000). A group of one hundred and sixty two subjects, half of which were French (left to right) readers, and half of which were Israeli (right to left) readers, were examined to study whether the direction in which they read would have a significant influence on their aesthetic preferences. The group was selected to create a representative sample in terms of gender and age, and subjects were all monolingual and were tested in their native countries in order to standardize the experiment.
The French and Israeli subjects were given thirty pairs of mirror stimuli placed on top of one another, and were asked to state which picture in each pair was more aesthetically pleasing. Three types of pictures were shown: landscapes, moving objects with a one-way directionality, and static objects with a one-way directionality.
The results demonstrated that the French left to right readers preferred static and mobile objects with a left to right directionality, whereas the Israeli right to left readers preferred objects with a right to left directionality. This suggests that the directional orthography of a written language can impact a person’s aesthetic preferences for direction in visual stimuli.
In further analysis of the data, it was discovered that French children tended to only have a preference in examining mobile objects, while adults had a preference for both mobile and static objects. Likewise, Israeli adults had a preference for both mobile and static objects, while children seemed to have no preference at all. In viewing landscapes, readers did not tend to have a preference. This suggests that perhaps the cultural experience of reading a written language has a strong effect on the way that humans view discrete objects and motion. Adults naturally have more exposure to a written language as they grow older, as children may lack extensive exposure to written language at a young age. Because adults have more exposure to language than children, language may have a stronger influence on the way that adults think. This interaction between written language and culture (the extent of exposure to written language) could result in cross-linguistic differences in aesthetic preferences.
This evidence also opposes a prior theory claiming that preference for the position of stimuli results from the cerebral lateralization of the brain. Previous studies attributed visual preferences to the left brain being specialized for language-related functions in the majority of right-handed people (Chokron, De Agostini 2000). Because only right-handers were tested in the experiment, the difference in aesthetic preference can be attributed to language rather than cerebral dominance of one hemisphere of the brain.
Additional studies have demonstrated that when shown a picture, subjects can more rapidly match the picture to a sentence when the positions of the objects in the picture match the positions of the objects in the sentence. For example, Italian speakers have been determined to more easily match objects to sentences when the subject of the sentence is on the left and the object of the sentence is on the right, while Arabic speakers match the pictures to the sentences more quickly if the objects are in the opposite places (Maass, & Russo, 2003). The subjects also were more likely to draw pictures that corresponded to the directionality of their language. For instance, Italian speakers tended to draw subjects on the left and objects on the right, while the Arabic speakers did just the opposite. These findings have been attributed to the directionality of Italian and Arabic as written languages. Italian is written left to right, whereas Arabic is written right to left. In this manner written language seems to influence visual preferences, because it is easier for people to look at and think about objects if they correspond to the way that their native language is written.
Counterevidence has been presented however, that it is not language, but perhaps some universal characteristic in humans that causes them to think about objects as being in a certain place. One study, using English and Arabic speakers, found that when asked to draw pictures of agents performing tasks, neither group had a significant preference that was dependent on language or sentence structure (Altmann, et al, 2006). Most subjects preferred to draw objects on the right side of the paper, particularly with objects that were static. However, it is interesting to note that the subjects were not given complete verbal sentences to draw the pictures, but rather just verbs and a stick figure model. They were given a card with things like “kicks”, “is kicked”, “spray”, “is sprayed”, rather than fluid sentences and were asked to draw a picture when just shown one verb and the stick figure. The participants were forced to construct the sentence in their mind, which could lead to disparities and mistakes of which the scientists were unaware. The sentences drawn were not necessarily standardized.
Many additional researchers (especially in earlier experiments) have found that people regardless of native language prefer objects on the right side, particular with materials lacking motion. They have also found a preference for left to right directionality in thought and have attributed this trend to the structure of the brain. In many experiments, these events have been associated with asymmetrical hemispheric activation (the left hemisphere being more active than the right hemisphere) in using language processing skills (Chokron, & De Agostini, 2000). However, it is important to take into account that the data from these experiments often only used English speakers, or speakers of one language. Therefore the results may have in fact suggested a connection to language that was overlooked because it was not the focus of the experiment, and interpretations of data may have been flawed. Although the data from this experiment (unlike many previous studies), takes into account that speakers of different languages may perceive things differently, the data is not entirely compelling, claiming that “there was considerable individual variation in bias strength among individuals of both groups,” and that “English speakers showed a significant bias for drawing agents on the right when illustrating passive verbs, but their rightward bias for the positions of agents when illustrating active verbs did not reach significance.” (Altmann et al., 2006).
The data from this stick figure and verb experiment seems less valid than the previous studies mentioned, however, if it is accurate, it may provide some interesting insight into visual preferences. It is likely that language is not the only factor responsible in determining how people prefer to look at visual stimuli or how people draw, but one of many. It is important not to assume that language is the all-determining factor in how people think. Perhaps an interaction of cerebral dominance, culture (such as our exposure or lack of exposure to language) and language itself governs preferences for visual directionality. The extent to which language alone influences how humans view things is difficult to determine because it is very difficult to isolate language from culture and potentially innate human abilities. The overall consensus seems to be that both language and the structure of the brain seem to influence skills involving directionality with language being the stronger and more influential factor (Maass A., & Russo A., 2003).
It appears clear in a great amount of the recent data that humans tend to prefer visual stimuli that coincide with the structure of their written language. In this sense, the written languages a person is exposed to can influence their aesthetic preferences and whether they perceive a directionality in the world.
How does grammatical gender influence our perceptions of objects?
Studies have also shown that the presence of grammatical gender in a language can influence the way in which people perceive objects. In many languages grammatical gender deems words as either feminine or masculine (and in some languages neuter,vegetative, and other genders (Boroditsky, Schmidt, & Phillips, 2002)), and associates these words with matching gendered pronouns and articles. Grammatical gender exists in several languages such as German, Spanish, Russian and French.
In one study, German and Spanish subjects (who both understood English) were given a list of twenty-four objects (in English) that contained opposite genders in German in Spanish (Boroditsky, Schmidt, & Phillips, 2002)). For example, the list contained a sun, which in German is feminine and in Spanish is masculine, and a key, which is feminine in Spanish and masculine in German. When asked to describe the objects, the subjects tended to describe them with adjectives that agreed with the grammatical gender. For instance, Spanish speakers described the key (in stereotypically feminine terms) as “golden, intricate, little, lovely, shiny, and tiny” while German speakers described it (in stereotypically masculine terms) as “hard, heavy, jagged, serated, and useful”. These descriptions occurred consistently throughout the experiment. Because there is no inherent gender in the random objects used in the experiment, the data suggests that grammatical gender of a word alone influences the way that people think about objects.
This study was also repeated with pictures to demonstrate that even without words or labels or any visual influence of language, speakers of different languages thought about objects in different ways. Subjects were shown to match pictures of objects with a specific grammatical gender to people of the same biological gender. Both the Spanish speakers and the German speakers rated objects that were grammatically feminine to be more like biological females and objects that were grammatically masculine to be more like biological males (Boroditsky, Schmidt, & Phillips, 2002).
German and Spanish speakers were also more likely to remember objects that were given English human names that matched their grammatical gender. For example, an apple named Patrick would be easier for German speakers to remember than Spanish speakers because an apple is grammatically masculine in German and feminine in Spanish. Both Spanish and German speakers consistently remembered English names for objects whose gender matched the grammatical gender of the object in their native language, and did not consistently remember the human names given to objects when the genders of the name and the object did not match. English speakers tested in the same experiment could recall the names as consistently as the German and Spanish speakers did with matching genders, and better than German and Spanish speakers when the genders did not match (Boroditsky, Schmidt, & Phillips, 2002).
Bilingual speakers of German and Spanish were also tested. Results demonstrated that the degree to which the subjects assigned an object to a corresponding German grammatical gender or a corresponding Spanish grammatical gender was dependent on each person’s background. Subjects choices reflected their skill in the language, whether they had been born in a Spanish-speaking or a German-speaking country, how many years they had studied each language, and how much earlier they had started learning one language than the other. This suggests that exposure and immersion in a language is a cultural influence that affects how much language influences perceptions of objects as corresponding with their grammatical genders. Once again the significance of the overlap between language and culture is demonstrated (Boroditsky, Schmidt, & Phillips, 2002).
Interestingly enough, unlike many previous studies regarding grammatical gender, the tests were conducted in English. This suggests that the perception of objects as having gender is a part of the way a person thinks. The subjects thought of the objects as feminine or masculine even when communicating in a language that was not their native language that also did not have a grammatical gender.
Several arguments have been raised against this concept, stating that differences between grammatical genders do not influence thought, but rather the culture of the languages does. For example, a society whose moon has a grammatical gender of masculine, may tend to tell myths and stories to children growing up in which the moon is assigned masculine characteristics (Chris, 2005). However, an additional study by Boroditsky, Schmidt, and Phillips (2002), adjusted for this possible confounding factor by attempting to isolate language from the influence of culture.
In this study, tests were given to English speakers only, and a fake language called Gumbuzi was used. The subjects were told that the Gumbuzi language had words that were both soupative and oosative (Soupative and oosative were two completely random categories chosen). Next the subjects were shown drawings of four males, four females, and twelve inanimate objects, and were taught which would be considered soupative and oosative until they had mastered them. Each category (soupative and oosative) always contained one gender. For example, in one group there would be pans, forks, pencils, ballerinas, and girls. In the other would be pots, spoons, pens, giants, and boys. The gender neutral words were sometimes present in one category and sometimes present in the other to make sure that people would not be biased toward a certain set of words as being associated with feminine and masculine qualities. (So the pans, forks, and pencils would sometimes be with ballerinas and girls and at other times would be with giant and boys). The subjects were later shown unlabeled pictures of the objects and asked to state adjectives to describe the objects in the pictures. The results demonstrated that similarly to the experiment with German and Spanish speakers, the subjects generated more masculine adjectives to describe objects when they were grouped with biological males and more feminine adjectives when grouped with biological females. Subjects also rated pictures that were within the same group (soupative or oosative) as being more similar.
The studies of subjects who learned the Gumbuzi language demonstrate that language can have an influence on how people think even when the people have not been exposed to any cultural factors that connect to the language. This study, alongside the mass amounts of data collected by Boroditsky et al., provides compelling evidence that the grammatical gender of language has a notable effect on the way in which humans perceive objects that surround them.
How do counting words and pluralisation influence our perceptions of visual objects?
Studies by Lucy and Gaskins (1996) of the Yucatec Maya language demonstrate that the way in which we describe inanimate objects (such as whether we pluralise them or whether they are defined by a name or by the material they are literally made out of) may influence how we perceive and think about these objects.
Yucatec Maya, a language spoken in southeastern Mexico, describes inanimate objects differently than the English language. English (as well as several other languages) is said to have what is called a “count-mass syntax”. English use “count nouns” to describe discrete objects such as books and “mass nouns” (collective nouns) to describe entities that inherently consist of more than one thing, such as the word “sand”. In the English language, count nouns are pluralised while mass nouns are not (Thomas et al, 2003). In Yucatec Mayan, only animate objects (such as animals) are pluralised. Inanimate discrete objects (such as a books), and inanimate, tangible substances with “malleable form” such as sand are not pluralised. In this sense, Yucatec Mayan differs in a big way from English in the sense that inanimate discrete objects are not pluralised.
Lucy’s experiment examined whether this difference in the structure of Yucatec Mayan and English resulted in a significant effect on how people perceive and recall visual stimuli. He showed the two groups of speakers a series of pictures. In Picture 1, there was a hut next to four trees and a well. There was also a boy, a hen, a bottle, and a man feeding corn to three pigs. The subjects were asked to describe the picture. Next, Lucy had the speakers describe Picture 1 while not looking at the picture, testing their memories of what was in the picture. Then Lucy showed other similar pictures to the subjects. Picture 2 was missing the boy, Picture 3 had no bottle, Picture 4 included a broom, Picture 5 had extra corn by the hen, and Picture 6 had extra corn by the pigs. The subjects were asked to choose which picture was most similar to Picture 1. In the last task, the speakers were given all six pictures and were asked to choose which was the original Picture 1.
Lucy found that in all of the tasks, the English speakers were consistent in giving numbers of all of the objects in the picture (both animate and inanimate discrete objects) with the exception of the corn. The Yucatec Maya speakers did not remember number as well as the English speakers, but remembered plurals for the animate objects better than the inanimate objects. This suggests that pluralisation, or the lack thereof, can have a substantial effect on how a person views objects. The Yucatec Mayan speakers perceive the picture scenes as different from the English speakers by not noticing variation in number as much as English speakers due in inanimate discrete objects because they do not pluralise these objects as in the English language. The fact that both English speakers and the Yucatec Maya speakers usually failed to notice the relative increase in corn is consistent with the fact that neither language pluralises mass objects like corn.
Yucatec Mayan also does not have a boundary in describing count objects versus mass objects like English does (Boroditsky, 2001). Yucatec Mayan describes almost all nouns in terms of what they consist of, using classifiers to describe them. What would be considered a “candle” in English, would be considered, “one-long-thin wax” in Yucatec Mayan (Boroditsky, 2001). In a sense, the Yucatec Mayan word could be used to describe several long thin objects made of wax, not just candles. On the other hand, English words are more likely to be used to describe other objects with similar shape and function. A table is a table whether it is made out of wood or plastic.
When speakers of Yucatec Mayan were shown a series of discrete objects, they tended to see discrete objects that were made of the same material as being more similar. English speakers tended to see discrete objects with similar shapes as being more alike. For example, if Yucatec Mayan speakers were shown a plastic comb with a handle, a plastic comb without a handle, and a wooden comb without a handle, they would see the two plastic combs as being more similar. English speakers, on the other hand, were more likely to say that the two combs resembing each other in shape would be the most similar (Boroditsky, 2001).
The study suggests that as a result of the way the two cultures use language to describe discrete objects, English speakers recognize discrete objects more by their shape, while Yucatec Maya speakers recognize discrete objects more by their material composition. The essence of the object is conceptualized differently by Yucatec Maya speakers and English speakers. The fact that Yucatec Mayan forces speakers to refer to the substances present in an object when they name it, while English does not require this action causes speakers of each language to perceive the objects differently.
Interestingly, the ability to discriminate between material substances and discrete objects is one that has been found in young children. One study showed that English-speaking children who had not yet learned languages were able to distinguish between material substances such as clay, and sand, and discrete objects with specific shape. When given a noun and shown a discrete object, the children tended to give meaning to the objects in its shape. When given a noun and shown a material substance, the children projected the word onto the material substance rather than the substances shape (Imai, & Mazuka, 2007).
The study suggests that the ontological distinction between objects and substances is an innate factor that occurs prior to language acquisition in human beings. However, language can cause its speakers to attend more to one of these categories. In the English language, discrete objects are almost always recognized by shape, while material substances (like sand or mud) are referred to by the substance they are. With the Yucatec Maya language, all objects (both discrete and material substances) are referred to by their contents. It seems that as we acquire language, we learn to think about discrete objects in the context of our language, and this influence and changes the whether we conceptualize these objects more by their shape or by their constitution.
How can different meanings of words/absence of words influence the way we think about objects?
What happens when an object is described by one word in one language but by two different words in another language? Does this cause the speaker of one language to view the object as a single entity and the speaker of the other language to view it as two separate entities?
In the Japanese language, there is no general word to describe water, but rather two different words to describe water as hot or cold. “Mizu”, or “tumetai mizu” refers to cold water, and “o-yu” or “atatakai o-yu” refers to warm water (Busbin, 2007). Curtis Hayes (1996) demonstrated that people who speak Japanese perceive the concept of water as different than those who speak English. His studies suggest that the way that people who speak Japanese construct their idea of water is heavily influenced by their language. People who speak only Japanese think of only hot or cold water, rather than just water. Their language does not include a general word for water, which causes some scientists to argue that Japanese monolingual speakers cannot conceptualize a general view of water, but can only see it in terms of being hot water or cold water. (3).
Kazuko Busbin, Japanese professor at Stanford University and native Japanese speaker claims that learning the concept of water in English was not difficult to grasp, despite the fact that Japanese contains two different words to describe what English only uses one word to describe. Busbin suggests that hot and cold water may have served a different function historically in the Japanese society, therefore creating distinctions in words and vocabulary. This would argue that the language evolved from the culture, and that the concept of hot and cold water as different entities did not evolve from language.
Perhaps the concept of water alone was not hard for Busbin to grasp because the use of adjectives in English to modify water served as a simple replacement to the use of different words for water in Japanese. (It is also important to note that Busbin is one person; if this experiment was actually tested there could be a great deal of variation between individuals). In a sense, English speakers view hot water and cold water as two different things as well; however they see them both as being part of a larger, more general category of water. English uses adjectives to modify the water instead of entirely different words. The fact that Japanese speakers can opt to use the adjectives “tumetai” (cold) and “atatakai” (hot) to emphasize hot and cold water suggests a similarity to English in using adjectives to modify the water. It is unlikely that if Japanese speakers saw mizu and o-yi as two completely different entities that they would use opposing adjectives to describe them. They describe them as if mizu and o-yi were opposites of one single entity, as part of a bigger whole. The use of adjectives to modify the already distinguished hot and cold water in Japanese suggest that there is a link between these words and that Japanese speakers do see hot and cold water as similar rather than completely independent of one another.
It also seems probable that although Japanese speakers have two different words for hot and cold water, that they would detect a similarity in the composition of water that would allow them to see hot and cold water in the same light. For example, if a Japanese speaker were to heat a teakettle filled with water to make tea, they would first put in cold water (mizu), and hot water (o-yu) would come out. Clearly, even if Japanese speakers thought of mizu and o-yu as two different materials, they would be able to understand that a link existed between the two. Hot water and cold water share several similar characteristics; they are both wet, clear, liquids that can be consumed, and used for washing or several other activities. These characteristics can be observed in the absence of language. Comparing hot and cold water is not the same as comparing a cat and a dog. The research suggesting that Japanese speakers cannot conceptualize the idea of just water seems flawed and illogical, and in this case language does not seem to cause a substantial difference in conceptualization. It would be interesting to do more research in this area to determine whether there is an important effect resulting from the use of two different words for water.
How can Color Naming Words Influence our Perception of Color?
If we call a colors by two different names does it cause us to view these colors differently? If the boundaries of what is considered a color in one language overlap with the boundaries of what is considered another color in a different language, how does this affect our perception of the color?
Cross-linguistic differences have been shown to influence how humans view color. In past studies, color naming has been found to be somewhat universal, as many languages possess the same focal colors with similar boundaries. However, there is a wide spectrum of color description variation across languages. For example, In Bassa (of Sierra Leone) and Dani (of New Guinea), there are only two color words, one to describe black and cool colors, another to describe white and warm colors. English seems to fall toward the middle of the spectrum, having 11 basic colors (Gritchka, 2002).
A study at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology by Winawer and others (2007) suggests that Russian speakers perceive different shades of blue as more different than English speakers. In Russian, there are two words for blue: “goluboy” (meaning light blue) and “siniy” (meaning dark blue). Similar to how Japanese has different words for water, Russian has complete different words for blue, rather than regarding them both as variations of one color blue.
The subjects of the experiment (Russian speakers and English speakers) were given sets of three blue squares, each set containing two squares that were similar to each other, and one square that was supposed to stick out as being different. The scientists attempted to determine whether the Russian speakers would complete the task more quickly than English speakers, particularly when the two shades of blue spanned the barrier between goluboy and siniy (Hopkin, 2007). Russian speakers were found to perform better when distinguishing between different shades of blue, suggesting that they perceive light and dark blue as two completely different colors.
Results demonstrated that the Russian speakers performed especially well (and much better than the English speakers) when the colors were very close together and overlapped the boundary between siniy and goluboy (Winawer, et al., 2007). This emphasizes that Russian speakers indeed perceived siniy and goluboy as two different colors while English speakers saw them as more similar and harder to discriminate between.
The quicker performance by the Russian speaking subjects continued when they were asked to perform spatial tasks, but disappeared when the subjects were forced to repeat numbers in their head while performing the task (Hopkin, 2007). This effect demonstrates that verbal interference hindered their ability to discriminate as well between colors, and suggests that language processing skills are crucial to this distinction.
This study suggests that because Russians are forced to distinguish between “goluboy” and “siniy” in using everyday language while examining everyday objects, they can better detect the differences between the colors. Because this distinction is not required in English, English users cannot as readily perceive the differences between different shades of blue. This suggests that language played a key role in allowing the rapid discrimination between the shades of blue, and in general affects how we perceive different colors.
A counterargument to this claim has been presented. Most languages with a variety of words for blue (only about 5% of languages) are found at high northern latitudes, and there may be a physiological effect that makes people at these latitudes more proficient at seeing different shades of blue (Ani, 2007). There is no direct evidence to support this claim, however, interesting studies of people living in the tropics demonstrate that they cannot really distinguish between the colors green and blue. This difficulty has been attributed to climate, as bright sunlight can damage the retina, causing the lenses of the eyes to be more yellowed (Hopkin, 2007). This suggests that perhaps, physical factors could play a significant role in color perception. Perhaps people living at medium latitudes have slight sun damage which keeps them from perceiving differences between blue. Based on eye sensitivity to focal points of certain colors, perceptions could differ. Or perhaps the northern latitude consistently have more different types of blue in the environment, while the tropics lack very different blue and greens.
Previous studies also suggest that cross-linguistic differences color perception may result from “evolutionary tuning” of colors that are present in the environment, rather than from the structure of language (Kay, & Regier, 2006). Possibly, just as we lose the ability to discriminate between phonemes that we never hear as infants, we lose the ability to discriminate the colors we do not see often.
Because the Russian and English speakers tested by Winawer lived in similar environments (Boston), the climate effects are standardized (assuming that the subjects lived in Boston for their entire lives). Therefore, it does not seem likely that the subjects’ immediate environment altered their lenses and their color perception in this experiment. However, the evolutionary argument is still possible, if over time the eyes of people living at different latitudes adjust accordingly. Unfortunately, there has been no substantial research of the subject, and the theory is one that is difficult to test. It is also important to note that in this experiment, the Russian advantage vanished when the subjects were asked to perform a verbal task (reciting numbers in their head). This suggests that the ability to discriminate better than English speakers was language-related rather than a product of environment or genetics.
In Summary:
Although there is no way to prove indefinitely that language changes how the world is perceived, the studies mentioned provide substantial evidence that language does play a key role in shaping human thought. The research demonstrates that in a variety of situations, language has a significant effect on the way in which people perceive visual stimuli. From the differences in directionality of written language, to grammatical gender, to disparities in word definitions and sentence structure, native languages can truly alter the way in which their speakers view and understand their surrounding environment.
It is apparent that although language can influence how we view visual stimuli, it is not fully responsible for how we see the world. Because cross-linguistic differences can result from several influences, in many cases, it is difficult to determine whether the way people view the world is a result of language, or other factors such as culture or physical environment. Many who argue against the idea that language influences thought say that culture influences language. For example, the fact that a language only has specific words is reflective of the culture and environment of the people who speak the language. The language is formatted to fit the surrounding circumstances of the people. The culture influences the language rather than the language influencing the culture.
It is important to separate cultural influences on language when examining whether or not a certain element of language influences human thought and perception of visual stimuli. Many of the studies mentioned gave multiple possible explanations of the data because in most cases it is nearly impossible to completely isolate the effects of language from the effects of other factors. However, by performing standardized experiments and controlling possible confounding factors, it is easier to rule out factors other than language that may influence data in a misleading way. The majority of the experiments discussed went to great efforts to ensure the reliability and validity of the data, and to organize studies in which language would be the determining factor in how subjects responded.
However, outside of the laboratory and in the real world, our language cannot act independently of our culture and our environment to impact our perceptions and the way we think. No one element determines or constrains human thought. The interaction of several factors simultaneously shape how we respond to visual stimuli. Language works alongside our culture and the other influences of our environment to mold a world view that is unique to all languages, cultures, genders, ages, and individuals.
Studying how language impacts the way in which people view the world can serve an incredibly important function. The ability to understand others, and the importance of being able to step outside our own perspectives to see things in the eyes of others is crucial to successful communication. The fact that language can influence our point of view can help us to comprehend how others may see the world differently. In a day and age when communication is necessary and extremely significant, understanding how language operates is essential.
Works Cited/References:
1. Altmann, L. J. P., Saleem, A., Kendall, D., Heilman, K.M., Gonzalez Rothi, L. J. (June 2006). Orthographic directionality and thematic role illustration in English and Arabic. Brain and Language, 97, 3, 306-316. Retrieved on December 8, 2007 from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WC0-4J3NY1H-1&_user=145269&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000012078&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=145269&md5=f3915b6495fc01a364f4226c8b072984
2. Ani (May 1, 2007). Why spoken Russian can help perceive colours better than English. Retrieved on December 9, 2007 from http://in.news.yahoo.com/070501/139/6f7aw.html.
3. Author unknown (n.d.) Current interpretations of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Retrieved on December 5, 2007 from http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/4110/whorf.html .
4. Boroditsky, L. (2001). Linguistic relativity. Article 00567, Retrieved on November 28, 2007 from http://www-psych.stanford.edu/%7Elera/papers/ECS-proofs.pdf
5. Boroditsky, L., Schmidt, L.A., & Phillips, W. (2002). “Sex, Syntax, and Semantics”. Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved on November 28, 2007 from http://www-psych.stanford.edu/%7Elera/papers/gender.pdf
6. Chokron, S., & De Agostini, M. (September 2000). Reading Habits Influence Aesthetic Preference. Cognitive Brain Research, 10, 1-2, 45-49. Retrieved on November 29, 2007, from .http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6SYV-414N3N5-5&_user=10&_coverDate=09%2F30%2F2000&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=c68de114591df3d1377f342c6c5e169
7. Chris. (2005, August 10). The systematizing moon and the empathizing sun. Retrieved on December 3, 2007 from http://mixingmemory.blogspot.com/2005/08/systematizing-moon-and-empathizing-sun.html
8. Gritchka. (2002, December 23). Colour terms in language. Retrieved on December 9, 2007 from http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=906954
9. Hopkin, M. (2007, April 30). Seeing the blues. Nature, 10.1038. Retrieved on December 9, 2007 from http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070430/full/news070430-2.html
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=906954
10. Imai, M., & Mazuka, R. (2007). Language-Relative Construal of Individuation Constrained by Universal Ontology: Revisiting Language Universals and Linguistic Relativity. Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal. 31, 3, 385-413.
11. Kay, P., & Regier, T. (2006). Language, Thought, and Color: Recent Developments. Retrieved on December 10, 2007 from http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~kay/tics.pdf.
12. Lucy, J.A. (1996). Grammatical Categories and Cognition: A Case Study of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved on November 27, from http://books.google.com/books?id=loptW4eV4IkC&pg=PA246&lpg=PA246&dq=lucy+and+gaskins+yucatec+mayans&source=web&ots=xkWDPm3aIM&sig=5NHZ6vQ9rVNI5-tiNYe9OSC9Uo8#PPA246,M1
13. Maass A., & Russo A. (July 2003). Directional Bias in the Mental Representation of Spatial Events: Nature or Culture? Psychological Science, 14, 4, 296-301. Retrieved on November 29, 2007 from http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/action/showFullText?submitFullText=Full+Text+HTML&doi=10.1111%2F1467-9280.14421
14. Stafford, A. (n.d.). The Whorf hypothesis examined. Retrieved on December 5, 2007 from http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/language/whorf.html
15. Thomas, L., Wareing, S., Singh, I., Stilwell Peccei, J., Thomborrow, J, & Jones, J. (2003). Language, Society, and Power. Routledge. Retrieved on November 30, 2007 from http://books.google.com/books?id=BPRkvgWXVhcC&dq=quoted+in+gumperz+and+levinson+%221996+21%22+unconscious+whorf.
16. Winawer, J., Witthoft, N., Frank, M. C., Wu, A., Wade, A.R., & Boroditsky, L. (2007, May 8). Russian Blues Reveal Effects of Language on Color Discrimination. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104 (19), 7780-7785. Retrieved on December 9, 2007 from http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1876524
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Idioms and Language
An idiom is is "an expression in the usage of a language that is peculiar to itself either grammatically or in having a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements." It is a statement that conveys a meaning that is different than its literal meaning, and cannot be directly translated.
The word "idiom" has a very broad, general definition and can include "anything from the colloquial to the metaphor." Idioms, like slang, generally are contained within different regions or classes of people and can create subcultures within a larger group of people. Idioms have been around for an extremely long time, considering that some are found in places like the Bible and works by Shakespeare.
Here is a list of "Popular Idioms" given on the website. (Although I must admit that some of these I have not heard of at all).
•Accident waiting to happen: Hindsight phrase, frequently used in the wake of a disaster.
•Ace in the hole: A hidden advantage or secret source of power. An American phrase used as the title of a Cole Porter song in the show "Let's Face It" (1941). It originated from the game of stud poker. A "hole" card is one not revealed until the betting has taken place. If it is an ace, so much the better.
•Acid test: A crucial test. Originally an "acid test" involved the use of aqua fortis to test for gold.
•Bark up the wrong tree: This phrase meaning "to follow a false scent" is of U.S. origin (by 1832) and is said to come from raccoon hunting. As this activity is done at night (raccoons being nocturnal) and as, if chased, raccoons run up trees, it would be quite possible for a dog to bark mistakenly under the wrong tree.
•Eat humble pie: Meaning, "To submit to humiliation." The "humbles" or "umbles" were the less appealing parts of a deer killed in a hunt. They would be given to those of lower rank and perhaps served as "humble pie" or "umble pie."
•Hair of the dog: Meaning, "Another drink of the same to help cure a hangover." This comes from the old belief that a bite from a mad dog could be cured if you put hair from the same dog's tail on the wound.
•Ivory tower: Meaning, "To live in intellectual seclusion and protected from the harsh realities of life." The expression comes from Sainte-Beuve writing in 1837 about the turret room in which the Comte de Vigny, a French writer worked.
It appears that idioms are present in many languages other than English as well. For example, in German, people sleep like woodchucks and marmots, rather than logs. Instead of pulling someone's leg, in German you take someone in your arms, and in Spanish you take them by the hair.
American Sign Language has been found to have a few idioms, although idioms do not seem to be as prevalent in American Sign Language as in English. One ASL idiom, "train go sorry", means that the person speaking will not repeat what has been said because it is the listener's fault for not paying attention. Another "swallow fish", is similar to the English idiom, "you fell for it, line, bait, and sinker." Many people argue, however, that sign language idioms are not really idioms within sign language, but simply briefer deviations of English idioms that are not unique. A potential counterexample to this statement that is interesting is the idiom "Fish", meaning "I am done; it's over." The idiom plays on the fact that when deaf people mouth the word "finish", their lip movements appear ot be saying "fish."
Because idioms have been found in languages like English, Spanish, German, and American Sign Language, idioms clearly must be a universal element of language (just kidding!). But it is interesting that they appear in more than one language.
What purpose do idioms serve in language? Do they have a specific function?
Idioms can be difficult to understand, especially with the mass media in the world today. Idioms can spread through television, movies, and music so rapidly that soon their original meanings are lost. Generally idioms "stem from something real", but over time the specific reference to which the idiom was created is almost always forgotten along the way. David Simpson, an English professor at the University of California Berkeley, claims that the origin of an idiom is nearly impossible to identify. People often make up stories that are inaccurate to explain idioms, such as explaining that eating "a square meal" originated because people used to use square plates.
Does the fact that their origins are often lost suggest that idioms may have a negative impact on language? Do they make language more difficult to understand and unclear? Or do they enhance language and thought by comparing our experiences to abstract ideas? Does it even really matter that most people cannot track idioms to their original references if the people still know what the idiom means?
Susan Gass, a professor of linguistics at Michigan State University, claims that, "Somebody born in the '80s or '90s probably knows what it means but doesn't really understand the concept when it originated." She uses the example of a person sounding like a broken record, who says things over and over again like a record does when it becomes scratched. People who never listened to records probably do not understand the direct reference, but they do understand that people who sound like a broken record keep repeating themselves. In this sense, if the meaning of the idiom is understood, is it really that big of a deal if the origin is not understood? As long as the meaning is conveyed, is the origin even significant?
Translation of idioms could potentially cause confusion. For example, (in the idiom mentioned above) "taking someone in your arms" in German refers to "pulling their leg" in English. A monolingual English person and a monolingual German person would have very different ideas about what each of the phrases meant. They would be likely to take the other language's idiom literally in translation, and even if they were told the meaning might struggle to understand the idiom because they were unaware of the origin.
Idioms are an interesting element in language. What drives humans to use these metaphors and comparisons? How is it that idioms continue to carry meaning between generations and cultures (such as the "broken record" idiom) when what they describe is no longer remembered? I would love to hear your thoughts :)!
Links:
http://www.courant.com/features/lifestyle/hc-sundaylifeidioms.artnov25,0,2633476.story
http://www.able2know.org/forums/about3936.html
http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-layout/idioms.htm
http://deaf-tea-time.blogspot.com/2007/06/idioms-does-asl-have-idioms.html
The word "idiom" has a very broad, general definition and can include "anything from the colloquial to the metaphor." Idioms, like slang, generally are contained within different regions or classes of people and can create subcultures within a larger group of people. Idioms have been around for an extremely long time, considering that some are found in places like the Bible and works by Shakespeare.
Here is a list of "Popular Idioms" given on the website. (Although I must admit that some of these I have not heard of at all).
•Accident waiting to happen: Hindsight phrase, frequently used in the wake of a disaster.
•Ace in the hole: A hidden advantage or secret source of power. An American phrase used as the title of a Cole Porter song in the show "Let's Face It" (1941). It originated from the game of stud poker. A "hole" card is one not revealed until the betting has taken place. If it is an ace, so much the better.
•Acid test: A crucial test. Originally an "acid test" involved the use of aqua fortis to test for gold.
•Bark up the wrong tree: This phrase meaning "to follow a false scent" is of U.S. origin (by 1832) and is said to come from raccoon hunting. As this activity is done at night (raccoons being nocturnal) and as, if chased, raccoons run up trees, it would be quite possible for a dog to bark mistakenly under the wrong tree.
•Eat humble pie: Meaning, "To submit to humiliation." The "humbles" or "umbles" were the less appealing parts of a deer killed in a hunt. They would be given to those of lower rank and perhaps served as "humble pie" or "umble pie."
•Hair of the dog: Meaning, "Another drink of the same to help cure a hangover." This comes from the old belief that a bite from a mad dog could be cured if you put hair from the same dog's tail on the wound.
•Ivory tower: Meaning, "To live in intellectual seclusion and protected from the harsh realities of life." The expression comes from Sainte-Beuve writing in 1837 about the turret room in which the Comte de Vigny, a French writer worked.
It appears that idioms are present in many languages other than English as well. For example, in German, people sleep like woodchucks and marmots, rather than logs. Instead of pulling someone's leg, in German you take someone in your arms, and in Spanish you take them by the hair.
American Sign Language has been found to have a few idioms, although idioms do not seem to be as prevalent in American Sign Language as in English. One ASL idiom, "train go sorry", means that the person speaking will not repeat what has been said because it is the listener's fault for not paying attention. Another "swallow fish", is similar to the English idiom, "you fell for it, line, bait, and sinker." Many people argue, however, that sign language idioms are not really idioms within sign language, but simply briefer deviations of English idioms that are not unique. A potential counterexample to this statement that is interesting is the idiom "Fish", meaning "I am done; it's over." The idiom plays on the fact that when deaf people mouth the word "finish", their lip movements appear ot be saying "fish."
Because idioms have been found in languages like English, Spanish, German, and American Sign Language, idioms clearly must be a universal element of language (just kidding!). But it is interesting that they appear in more than one language.
What purpose do idioms serve in language? Do they have a specific function?
Idioms can be difficult to understand, especially with the mass media in the world today. Idioms can spread through television, movies, and music so rapidly that soon their original meanings are lost. Generally idioms "stem from something real", but over time the specific reference to which the idiom was created is almost always forgotten along the way. David Simpson, an English professor at the University of California Berkeley, claims that the origin of an idiom is nearly impossible to identify. People often make up stories that are inaccurate to explain idioms, such as explaining that eating "a square meal" originated because people used to use square plates.
Does the fact that their origins are often lost suggest that idioms may have a negative impact on language? Do they make language more difficult to understand and unclear? Or do they enhance language and thought by comparing our experiences to abstract ideas? Does it even really matter that most people cannot track idioms to their original references if the people still know what the idiom means?
Susan Gass, a professor of linguistics at Michigan State University, claims that, "Somebody born in the '80s or '90s probably knows what it means but doesn't really understand the concept when it originated." She uses the example of a person sounding like a broken record, who says things over and over again like a record does when it becomes scratched. People who never listened to records probably do not understand the direct reference, but they do understand that people who sound like a broken record keep repeating themselves. In this sense, if the meaning of the idiom is understood, is it really that big of a deal if the origin is not understood? As long as the meaning is conveyed, is the origin even significant?
Translation of idioms could potentially cause confusion. For example, (in the idiom mentioned above) "taking someone in your arms" in German refers to "pulling their leg" in English. A monolingual English person and a monolingual German person would have very different ideas about what each of the phrases meant. They would be likely to take the other language's idiom literally in translation, and even if they were told the meaning might struggle to understand the idiom because they were unaware of the origin.
Idioms are an interesting element in language. What drives humans to use these metaphors and comparisons? How is it that idioms continue to carry meaning between generations and cultures (such as the "broken record" idiom) when what they describe is no longer remembered? I would love to hear your thoughts :)!
Links:
http://www.courant.com/features/lifestyle/hc-sundaylifeidioms.artnov25,0,2633476.story
http://www.able2know.org/forums/about3936.html
http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-layout/idioms.htm
http://deaf-tea-time.blogspot.com/2007/06/idioms-does-asl-have-idioms.html
Monday, December 3, 2007
We have discussed sign language and the deaf community in class several times. Recently the "Google Alerts" have been flooded with sign language articles. I found two really interesting articles that seem to demonstrate the lengths to which people are going in order to expand the use of sign language in cultural events. These actions are helping to integrate the deaf community with the hearing community by allowing them to experience the same cultural activities.
In Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), the producers of an Aesop's Fables puppet show are attempting to bring the magic of the performance to the deaf community. Samuel Chew, a professional Malaysian sign language interpreter, will be giving the puppet characters of the play "voices" through sign language translation, so that deaf members of the audience will be able to enjoy the show alongside the hearing audience. Actors will play the roles normally, but Chew will be on the sides of the stage to translate the actors' lines for the deaf audience.
Chew claims that it will be more difficult to convey the roles of the characters through sign language than it would be to simply have a conversation in sign language. Expressing the several different characters simultaneously, while trying to capture the essence of the artistic aspects of the play can be extremely challenging. Certain terms have to be translated more or less literally than others in order to create the same meaning.
Despite translation difficulties, however Chew claims that the biggest obstacle will be trying to keep the deaf audience's attention on the puppet characters and not just the translator. He wants the audience to enjoy the show and to be able to both watch and understand the play. He will attempt to "convey the message of the source language into the target language without disrupting the dynamics of the play." He does not want to "steal the limelight." He states that luckily, sign language is very straightforward and there is not a lot of room for error. His job is to get the message across while allowing the audience to still pay attention to what is actually occuring onstage. He wants the deaf members of the audience to witness the same performance that the hearing members will.
More efforts to give the deaf community the same experiences as the hearing community occurred across the world from the Malaysian performance of Aesop's Fables. In Clarkston, Michigan, 52 year old Ron Swartz is enabling deaf children to experience the same excitement of sitting on Santa's lap that hearing children feel. Swartz, a deaf resident, has been doing this for ten years in his community. He uses sign language to communicate with the deaf children, asking them what they want for Christmas. One of the main reasons that Swartz took on this role was because as a child he always had a difficult experience trying to communicate with Santa. By acting as a deaf Santa Claus, Swartz allows deaf children to communicate with Santa in the same way that hearing children get to communicate with Santa.
These articles demonstrate a strong effort to connect the deaf community to cultural events that they might normally have to miss out on. I found it interesting that these two articles referred to events that are taking place across the world from each other, rather than in a specific area. Unlike most languages, sign language is omnipresent, and basically exists everywhere across the world. It does not discriminate between culture or what a person's native language would be, but is within each language and affects several different types of people.
I feel that the increase in efforts to learn sign language and to use sign language in schools and the community are similar to the many articles we read about improving and expanding language programs in schools and the community. Sign language is just another language and culture whose significance is being recognized. The necessity of communicating with others who speak different languages than we do is of the utmost importance in the world that we live in. Not only is communication crucial to political issues between nations, it is a crucial part of understanding culture and being able to build relationships with others that do not speak our native tongue.
The fact that there are so many articles about sign language reflects that the writers of these articles see this form of communication as significant. The effort to unisolate the deaf community from activities that are usually only able to be fully experienced by people who can hear demonstrates a unifying movement toward a more integrated deaf community.
Links:
1. Damron, Gina. "Santa Knows Sign Language." Detroit Free Press. Retrieved from http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071202/NEWS03/712020685/1005 on December 3, 2007.
2. Lian, Michele. "Telling Stories in Silence." Star Magazine. Retrieved from http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2007/12/2/lifefocus/19579105&sec=lifefocus on December 3, 2007.
In Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), the producers of an Aesop's Fables puppet show are attempting to bring the magic of the performance to the deaf community. Samuel Chew, a professional Malaysian sign language interpreter, will be giving the puppet characters of the play "voices" through sign language translation, so that deaf members of the audience will be able to enjoy the show alongside the hearing audience. Actors will play the roles normally, but Chew will be on the sides of the stage to translate the actors' lines for the deaf audience.
Chew claims that it will be more difficult to convey the roles of the characters through sign language than it would be to simply have a conversation in sign language. Expressing the several different characters simultaneously, while trying to capture the essence of the artistic aspects of the play can be extremely challenging. Certain terms have to be translated more or less literally than others in order to create the same meaning.
Despite translation difficulties, however Chew claims that the biggest obstacle will be trying to keep the deaf audience's attention on the puppet characters and not just the translator. He wants the audience to enjoy the show and to be able to both watch and understand the play. He will attempt to "convey the message of the source language into the target language without disrupting the dynamics of the play." He does not want to "steal the limelight." He states that luckily, sign language is very straightforward and there is not a lot of room for error. His job is to get the message across while allowing the audience to still pay attention to what is actually occuring onstage. He wants the deaf members of the audience to witness the same performance that the hearing members will.
More efforts to give the deaf community the same experiences as the hearing community occurred across the world from the Malaysian performance of Aesop's Fables. In Clarkston, Michigan, 52 year old Ron Swartz is enabling deaf children to experience the same excitement of sitting on Santa's lap that hearing children feel. Swartz, a deaf resident, has been doing this for ten years in his community. He uses sign language to communicate with the deaf children, asking them what they want for Christmas. One of the main reasons that Swartz took on this role was because as a child he always had a difficult experience trying to communicate with Santa. By acting as a deaf Santa Claus, Swartz allows deaf children to communicate with Santa in the same way that hearing children get to communicate with Santa.
These articles demonstrate a strong effort to connect the deaf community to cultural events that they might normally have to miss out on. I found it interesting that these two articles referred to events that are taking place across the world from each other, rather than in a specific area. Unlike most languages, sign language is omnipresent, and basically exists everywhere across the world. It does not discriminate between culture or what a person's native language would be, but is within each language and affects several different types of people.
I feel that the increase in efforts to learn sign language and to use sign language in schools and the community are similar to the many articles we read about improving and expanding language programs in schools and the community. Sign language is just another language and culture whose significance is being recognized. The necessity of communicating with others who speak different languages than we do is of the utmost importance in the world that we live in. Not only is communication crucial to political issues between nations, it is a crucial part of understanding culture and being able to build relationships with others that do not speak our native tongue.
The fact that there are so many articles about sign language reflects that the writers of these articles see this form of communication as significant. The effort to unisolate the deaf community from activities that are usually only able to be fully experienced by people who can hear demonstrates a unifying movement toward a more integrated deaf community.
Links:
1. Damron, Gina. "Santa Knows Sign Language." Detroit Free Press. Retrieved from http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071202/NEWS03/712020685/1005 on December 3, 2007.
2. Lian, Michele. "Telling Stories in Silence." Star Magazine. Retrieved from http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2007/12/2/lifefocus/19579105&sec=lifefocus on December 3, 2007.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Who would win a "Miss Language" Contest?
Estonian Education Minister Tonis Lukas has announced a "Language Beauty Contest" that will take place to celebrate the 90th birthday of Estonia in February. The goal is to find the worlds "prettiest language" by examining the most beautiful sentences from different languages. According to story, there once was a world championship of languages. Estonia lost, taking second place to Italian, which won with the phrase, "soida tasa ule silla," meaning "go slowly over the bridge."
Estonia is different than most European languages, and is a member of the Finno-Ugric group of languages. Only about 1.1 million people worldwide speak Estonian, the majority of which live in Estonia, Finland, and Russia. Historically, the Estonian language holds a special significance to its people, as preserving the language played a significant role in opposition to foreign rule by Russia in the 19th century.
Although Education Minister Lukas claims that "we're pleased to turn to other nations with a friendly call to check how our language sounds to others now," I question how it is possible to judge the beauty of a language. We've all heard the saying "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." It seems that some humans have agreed that certain languages, such as French and Italian, have a certain grace that make them beautiful, as opposed to languages such as German (sorry Phillip :(!) and Chinese. But what really makes a language beautiful?
Does a person's native language influence their perception of what constitutes beauty in a language? Are those who learn romance languages as their native languages more likely to be biased towards preferring romance languages? Or is there some inherent property in humans that causes preferences for certain sounds. I believe that Professor Boroditsky mentioned that humans tend to have a preference for rhythm in sounds (such as in music). Studies have shown that rhythm can help people to learn languages more easily. Do languages that seem to flow more appeal to humans? Standards of physical beauty differ from culture to culture and throughout time. Fads of what is beautiful come and go, and the standards of beauty are always changing. Does the same thing happen to language?
Unfortunately, there have not been a great deal of experiments studying whether people perceive languages as beautiful or not (at least any that can be easily googled for the sake of the blog), and I assume that it would be a very difficult issue to create a legitimate scientific experiment on. Scientists have noted in some experiments that newborns and older babies in monolingual families tend to prefer their native language over unfamiliar languages. I am curious to know how most adults feel when they have been exposed to several languages.
On some random websites I found comments about opinions of which languages are beautiful. The majority of the comments I read favored their own language. They seemed to favor their native language not so much because of how it sounded, but because of its uniqueness and the personality that it carried. I feel that this makes sense because our native language possesses a very personal and special meaning for us. It is more than just pleasant sounding; it is symbolic or our histories and our identities. In addition to advocates of native languages, there were also many responses admiring the beauty of the romance languages.
So I think we should have a language "beauty contest" for our introductory seminar. What language do you guys think is the most beautiful (of the languages that you are familiar with) and why? Also, I would love to hear ideas about possible theories of why we prefer certain languages.
Links:
1. http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i2MtyJZSeEWNwHls0ZevOINjaWHQ
2. http://www.physik.uni-bielefeld.de/complexity/ramus.pdf
3. http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet? prog=normal&id=JASMAN000115000005002505000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes (The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America -- May 2004 -- Volume 115, Issue 5, p. 2505)
4. http://help.berberber.com/forum79/14072-most-beautiful-language-world.html
Estonia is different than most European languages, and is a member of the Finno-Ugric group of languages. Only about 1.1 million people worldwide speak Estonian, the majority of which live in Estonia, Finland, and Russia. Historically, the Estonian language holds a special significance to its people, as preserving the language played a significant role in opposition to foreign rule by Russia in the 19th century.
Although Education Minister Lukas claims that "we're pleased to turn to other nations with a friendly call to check how our language sounds to others now," I question how it is possible to judge the beauty of a language. We've all heard the saying "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." It seems that some humans have agreed that certain languages, such as French and Italian, have a certain grace that make them beautiful, as opposed to languages such as German (sorry Phillip :(!) and Chinese. But what really makes a language beautiful?
Does a person's native language influence their perception of what constitutes beauty in a language? Are those who learn romance languages as their native languages more likely to be biased towards preferring romance languages? Or is there some inherent property in humans that causes preferences for certain sounds. I believe that Professor Boroditsky mentioned that humans tend to have a preference for rhythm in sounds (such as in music). Studies have shown that rhythm can help people to learn languages more easily. Do languages that seem to flow more appeal to humans? Standards of physical beauty differ from culture to culture and throughout time. Fads of what is beautiful come and go, and the standards of beauty are always changing. Does the same thing happen to language?
Unfortunately, there have not been a great deal of experiments studying whether people perceive languages as beautiful or not (at least any that can be easily googled for the sake of the blog), and I assume that it would be a very difficult issue to create a legitimate scientific experiment on. Scientists have noted in some experiments that newborns and older babies in monolingual families tend to prefer their native language over unfamiliar languages. I am curious to know how most adults feel when they have been exposed to several languages.
On some random websites I found comments about opinions of which languages are beautiful. The majority of the comments I read favored their own language. They seemed to favor their native language not so much because of how it sounded, but because of its uniqueness and the personality that it carried. I feel that this makes sense because our native language possesses a very personal and special meaning for us. It is more than just pleasant sounding; it is symbolic or our histories and our identities. In addition to advocates of native languages, there were also many responses admiring the beauty of the romance languages.
So I think we should have a language "beauty contest" for our introductory seminar. What language do you guys think is the most beautiful (of the languages that you are familiar with) and why? Also, I would love to hear ideas about possible theories of why we prefer certain languages.
Links:
1. http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i2MtyJZSeEWNwHls0ZevOINjaWHQ
2. http://www.physik.uni-bielefeld.de/complexity/ramus.pdf
3. http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet? prog=normal&id=JASMAN000115000005002505000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes (The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America -- May 2004 -- Volume 115, Issue 5, p. 2505)
4. http://help.berberber.com/forum79/14072-most-beautiful-language-world.html
Choosing Between Languages
In class we have been discussing how we use the different languages that we know. Some of us speak our native language at home, while speaking English as school. Some of us only use a language other than English in our foreign language classes. Some of us speak a mixture of two languages. We have established that depending who we are talking to and what type of environment we are in, we speak differently. Whether we speak in a different tone, use different word choice, or speak in an entirely different language, the context of the situation determines what type of language we will utilize.
In our home environments and in school it usually is pretty clear which language should be chosen. But in day to day life and random situations, it can be extremely difficult to know which language is the appropriate one to speak. Maria Carreira, a native Spanish speaker from Cuba who also speaks English, and an expert of the use of Spanish in the United States, finds herself facing this problem constantly. For Carreira, it comes down to the question "When to use inglés and when to speak Spanish?". This "language-etiquette" can be tricky, and if the appropriate language is not used, can lead to awkward situations.
For example, when ordering at a taco stand, Carreira began to order in Spanish. Upon seeing the "bluest eyes" of the man working there, she automatically switched to speaking English, assuming that he was not capable of communicating in Spanish. He responded in English, but Carreira later realized her mistake when she saw that he had been taking orders in Spanish.
Choosing what language to speak in can be tricky. For instance, if someone is struggling to speak in English, it could be seen as rude to speak to him in Spanish, because it is acknowledging that the person's English abilities are incompetent. It is almost like giving up on the person's abilities in English. On the other hand the person could also be rejoiced that his or her native language is understood and prefer to speak in it. In addition, avoiding speaking in Spanish in an attempt to not hurt the feelings of a person could upset the person if he or she is extremely proud of his or her heritage.
The ultimate goal of language-etiquette is to make the person one is conversing with feel comfortable. Generally, the "which language" decision is made quickly, based on physical judgments. The bilingual speaker takes into account age, social status, clothing, skin color, eye color, hair color, and name (if available) to determine which language is more appropriate.
I personally have had several experiences in which I struggled to choose the polite language to speak. From speaking with workers who have been in my neighborhood, to maids in hotel rooms, to parents of children that I work with, it is really difficult to know which language to speak. I am generally afraid to speak Spanish because I do not want to offend the other person (and because I fear that I will not be fully competent in an all-Spanish conversation), but I do not want to be rude when speaking English if the person clearly does not understand what I am trying to say. I have had experiences speaking Spanish to others in which the other person became extremely excited and trusting because I could share the language, but I have also had experiences where the other person was hesitant to speak in Spanish and seemed to feel disrespected.
The decision becomes even more difficult when appearances are deceiving. Judging someone to see which language he or she prefers may be successful most of the time, but every once in a while it can cause an even more awkward situation. Going up to someone who looks Hispanic and immediately speaking Spanish can result in embarassment, especially if the person does not know any Spanish. In reality, our stereotypes of what a person who speaks a certain language will look like fall short. There is a student on my dorm floor who is black and has an English accent. I know that the first time I talked to her I was extremely surprised because I did not expect her to speak that way. It is similar to when I see a caucasian speaking a language like Chinese or Japanese. Our physical judgments can only carry us so far in determining whether a person actually will speak a language.
Considering the large degree of billingualism in our class, I am curious to know how you guys judge the situation when you are in it. What determines which language you choose to speak? What methods have been the most/least successful? How can we avoid these awkward situations and offending others?
Links:
1. Silverstein, Stuart. "Tongue Twister: English or Español?" La Times. Retrieved from http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004020933_etiquette18.html on November 24, 2007.
In our home environments and in school it usually is pretty clear which language should be chosen. But in day to day life and random situations, it can be extremely difficult to know which language is the appropriate one to speak. Maria Carreira, a native Spanish speaker from Cuba who also speaks English, and an expert of the use of Spanish in the United States, finds herself facing this problem constantly. For Carreira, it comes down to the question "When to use inglés and when to speak Spanish?". This "language-etiquette" can be tricky, and if the appropriate language is not used, can lead to awkward situations.
For example, when ordering at a taco stand, Carreira began to order in Spanish. Upon seeing the "bluest eyes" of the man working there, she automatically switched to speaking English, assuming that he was not capable of communicating in Spanish. He responded in English, but Carreira later realized her mistake when she saw that he had been taking orders in Spanish.
Choosing what language to speak in can be tricky. For instance, if someone is struggling to speak in English, it could be seen as rude to speak to him in Spanish, because it is acknowledging that the person's English abilities are incompetent. It is almost like giving up on the person's abilities in English. On the other hand the person could also be rejoiced that his or her native language is understood and prefer to speak in it. In addition, avoiding speaking in Spanish in an attempt to not hurt the feelings of a person could upset the person if he or she is extremely proud of his or her heritage.
The ultimate goal of language-etiquette is to make the person one is conversing with feel comfortable. Generally, the "which language" decision is made quickly, based on physical judgments. The bilingual speaker takes into account age, social status, clothing, skin color, eye color, hair color, and name (if available) to determine which language is more appropriate.
I personally have had several experiences in which I struggled to choose the polite language to speak. From speaking with workers who have been in my neighborhood, to maids in hotel rooms, to parents of children that I work with, it is really difficult to know which language to speak. I am generally afraid to speak Spanish because I do not want to offend the other person (and because I fear that I will not be fully competent in an all-Spanish conversation), but I do not want to be rude when speaking English if the person clearly does not understand what I am trying to say. I have had experiences speaking Spanish to others in which the other person became extremely excited and trusting because I could share the language, but I have also had experiences where the other person was hesitant to speak in Spanish and seemed to feel disrespected.
The decision becomes even more difficult when appearances are deceiving. Judging someone to see which language he or she prefers may be successful most of the time, but every once in a while it can cause an even more awkward situation. Going up to someone who looks Hispanic and immediately speaking Spanish can result in embarassment, especially if the person does not know any Spanish. In reality, our stereotypes of what a person who speaks a certain language will look like fall short. There is a student on my dorm floor who is black and has an English accent. I know that the first time I talked to her I was extremely surprised because I did not expect her to speak that way. It is similar to when I see a caucasian speaking a language like Chinese or Japanese. Our physical judgments can only carry us so far in determining whether a person actually will speak a language.
Considering the large degree of billingualism in our class, I am curious to know how you guys judge the situation when you are in it. What determines which language you choose to speak? What methods have been the most/least successful? How can we avoid these awkward situations and offending others?
Links:
1. Silverstein, Stuart. "Tongue Twister: English or Español?" La Times. Retrieved from http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004020933_etiquette18.html on November 24, 2007.
The "Language" of DNA
Introns, short for "intragenic regions", are regions of DNA, also known as "junk DNA." They gained this nickname because they do not seem to code for anything. Unlike exons, the regions of DNA that are transcribed and translated into proteins, introns are spliced out during protein synthesis. Ironically, although they do not seem to have a specific function, introns make up the majority of DNA. Four types of introns are known to exist: Nuclear introns (which are spliced out by spliceosomes), and group I, II, and III introns (which "self-splice").
Several theories exist about the origin and function of introns. The two main competing theories are the Introns-Early model and the Introns-Late model. The Introns-Early model, suggests that introns are ancient, existing in the earliest prokaryotes. Over evolutionary time, introns were lost in order for organisms to grow more efficiently. Early introns functioned in exon recombination that produced new proteins and eventually new genes. The Introns-Late model suggests that introns emerged from parasitic transposons after eukaryotes and prokaryotes split off. Simon Shepherd, from the University of Bradford proposed that introns may function as a correcting system that helps to fix mistakes that are made during DNA replication.
The debate over intron origin and function is continuous and scientists have not come to a concrete conclusion. However, a recent study has demonstrated an interesting characteristic of introns in DNA. Collaboration between doctors, physicists, and linguists demonstrates that DNA obeys Zipf's Law, a law that is applicable to all human languages.
In Zipf's Law, the popularity of a word (ranked) is inversely proportional to how many times the word is used. If the popularity rank of a word in a book is graphed vs. the number of time the word appears in a book, the graph will yield a straight line. Therefore the most popular word will be used twice as often as the second most popular word which occurs twice as often as the third most popular word. For example, "the", which is the most frequently used word in the English language makes up about 7% of all words used. "Of", the second most popular word, makes up about 3.5% of words used. Linguists claim that Zipf's Law governs all human languages.
Scientists divided DNA into "words" of nucleotide sequences of varying lengths. When ranking the frequency of these "words" against the number of times the words appeared, the graph yielded a straight line. The scientists therefore claimed that the structure of DNA abides by Zipf's Law.
Many further studies of Zipf's Law take away from its magic. G.A. Miller's "monkey typing on a keyboard" experiment argued that a monkey typing randomly at a typewriter with more than one key and a space bar would generate the same pattern of Zipf's Law. Most psychologists and linguists ignore Zipf's Law, seeing it simply as a statistical probability with no inherent significance.
Although most of the articles I used to follow up on this concept were extremely complex mathematically (and I did not really understand them), I thought the concept of language having a mathematical pattern was interesting. At first it made language seem more universal, since all languages are supposed to abide Zipf's Law. But if it is true that a monkey typing randomly on a keyboard, forming words of random letters gets the same results, Zipf's Law doesn't seem very important at all in analyzing the structure of language. Studies seem to suggest that any form of written symbols will follow Zipf's law, so it would make sense that if scientists created a language for DNA, it would do the same. What I found most interesting was that someone actually discovered this pattern. I was reminded of Joe's comment a few weeks ago about how humans (especially in western culture) have a need to categorize and explain everything. Howver, despite its validity or its usefulness, this article was really interesting because of how interdisciplinary the topic was. It combined biology, linguistics and psychology in examining the "language" of DNA.
Links:
1. Kruszelnicki, Karl. "Language in Junk DNA." ABC. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s133634.htm on November 24, 2007.
2. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/18/29003/01306541.pdf
3. http://www.jstor.org/view/00029556/ap050317/05a00180/0
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf's_law
Several theories exist about the origin and function of introns. The two main competing theories are the Introns-Early model and the Introns-Late model. The Introns-Early model, suggests that introns are ancient, existing in the earliest prokaryotes. Over evolutionary time, introns were lost in order for organisms to grow more efficiently. Early introns functioned in exon recombination that produced new proteins and eventually new genes. The Introns-Late model suggests that introns emerged from parasitic transposons after eukaryotes and prokaryotes split off. Simon Shepherd, from the University of Bradford proposed that introns may function as a correcting system that helps to fix mistakes that are made during DNA replication.
The debate over intron origin and function is continuous and scientists have not come to a concrete conclusion. However, a recent study has demonstrated an interesting characteristic of introns in DNA. Collaboration between doctors, physicists, and linguists demonstrates that DNA obeys Zipf's Law, a law that is applicable to all human languages.
In Zipf's Law, the popularity of a word (ranked) is inversely proportional to how many times the word is used. If the popularity rank of a word in a book is graphed vs. the number of time the word appears in a book, the graph will yield a straight line. Therefore the most popular word will be used twice as often as the second most popular word which occurs twice as often as the third most popular word. For example, "the", which is the most frequently used word in the English language makes up about 7% of all words used. "Of", the second most popular word, makes up about 3.5% of words used. Linguists claim that Zipf's Law governs all human languages.
Scientists divided DNA into "words" of nucleotide sequences of varying lengths. When ranking the frequency of these "words" against the number of times the words appeared, the graph yielded a straight line. The scientists therefore claimed that the structure of DNA abides by Zipf's Law.
Many further studies of Zipf's Law take away from its magic. G.A. Miller's "monkey typing on a keyboard" experiment argued that a monkey typing randomly at a typewriter with more than one key and a space bar would generate the same pattern of Zipf's Law. Most psychologists and linguists ignore Zipf's Law, seeing it simply as a statistical probability with no inherent significance.
Although most of the articles I used to follow up on this concept were extremely complex mathematically (and I did not really understand them), I thought the concept of language having a mathematical pattern was interesting. At first it made language seem more universal, since all languages are supposed to abide Zipf's Law. But if it is true that a monkey typing randomly on a keyboard, forming words of random letters gets the same results, Zipf's Law doesn't seem very important at all in analyzing the structure of language. Studies seem to suggest that any form of written symbols will follow Zipf's law, so it would make sense that if scientists created a language for DNA, it would do the same. What I found most interesting was that someone actually discovered this pattern. I was reminded of Joe's comment a few weeks ago about how humans (especially in western culture) have a need to categorize and explain everything. Howver, despite its validity or its usefulness, this article was really interesting because of how interdisciplinary the topic was. It combined biology, linguistics and psychology in examining the "language" of DNA.
Links:
1. Kruszelnicki, Karl. "Language in Junk DNA." ABC. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s133634.htm on November 24, 2007.
2. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/18/29003/01306541.pdf
3. http://www.jstor.org/view/00029556/ap050317/05a00180/0
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf's_law
Friday, November 9, 2007
Language Deficiency as the Basis of Social Problems
Garth George, an opinion writer for the New Zealand Herald, claims that illiteracy and the lack of competent language skills make up the roots of most social problems. George believes that insufficient comprehension of oral and written language is one of the most significant factors that causes violence, abuse, bad parenting, and juvenile delinquency. George claims that poor communication, resulting from the inability to tell others about ourselves and explain to others what we want, as well as the inability to understand the desires of others, leads to anger and frustration.
Effective communication is extremely crucial to our relationships with others, and the lack of language skills can result in unsuccessful communication that harms relationships between people. Those who cannot effectively communicate with others and understand the world that surrounds them tend to feel isolated from the rest of society. If a lack of language skills frequently results in this sense of frustration, those who experience it are more likely to alienate themselves from the rest of the world. They are more prone to joining violent groups such as gangs, giving up on language involving tasks such as school, and committing acts of crime.
According to wikipedia, people who are considered functionally illiterate (cannot use reading, writing, or computational skills efficiently in daily life) are more at risk for facing stressful experiences, social intimidation, health problems, and an inadequate income. Illiteracy has also been linked with poverty and crime in the United States. The link between illiteracy and poverty seems very plausible. In American society, literacy is crucial in almost all careers, especially in careers that are high paying. Those who lack an education or language skills are more likely to struggle in obtaining a career that will generate enough income to pay the bills. In the economy of today, a strong education is almost a necessity to achieve financial success. Therefore, it makes sense that those who are illiterate, functionaly illiterate, or struggle with language are more likely to live in poverty.
The link between literacy and crime however, is more complex. In the past decade, approximately 60% of adults in United States prisons were considered to be either functionally or marginally illiterate. Similarly, about 85% of juvenile criminals had difficulties with writing, math, and reading. (Note the difference between "functionally illiterate" and "illiterate"-the main distinction being that a functionally illiterate person can read and write in their native language, but is not fully efficient in everyday activities; an illiterate person cannot read or write at all).
Are the links between literacy and crime correlated by coincidence? Does illiteracy actually cause a greater likelihood that a person will become involved in dangerous or violent practices? After thinking this question through, I have to say that I disagree. I do not think that the inability to communicate efficiently due to a lack of skills in language directly causes a person to become more prone to lead a criminal life. However, I do believe that the types of people who are illiterate tend to live in environments and face circumstances that promote a greater likelihood of criminal activity. It seems logical that those who are illiterate have trouble finding sufficient jobs and are more likely to be poor. Because of their impoverished social status, they are more likely to resort to illegal activities in order to get money, are more likely to live in neighborhood where crime exists and is influential, and are less likely to succeed in school because they cannot read or write, ultimately leading to dropping out and the possibility of becoming involved in crime as a substitute. Therefore, I believe that there is not so much a direct link between language skills and crime, but rather a direct relationship between language skills and poverty, and a direct relationship between poverty and social problems.
If these social problems are a result of the environment a person lives in (which is often a result of financial status), and financial status is related to how well a person understands the language of a society, would ethnic minorities living in a country be more likely to experience social problems? For example, are immigrants who speak another language and move to predominately English speaking regions of the United States more likely to be involved in crime than English speakers? Will their English language deficiencies increase the chances that they will struggle financially, and will this struggle enhance the probability that they will face social problems such as crime and violence?
As I am writing this, I feel like illiteracy is not so much the issue at hand, but simply the ability to communicate. Reading and writing are clearly important forms of communication, but communication through conversation is especially significant in the relationships that people have with one another. Perhaps the general language barriers that exist, rather than illiteracy, are a bigger influence on financial well-being and the resulting well-being of an individual. For example, would someone living in the United States who could speak and understand English but could not read or write be at the same disadvantage as an immigrant who could not understand English at all? Both are by definition illiterate, but clearly the immigrant will struggle even more due to the language barrier.
I think that we have all experienced the frustration of being unable to communicate with another person. Whether a language barrier or a cultural obstacle exists, or simply if another other person cannot quite comprehend a point that you are making, the inability to connect through language and to experience mutual understanding can be upsetting. Through the financial problems that the lack of knowledge of language can bring, to the simple frustrations of not being able to understand the surrounding world, the inability to fully communicate with the people and the environment around you can bring forth distress, anger, frustration, and resentment. I am interested to hear your thoughts. Clearly many factors influence and lead to social problems throughout the world. But in regards to language, is it plausible to say that illiteracy, or perhaps better stated as the inability to fully communicate with a language, is responsible for many of the world's social problems?
Links:
1. George, Garth (2007). "Lack of Language Skills at Core of Social Problems." New Zealand Herald. Retrieved from
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/466/story.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10474604 on November 9, 2007.
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy (November 9, 2007)/
Effective communication is extremely crucial to our relationships with others, and the lack of language skills can result in unsuccessful communication that harms relationships between people. Those who cannot effectively communicate with others and understand the world that surrounds them tend to feel isolated from the rest of society. If a lack of language skills frequently results in this sense of frustration, those who experience it are more likely to alienate themselves from the rest of the world. They are more prone to joining violent groups such as gangs, giving up on language involving tasks such as school, and committing acts of crime.
According to wikipedia, people who are considered functionally illiterate (cannot use reading, writing, or computational skills efficiently in daily life) are more at risk for facing stressful experiences, social intimidation, health problems, and an inadequate income. Illiteracy has also been linked with poverty and crime in the United States. The link between illiteracy and poverty seems very plausible. In American society, literacy is crucial in almost all careers, especially in careers that are high paying. Those who lack an education or language skills are more likely to struggle in obtaining a career that will generate enough income to pay the bills. In the economy of today, a strong education is almost a necessity to achieve financial success. Therefore, it makes sense that those who are illiterate, functionaly illiterate, or struggle with language are more likely to live in poverty.
The link between literacy and crime however, is more complex. In the past decade, approximately 60% of adults in United States prisons were considered to be either functionally or marginally illiterate. Similarly, about 85% of juvenile criminals had difficulties with writing, math, and reading. (Note the difference between "functionally illiterate" and "illiterate"-the main distinction being that a functionally illiterate person can read and write in their native language, but is not fully efficient in everyday activities; an illiterate person cannot read or write at all).
Are the links between literacy and crime correlated by coincidence? Does illiteracy actually cause a greater likelihood that a person will become involved in dangerous or violent practices? After thinking this question through, I have to say that I disagree. I do not think that the inability to communicate efficiently due to a lack of skills in language directly causes a person to become more prone to lead a criminal life. However, I do believe that the types of people who are illiterate tend to live in environments and face circumstances that promote a greater likelihood of criminal activity. It seems logical that those who are illiterate have trouble finding sufficient jobs and are more likely to be poor. Because of their impoverished social status, they are more likely to resort to illegal activities in order to get money, are more likely to live in neighborhood where crime exists and is influential, and are less likely to succeed in school because they cannot read or write, ultimately leading to dropping out and the possibility of becoming involved in crime as a substitute. Therefore, I believe that there is not so much a direct link between language skills and crime, but rather a direct relationship between language skills and poverty, and a direct relationship between poverty and social problems.
If these social problems are a result of the environment a person lives in (which is often a result of financial status), and financial status is related to how well a person understands the language of a society, would ethnic minorities living in a country be more likely to experience social problems? For example, are immigrants who speak another language and move to predominately English speaking regions of the United States more likely to be involved in crime than English speakers? Will their English language deficiencies increase the chances that they will struggle financially, and will this struggle enhance the probability that they will face social problems such as crime and violence?
As I am writing this, I feel like illiteracy is not so much the issue at hand, but simply the ability to communicate. Reading and writing are clearly important forms of communication, but communication through conversation is especially significant in the relationships that people have with one another. Perhaps the general language barriers that exist, rather than illiteracy, are a bigger influence on financial well-being and the resulting well-being of an individual. For example, would someone living in the United States who could speak and understand English but could not read or write be at the same disadvantage as an immigrant who could not understand English at all? Both are by definition illiterate, but clearly the immigrant will struggle even more due to the language barrier.
I think that we have all experienced the frustration of being unable to communicate with another person. Whether a language barrier or a cultural obstacle exists, or simply if another other person cannot quite comprehend a point that you are making, the inability to connect through language and to experience mutual understanding can be upsetting. Through the financial problems that the lack of knowledge of language can bring, to the simple frustrations of not being able to understand the surrounding world, the inability to fully communicate with the people and the environment around you can bring forth distress, anger, frustration, and resentment. I am interested to hear your thoughts. Clearly many factors influence and lead to social problems throughout the world. But in regards to language, is it plausible to say that illiteracy, or perhaps better stated as the inability to fully communicate with a language, is responsible for many of the world's social problems?
Links:
1. George, Garth (2007). "Lack of Language Skills at Core of Social Problems." New Zealand Herald. Retrieved from
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/466/story.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10474604 on November 9, 2007.
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy (November 9, 2007)/
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