The View From Carnegie 210

Agar points out that discourse is how people actually talk in ordinary situations. So, if we actually talk one way, why do we judge it by written standards? Why use the traditional sentence grammar of English that we use to judge writing for speaking? Is this a fair judgment? For example, it would be strange if this entry had a few ums and uhs, but if I did the same when speaking, there would not be the same reaction. So, why do we use traditional sentence grammar to judge speaking? My question stems beyond our conversations about the standard language or standard English. I'm asking why even use a written form as the basis of judgment for a spoken form? And anyways, didn't speaking come first? As in, if we spoke before we wrote, why are our speaking norms not our writing norms? Thinking globally, what about cultures who have different writing systems, where for instance one figure/symbol might represent an entire idea instead of letters that make up words.

Posted by Rachel Learned at 11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Vincent Donofrio, Rachel Learned, Jen Wilmore, Tamara Belden, Hussein Bani Khalid, & Wendy Paddock

Posted by Rachel Learned at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is the first time I've had to do an entry and had no idea what to write about. I thought that that was worth noting, though, and then I thought about it and decided that it is because these two chapters are primarily exemplary stories. Everything is an example. This makes sense though because he writes on page 134 about how important it is to work bottom-up. He explains, "When you move into a situation and frames don't work, you're in a bottom-up mode. You take in the differences and work to build a frame that shows how they're all related." Since he's explaining to us his experiences and how they've helped to change his frames and top-down theories, it makes sense. That initial knowledge comes from somewhere. I know this is going to be a very general question, but I'm just curious about people's reactions to these chapters. I found them entertaining and informative--once I thought about them more. I was trying to think about times when I had expectations that were totally shattered, and I suppose they almost exclusively come from traveling experiences or times when I've run across someone knew who just had a completely different way of approaching something than I did. What kinds of experiences does everyone else have with this?

Posted by Jen Wilmore at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I found an article on Cognitive Daily about how we perceive other people's intentions in e-mails. Dave Munger (2006). According to John Scalzi, you should read your writing out loud before posting it in a blog or e-mail, partially to catch spelling and other errors, but more importantly to see whether you are conveying the meaning you intend to convey.

Justin Kruger and his team conducted some experiments to see how people perceive each other's intentions in e-mails. He claims that a common problem is deciding whether a person is being serious or sarcastic in the e-mail. He wanted to know how accurately people can anticipate how readers will perceive the tone of their writing, so he tested 60 pairs of college students. In each pair, one person typed a chosen statement into an e-mail message, and the other person recorded the same statement with a tape recorder. Each person guessed whether the message recipient would perceive the message correctly as being serious or sarcastic. Then they read or listened to their partners' messages and decided whether they thought the message was serious or sarcastic.

Both e-mailers and speakers thought their messages would be perceived accurately, but e-mail recipients couldn't judge whether sarcasm was intended or not. However, people speaking sarcastic messages could accurately guess when recipients would perceive the sarcasm.

I thought this entry was interesting because we often think that what we say or write is being perceived accurately, but that's not always the case. Sometimes sarcasm is intended but not accurately perceived, and sometimes sarcasm is conveyed unintentionally.

Continue reading "Are you serious?" »

Posted by Wendy Paddock at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I came across an entry on Language Log by Mark Liberman (2004) that talks about the differences in some phrases that German and English speakers use. He says that German speakers tend to use phrases starting with "superfluous as..." or "unnecessary as...", while English speakers are more likely to use phrases beginning with "useless as...". Even though English speakers migh use "superfluous" or "unnecessary" phrases, Liberman claims that the entire phrases are usually either idiosyncratic or borrowed. Some examples are:

superfluous as a frog's croaks [Indian English; Hindi or Urdu?]
superfluous as a prostate gland [French; quote from Clemenceau about the office of the presidency]
superfluous as a typewriter
superfluous as a bicycle for a fish
unnecessary as a well is to a village on the banks of a river
unnecessary as a glass of water on Noah's Ark

useless as teats/tits on a boar (hog)
useless as teats/tits on a bull

I thought this was interesting because it's not something that we specifically discussed in class, but it shows some differences between languacultures. Phrases like these could be richpoints because they might be understand by one languaculture but not another.

Continue reading "Isn't that a little superfluous, unnecessary, and useless?" »

Posted by Wendy Paddock at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cook, S. W., Mitchell, Z., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2008). Gesturing makes learning last. Cognition, 106, 1047-1058.

The authors conducted an experimental study to see whether gesturing merely reflects a readiness to learn new knowledge, or is itself actively involved in the construction of new knowledge. The participants included eighty-four third and fourth grade children. They were asked to complete a mathematical pretest then only those who did not produce any correct answer were included in the study. Children were divided into three groups who were assigned different learning conditions: 1)gesture, 2)gesture+speech, and 3) speech group. Pupils in the first and second group were taught to use certain gestures during instruction, while those in the third group used only speech. Then, they completed a posttest. It was found that all groups solved comparable numbers of problems during instruction and on the immediate posttest. Four weeks later, participants completed a follow-up test. The three groups did differ in how well they maintained the knowledge gained during instruction. In the Speech group, the relation between instruction and learning was relatively weak. In this condition, many children who had improved after instruction failed to maintain their gains on follow-up.

The authors argue that when children are asked to instantiate a new concept in their hands, learning is more lasting than when they are asked to instantiate it in words alone. Gesturing has a clear effect on our long-term memories. Moreover, they suggest that "gesturing play a causal role in learning, perhaps by giving learners an alternative, embodied way of representing new ideas." Finally, the researchers recommend instructors to encourage children to move their hands as a way to improve and enhance their learning.

If you are interested in reading the whole article, please click on the following hyperlink:
Link

Posted by Hussein Bani Khalid at 8:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since my first From the Field, I've lacked the imagination to wrangle a post the language blogs, even though I find them more interesting (and fun) than articles from scholarly journals. I'd read few articles on Language Log, sigh sadly, and then resort to online catalogs of articles.

For whatever reason, today I refused to sigh sadly and spent most of the afternoon reading about the interwebs. From Language Log, I hopped over to Language Hat and read some good stuff there, including an interesting study, reviewed in the NYTimes, about labelling different "aliens" as friendly or unfriendly and the impact of the results on the Sapir-Whorf debate. I didn't want to devote my post to it, though, so I kept hopping*. Finally, I read an entry which described a really cool manifesto from the blog of a copy editor named Dan. His point of view is interesting, because while he's more of a language relativist, his job requires slightly more prescriptivism.

Here's his blog: http://www.ourboldhero.com/edit/index.html
And here's a post where he details the delicate balance he has to manage between his philosophy of language and his job: http://www.ourboldhero.com/edit/2007/10/please-leave-this-to-professionals.html

And I learned about the word ideolect (pronounced ID-ee-o-lekt): the term used to designate the idiosyncratic speech of individual peopleâ??an idiolect is a one-person dialect, unique in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.

Tada!

*Today's journey through language bloggery as I've described it looks pretty linear and lame, but in reality, I branched out from Language Log by opening about 15 other blogs in tabs and repeated the process several times in new pages, branching out all over the place (try doing that on Wikipedia someday, and you'll find yourself staring at a picture of a tesseract rotating on a single axis for a REALLY long time at 4 o'clock in the morning) . Many of the entries I came across were "which way is the correct way to write this?" or stories about new words that I couldn't figure out how to make an entire post about. And lots and lots of Google stats. Linguists love Google stats.

Posted by Tamara Belden at 6:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was looking up language news, and I stumbled upon this article. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6303-language-may-shape-human-thought.html
The article and study were published in 2004. And, I apologize for the second hand source of the article. I could not locate the actual article online.
The main reason this article is interesting is that the Brazilian tribe only has number classification for one, two, and many. However, its not that the tribe only has these three classifications, but they could not tell the difference between four and five objects. Upon reading this statement, it may seem like a shortfall. However, in their culture, is it necessary for them to tell to discriminate between four and five objects in a row? As with the color naming, maybe this culture has no need for all these numbers. Clearly, they can function with the numbers of one, two, and many. As the article explained, the ability to count objects it not necessary in their lives.

Posted by Rachel Learned at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like many of my classmates, I was very interested in the differences across cultures in color naming. While writing the entry, I was trying to think of another example where there are differences in the number of words used for a certain concept. I thought of a "fact" I had heard - Eskimos have 100 words for snow.
Here's a site that lists 100 words for snow. http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/varia/snow.html. I still wasn't quite satisfied with this arbitrary list. So searched further, and apparently that's not exactly true.
Here is the article I found: http://www.princeton.edu/~browning/snow.html . What's interesting is that apparently the amount of words for snow do not different that much between languages used in Alaska and English.
Then, I went back to the 100 list, and found some advice from Steven Pinker. http://www.mendosa.com/snow.html. Pinker says, "Contrary to popular belief, the Eskimos do not have more words for snow than do speakers of English. Counting generously, experts can come up with about a dozen."
When David Mendosa (owner of the site) showed Pinker the list of 100 words, he said "It is a work of a witty satirist. Some of the entries on the serious lists of Eskimo snow words are as dubious as "wa-ter" meaning melted snow "tlan-na-na" for oldie snow on the radio."

Posted by Rachel Learned at 7:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Terry Kit-fong Au, Janet S. Oh, Leah M. Knightly, Sun-Ah Jun, and Laura F. Romo go through the basics of childhood language learning being special to begin their article. As weâ??ve learned in class and in previous psych courses, people who are exposed to language as children learn the phonology and morphology much better than those who, however intensively they study, learn languages later in life. When a child learns a language very young but then stops using it, they lose their ability to understand and use it. However, it is possible for them to reaccess the language through age-regression hypnosis.
The study that Terry Kit-fong Au, Janet S. Oh, Leah M. Knightly, Sun-Ah Jun, and Laura F. Romo did essentially found that, â??both acoustical analyses and native-speaker accent ratings revealed that childhood speakers sounded more native-like than childhood hearers, who did not sound reliably better than the novice learnersâ??. One connection to class would be to the discussion we had of hearing children born to deaf parents who also did not speak. Their prime source of spoken language might be from a television, but because television (unless it is a show such as Blueâ??s Clues, but even that hardly counts) isnâ??t interactive, children canâ??t do hypothesis testing to try their hand at using language. To further support this, they write from their findings that, â??speaking a language during childhood helps adults learn to speak the language later with more native-like phonologyâ??. What they did find that slightly contrasted this information is that childhood â??overhearersâ?? had similar phoneme recognition as childhood â??speakers.â?? Although perhaps not expected, this still makes sense since they were exposed to just as many sounds even if they didnâ??t have to make them themselves.
This also applies to class because it speaks to sign languageâ??s need to be taken seriously as a language in itself. If deaf children arenâ??t identified early because people think that they can pick up signing easily since it isnâ??t a valid language, then they will never learn it and internalize it as well as they could have if they had been taught and exposed to sign language younger. Furthermore, it extends into practical application in the world because it proves that children need to learn second and third languages beginning at a young age if they are ever to approach multilingualism.

Continue reading "Children Acquiring Language" »

Posted by Jen Wilmore at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By the end of Chapter 6, The Atoms of Sign I felt as justice somehow prevailed as Stokoe's work and the legitimacy of ASL as a language were finally recognized. And then it occured to me that this entire ordeal was entirely unknown to me unti l I read this chapter. And 20 years after the "highly public apex" of the "Stonewall of the emerging deaf pride movement," our class still had a frame adjustment to understand that ASL wasn't gestural English. Why? Is this oversight because the deaf make up such a small percentage of the population or is there something else at play? Is so it threatening to hearing people for there to be a language that circumvents the act of speech? Why didn't I learn the truth about ASL in kindergarten or first grade? I just don't understand why, once Stokoe teased out all of the variety, subtley, and meaning contained in every sign, why there's still this general perception that ASL is just a system of awkwardly mimed English nouns.

Posted by Tamara Belden at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It is quite clear from the reading that there has been a strong struggle for Stokoe to prove his view. It was not until the 1980s that we started to realize that sign Language operates in pretty much the same way spoken language does. Honestly, while reading I was really wondering why even a renowned man like Alexander Graham Bell deemed signed language as a vice that the deaf must avoid. More striking is that also the deaf shared the Oralists's views till they finally became aware of the illusion they had gotten into. Don't you think that we should sometimes stope for a moment and question some of our prejudices and things we have taken for granted. Moreover, Fox points out that "Human language has so strong a dsire for systematicity that in many cases a sign that enters the lexicon as an obvious mimetic gesture will change over time to become more arbitrary" (p. 105). So... if most gestures start out as iconic then with the course of time they change to become arbitrary, does that imply that Sign language is much less arbitrary than any spoken one? Can't we say that because humans tend to be systematic, they first produced, for a reason or another, this spoken word or that, then with time, people took the lexicon for granted and it became arbitrary?

Posted by Hussein Bani Khalid at 5:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On page 100 Fox says that "like spoken languages...each sign language chooses differently from the store of available handshapes, locations, and movements." She uses the example of the word "brother", saying that the same handshape is used to form the word in Taiwanese Sign Language as in British Sign Language, but not in ASL. I was wondering how closely related some sign languages are to each other overall. Fox mentions that ASL signers have to learn new handshapes or movements when they learn Chinese sign language, and that they will have a strong "accent"...but would it be easy for someone to pick up the new handshapes and movements and understand someone signing in Chinese Sign Language? And if they didn't learn the new handshapes and movements, how easy would it be to still understand it? Overall, how easy is it to translate across sign languages?

Posted by Wendy Paddock at 5:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I don't know that I have something with a grand question at the end, I just thought this section was fascinating. On page 91 Fox once again reminds us that sign language is indeed just another completely legitimate and independent language. She talks about Stokoe's experience with trying to ask a question. What Stokoe seems to have done is go through the basic signs involved in asking a question but left out all the extra pieces. I don't remember what portion of our understanding comes from the actual words and their meanings that another person says, but I know it isn't very high. If Stokoe was operating without the correct intonations, facial expressions, and other cues, then of course the students weren't understanding. I suppose maybe I'm wondering how everyone else feels about the importance of cues versus word meaning. For instance, we've talked about turn taking and how important eye contact, etc is. How tough would it be to understand someone speaking in a monotone all the time? I wonder how that translates over to written language since in a way maybe it always risks being read in a monotone. Maybe that's why some people hate reading or have trouble comprehending things that they read. Then again, maybe not...

Posted by Jen Wilmore at 12:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was struck and surprised by the sentence, "The Max Planck materials are supposed to be 'culture-neutral', designed to work anywhere in the world." Is culture neutrality even possible? There was confusion from a video clip where a female had a short hair and a male had a pony tail. This one example shows confusion from a basic term as male and female. What about a more difficult term, such as an iPod that may be a part of our American technology that might not translate in other areas of the world? There are clear issues when taking anything from one culture to another. What other issues might we run into in trying to take other pictures, or even concepts across culture? What pictures/concepts would translate across cultures the easiest? Which ones would be nearly impossible?

Posted by Rachel Learned at 9:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In chapter 6, Fox gives an example of how sign language is a lot like spoken language in its flexibility and ability to grow, citing the existence of lexical gaps. Like it is often seen in spoken language, necessity is often the greatest force in the creation of new words. I find it particularity interesting to compare the example in the book of how the word home was created in sign language. The signs for eat and sleep (both activities that typically occur in the home) merged as one to mean home. There were no examples of how this happens in English and I am having a hard time thinking of my own even though I am certain that they are (besides notebook and roommate). Can you think of any words that were created out of necessity? Or any that are a conglomerate of words? In what ways does sign language's ability to grow and morph according to need validate it as a language?

Posted by Vincent Donofrio at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tedlock, B. (2007). Bicultural dreaming as an intersubjective communicative process. Dreaming, 17(2), 57-72.

I found this articel interesting because we have just finished Agar's Language Shock in which we talked about how significant and integrated culture is to any language. But, how can we explore culture? The author tackles the issue of dreaming and regards it as an important component of any culture. Interestingly, she reviews part of the literature and shows us how ethnographers found it very useful to try sharing and interpreting your dreams according to the values and beliefs of the culture you want to learn about. She states that: " Today fieldworkers participate within many cultural contexts, learning not only the local uses of dreaming, but also sharing their dreams with their subjects. In doing so, they increase their cultural knowledge and their communicative responsiveness: becoming to some degree both bilingual and bicultural." (p. 57). So, dreaming is said to be a path to a cultural knowlege. Some anthropologists now describe dreams as part of a cultural grammar that can be used to both understand one's own consciousness and culture as well as the consciousness and cultures of others. The article refers to Katherine Ewing, an ethnographer who did field research in Pakistan. Her experience with dreams in Sufism has allowed her to better understand the Sufis' perspective and religious values. Since most Western fieldworkers have retained their Western values, Tedlock argues against saying that they have "gone native." Instead, thay should be labeled "biculturals." Dreaming is also an indicator of whether you have successfully assimilated in agiven society, as your dreams start to include new surroundings from the new culture. I can't summarize the whole points but I rally recommend you read the whole articel; it reports interesting stories about dreaming in different cultures such as India and Venezuela.

Posted by Hussein Bani Khalid at 5:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I came across an article about Nicaraguan Sign Language for deaf children. In this article, Julie McCardle (2003) discusses how the Nicaragua School for the Deaf was established in the late 1970s and focused on the oral approach in the education of deaf students. They were taught to read and write in Spanish, as well as to read Spanish on the lips. They had never been taught any sign language prior to enrollment in the Nicaragua school. They weren't allowed to use any signing in the classroom, but they started to use their own form of communication outside the classroom, which teachers referred to as "mime." These students began to create vocabulary and grammar for their language, and Nicaraguan Sign Language was discovered in the 1980s.

Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) was developed through a pidgin language that evolved into a creole language. With respect to spatial representation, a difference was found between students who entered the Nicaragua school before and after 1983, and grammatical construct was used more by the younger students. McCardle (2003) states that there are differences between individuals who learn sign language at an early age and those who learn later in life, which supports the critical period hypothesis. I thought it was really interesting that the critical period hypothesis applies to sign language in the same way that it applies to spoken language. According to McCardle, native signers are able to use the morphological aspect of sign language in more appropriate situations than those who learn later in life.

Continue reading "Nicaraguan Sign Language" »

Posted by Wendy Paddock at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This study applies science to concepts that have been discussed in class primarily in non scientific terms. It explores cognitive control in within- and between-language switching in bilingual participants (English + Spanish) using fMRI testing as bilingual patients named photos in one language only or switched between them. A separate set of photos was described only in English as either the object or the action which were switched after each response. No difference in activation patterns in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex were found in picture naming between the two languages when only one was used. Nor was there any significant difference in the activation pattern of action naming between the two languages. However, an increased intensity of activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was present in switching between languages. This increased activation is believed to be the result of enhancement and repression of two different languages in turn. This study confirms that bilingualism does employ excess general executive processing and also that languages are represented in overlapping areas of the brain. These finding are very interesting but are not necessarily very accurate do to a very small sample size and little data on the age at which the second language was acquired, there is room for improvement.

An image of the brain demonstrating overlapping and applicable intensification during language switching in a bilingual brain.

Hernandez, A, Dapretto, M, Mazziotta, J, & Bookheimer, S (2001). Language switching and language representation in spanish-english bilinguals: An fmri study. NeuroImage, 14, 510-520.

Posted by Vincent Donofrio at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm not really sure that I understand how the author was able to break through (our even detect) his own frame of reference. After reading his description of Mexicans and how their desire for social harmony is interpreted as lying, I wasn't sure how Agar figured this all out. I understood the importance of realizing that language is more than vocab and grammar, but I don't see how to get from that point to being able to detect such frames. Does the author just ask "why did you just do this thing I dislike?" constantly? And how are the people he talks to able to detect their frames, if it's the air they breathe as well.

Posted by Tamara Belden at 7:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Agar seems to be too optimistic about our undestanding of other cultures. He is bringing us hope and dreams. Yes, I agree that language extends beyond the grammar and dictionary, and that we have to immerse ourselves in the culture of the language we want to learn. However, I wonder how ready and willing we are to understand others. Why is it that we try to impose our way of thinking and seeing things on others? In fact, it is not only in America that we have "the number-one beholders." What do you think of the author's view that knowing how to communicate in a culture is more important the knowing the language's grammar and vocabulary?

Posted by Hussein Bani Khalid at 7:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

On page 41, Agar discusses the linguistics joke "What do you call a person who speaks three languages? A trilingual. Two languages? A bilingual. One language? You guessed it, an American." He said that his friend believes that Americans are completely capable of learning the grammar for a second language, but that they have trouble understanding a different mentality. I agree with this, but in some ways I don't think we can be completely at fault for what appears to be ignorance. People in other cultures might be able to speak two or more languages, but it's possible that those cultures place a higher value on speaking more than one language. When I studied in Spain, most of my professors were fluent in at least two or three languages. This value is placed on students from a young age there; from the age of five or six, they are obligated to study English in school, and it's also common to learn a second foreign language in addition to English. I can see that Americans don't necessarily have this same mentality, although most, if not all, American students are now expected to study a foreign language at some point. Because of this, do you think the trend is changing? Do you think cultures will ever switch around in terms of this joke?

Posted by Wendy Paddock at 7:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Relating to my interest in politeness, I found the section on lies most compelling. However, I wanted more discussion relating to lies in context. I was interested in reasons for lying, such as selfish or white lies. For instance, if you lie to cover up cheating, that is a selfish lie. You are hurting someone else while protecting yourself. If you lie to compliment someone on their new haircut, it is a white lie. You are being polite because you are saving their face and not embarrassing them with critiques or insults. However, I was thinking that if one of my best friends lied to me, no matter what circumstance, I would be offended. On the other hand, I don't necessarily want strong critiques from people who I do not know or who have little knowledge of a situation. So, in what situations would lies, even little white ones be appropriate or inappropriate? What situations or with what people should we lie? Or, is it best to always tell the truth? Furthermore would you or should you lie when you are with someone of a different cultural background?

Bottom line: What, if any criterion is there to judge the appropriateness of lies?

Posted by Rachel Learned at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As we briefly pondered in class, for the sake of having never pondered it before, deaf people do in fact read just the same as those who are able to hear and speak, kind of. In fact, through fMRI, we can see how written language is processed in deaf individuals brains as opposed to signed communication and verbal communication in hearing people. Neville et al., 2007, explores three different groups of peoples brain functions through the use of fMRI including; deaf native ASL signers who learned only to read English visually, normally hearing and speaking native English speakers, and normally hearing native signers of ASL and speakers of English. All participants showed processing of their native language in the classic language processing area of the brain regardless if it is spoken or signed. However, deaf subjects did not process written English in this area in the way that a non-deaf native speaker would. Among many other significant findings, this study concludes that deaf people in a way do read like us, but regardless of the age of acquisition, this purely text based form of communication is not treated by the brain as a language, at least not in the same capacity as ASL in those who cannot hear.

Neville, H, Bavelier, D, Corina, D, Rauschecker, J, Karni, A, & Lalwani, A (1998). Cerebral organization for language in deaf and hearing subjects: Biological constraints and effects of experience. 95, 922-929.

Posted by Vincent Donofrio at 9:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Agar, who has spent many years living and working abroad, proposes that is not the American innability to learn that keeps us from learning other languages, it's our ego. From a practical standpoint, I understand why it would be much more beneficial for a child native in Dutch, for example, to learn English then for an English speaker to learn Dutch. For native-speakers of smaller language communities the motivation is present, in that English or other more mainstream languages will basically be required to be successful in business or academia. That kind of pressure just naturally does not exist for English speakers because they already possess the "language of commerce". Even within English, the "circles" we create feed into group superiority and broadening the gap in the understanding of language, that we are supposed to be masters of. The more we segregate as language communities, more confusion about meaning is sure to insue. Is there any way to slow down this natural language progression? Could the separation someday lead to entirely new languages?

How prepared are Americans for a new "language of commerce" such as Mandarin Chinese, considering the Chinese economy is set to outgrow ours in the near future? Will we suffer as a nation because of unwillingness to change and accept cultures / languages other than our own?

Posted by Vincent Donofrio at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Morsella, E., & Krauss, R. M. (2005). Muscular activity in the arm during lexical retrieval: Implications for gesture-speech theories. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. 34(4), 415-427. Retrieved from SpringerLink on 7 March 2008.

In this article, 6 electromyographic (EMG) electrodes were attached to the forearm muscles of 30 Columbia University students (14 males and 16 females), measuring muscular activity to see if lexical gestures+, were used when explaining certain types of words more than others. Morsella and Krauss used EMG so that more subtle arm movements could be detected. Participants were given the definitions of 17 abstract, and 19 concrete, low-frequency nouns, which had been previously rated by 42 other undergraduates*, and were asked to name the word which had been described. So that they would not attend to their arm movements, participants were told the purpose of the study was to measure memory and stress.
This study found that greater EMG amplitudes were found during retrieval of concrete words than abstract words, t (29) = 2.76, p<.01. Concrete and spatial scores of the nouns accounted for 0.27 of EMG amplitude variance. To explain overt gestural movement, the experimenters theorize that concrete nouns offer elements which can be expressed visually, which is much more difficult (if possible) for abstract nouns. To account for subtler movements, Morsella and Krauss cite the Gestural feedback model (GFM), which they expound upon in their own 2004 article. The GFM theorizes that lexical gestures help to hold feature information in a semantic-motor loop long enough for word retrieval, much the way vocal rehearsal keeps auditory information activated in the phonological loop. Put simply, these gestures help to communicate concepts that can be explained by visual features (concrete nouns) and aids in the retrieval of words in general.

+ As opposed to conventionalized or rhythmic gestures. The authors cite Krauss et al. (1996) for a review of gesture types:
Krauss, R. M., Chen Y., Chawla, P. (1996). Nonverbal behavior and nonverbal communication: What do conversational hand gestures tell us? Advances in Experimental SocialPsychology, 28, 389â??450.

* 20 males and 22 females were asked to rate how spatial, concrete, active, pantomimable, familiar, drawable, manipulable, and valuable each noun was, along a 6-point continuum.

Continue reading "For Which Words Do We Gesture?" »

Posted by Tamara Belden at 8:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I think itâ??s interesting that people think that Mexican lie a lot because they confuse their pleasantries for lies. From the story Agar told, it did, actually, seem like Luis was lying, and it would have irritated me because it seemed like they went into the situation unprepared, but I understand where Luis is coming from, too. I learned to ballroom dance from my best friend, who is an American-born Filipino. He would constantly tell me that I did a good job and did everything beautifullyâ??and then show me how to do the move again, which was usually completely different from what I had done. I would always fight with him because he wouldnâ??t correct me when I was wrong, and I need that continual feedback to learn. I didnâ??t even think that this could have been a cultural thing rather than just him being polite all the time. Since heâ??s very comfortable with me and his brother acts the same way, perhaps it is Filipino etiquette. I never understood it, but he probably didnâ??t understand why I was asking him to be rude or abrasive to me. I know that I wasnâ??t offending him or vice versa, but perhaps if I had known him less well, he would have been offended, and maybe I would have been even more upset that my teacher couldnâ??t teach. I guess we all have different definitions of â??good job.â?? These cultural idiosyncrasies fascinate meâ??I wonder what else Americans do that completely shocks others and how often people feel comfortable enough to ask aboutâ??like the girl who asked what a date wasâ??or who just lets them slip by.

Posted by Jen Wilmore at 5:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yang, W. (2002). Communication slips and their sociocultural implications. Language & Communication. 22(1), 69-82. Retrieved from ScienceDirect on 4 April 2008.

This paper is a sort of bridge between some of the concepts we learned in Erard's Um and Agar's Language Shock. Yang acknowledges the usefulness of studying speech disfluencies from a linguistic and psychological perspective, but proposes that sociocultural aspects also play a role. To use Agar's terminology, different Languacultures are going to produce different errors for different reasons.

Yang explains that familal relationships are more central and specific in Chinese as opposed to English. Cousins in Traditional Chinese are distuinguished by gender, age in relation to the speaker, and "closeness," (whether or not the cousin is related to the father). Because there are more options to choose from in Chinese, there are more chances for error than in English. Yang also points out that in English, once a relationship becomes too complicated to describe succintly, English speakers tend to just describe others by name, rather than kinship term, reducing the chance of speech errors here even further. For example, rather than introduce you to "my ex's parents who I'm still very close to," I'll introduce you to Jim and Phyllis. This is considered impolite in Chinese languaculture.

Another interesting sociocultural aspect of slips that Yang describes is that as speakers (regardless of the languaculture), we're aware that speech errors happen. She describes to purposeful plays on this theme. One is that some may mask potentially offensive political statements under the guise of slips, which she holds as a possible explanation for Dick Armey's referring to Barney Franks as Barney Fag. Another purposeful use of slips is in a traditional Chinese performance called "cross-talk" (xiangsheng). In this performance, Speaker A sets up Speaker B to make a slip. It can be compared to the priming trick in English where Speaker A tells Speaker B to repeat "poke" 10 times and then asks what the white of an egg is called.

Posted by Tamara Belden at 7:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, I think a bit of "debriefing" is in order. My post "Two Can Play at this Game, Agar" was my attempt to tell a story about Garkinkeling in a manner that was itself Garfinkeling. In these posts, we're supposed to ask a series of discussion questions, but I instead chose to tell a story (and storytelling as a way to teach is a rich point for Professor Knupsky, Professor Searle-White, and one can assume, Agar himself). I had hoped to collect more "data" on reactions to my post, but since my post was the last to be reviewed before our class activity, an appropriate moment didn't come up. I was also waiting to see if anyone called me on it before the end of class, but it was rather egotistical to assume that such behavior on my part is noteworthy enough to elicit a response, especially one which could have been considered to be rude.

Posted by Tamara Belden at 7:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Journal of Pragrmatics 40 (2008) 537�??558

In their article, Janet Bing and Charles Ruhl investigated the pragmatic use of responsibilty statements that usually follow writers' expressions of thanks for colleagues. They explored the face-inhancing value of these statements and compared them to thanks, apologies, and gambits in terms of being "formulaic disclaimers." They argue that claiming responsibilty not only "exonerates others from blame" but also allow authors to claim ownership of and credit for their work. Additionally, responsibility statement allow authors to establish a professional persona and demonstrate that they know the conventions of their profession.

When scholars don't abide but those conventions, they choose to present themselves as "humorous, creative, or individualistic." And most those who do so are famous authors. It is rare that a new writer would not follow this ritual because she/he wants to get the trust of other scholars as well as the readers.

Like conversational disclaimers, responsibilty statements attempt to "forestall a potential
negative evaluation in case readers should discover any errors or shortcomings in the
publication." They also express ritual modesty. However, they differ in terms of being written, relatively formal, and always follow formuals of thanks.

I found it suitable to address this topic as we have been discussing conversational rituals and how they contribute to our relations. You can skim through the article, if you are interested. Just go to the Journal of Pragmatics and click on the relevant volume and issue.

Posted by Hussein Bani Khalid at 6:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The author talked about how our view of the world, if we are number-one types, are based on the frames we unconsiously developed in our society. He states that:
"The worst problem is that the number-one types probably aren't aware that they have any frames at all. They are burried in patterns of unconsious habit, lost in the lessons of childhood, that drill in how the world works until akid forgets and figures that's how the world naturally works."

He also mentions that if we really want to learn another languaculture, we should first consider what is "natural" fro us as just "a frame" (p. 162). I think things became more clear now but here is the question: Doesn't that imply that one's identity could be threatened, I mean if someone says "Well, it is bad to deceive someone, but I think this is only a frame I have in mind, so deception might be allowed." I think the writer has excluded morals from discussion in one of the past chapters, however, he is now talking about "lying" as only a speech act that needs a frame to be understood. What do you suggest?

Posted by Hussein Bani Khalid at 7:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As a college student, I'm drawn to the semiannual poster sale held in the Campus Center lobby like a moth to a flame and last fall was no exception. I searched through piles of posters for the perfect, glossy emblem of my individuality. Sadly, nothing spoke to my own tastes, but I did find a great gift for a friend--a hyper-cute caricature of Alex from the film A Clockwork Orange (...I have strange friends). As always, I was broke, but I had heard that one could earn a poster from the vendors by passing out fliers for them. The rumor was true and I stepped outside with a handful of fliers to disseminate to my fellow students.

Once outside, I realized that approaching people as they walked up to the building and pushing a piece of paper into their hands did not appeal to me--confrontation makes me nervous. After quickly running through a few tactics, I decided to sit cross-legged in the middle of the 20ft. wide walkway leading to the building's entrance, with a flier extended upward in each hand (I was told later that I looked like some odd religious figure). I had a hypothesis that by simply sitting in an area where it's unexpected for a person to be sitting and offering an object to be taken, I would either 1. be given an extremely wide berth and avoided at all costs or 2. make approachers curious enough about my behavior to take the paper I was offering. When traffic was low, the former happened more frequently than the latter, but both occurred. When traffic was high, some passersby lost the option bow their paths out around me and many more people took the fliers (some people even thanked me when they took it).

It was pretty fun to people watch. And after only an hour and some change of sitting in the sun, I got my poster and skipped off.

Posted by Tamara Belden at 8:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Norman Fairclough discusses the interplay of language, culture, and politics in â??Political Correctnessâ??: The Politics of Culture and Language. None could exist or move forward without the other two, and he wonders how they have come to rely upon one another so heavily and obviouslyâ??as seen in the term â??political correctness.â?? He brings up the idea that calling someone out on their lack of â??PCnessâ?? is simply checking their language in the hopes of altering culture. At the same time, the PC-aware person is not necessarily asking for a change of meaning, only a change of word. There is implicit understanding that the non PC term was not ill-chosen, but is not supported by the polite people in the culture.
The term â??political correctnessâ?? was probably chosen because America is very focused on politics, believing it to be the source of change. For legitimate change to happen, it must be grounded and authorized by the political system either through a law or amendment.
The controversy surrounding â??PCâ?? is that it is gradually shifting from a morality check that people issue to one another, to an ironic standard to be scoffed at. If something is too â??PCâ?? nowadays, it is too afraid to say what it means, to bring up the tough subjects, to offend someone. What was once an aid towards inclusive thinking through inclusive language is now exclusive because it doesnâ??t allow us to talk about some topics for fear of saying the wrong thing. It is too easy to be labeled prejudiced because of an ignorantâ??or innocentâ??choice of words, which makes some subjects completely taboo.
Fairclough writes that, â??processes of cultural and discursive intervention, including what is referred to as â??PCâ??, can be seen in these terms as attempts to change discourses on the assumption that changing discourses will, or may, lead to changes in other elements of social practices through processes of dialectical internalizationâ?? (23). Here is where the connection to class comes in, although it is more related to my literature review topic than anything (which I didnâ??t realize when I began). We have seen how some wordsâ??like â??umâ??â??have been demonized by society and the educational system. â??PCnessâ?? is trying to do the same thing, but with a purpose. If you change the way someone thinks about the language of, say, prejudice, then you can change they way they talk about it. If you change the way someone talks about something, then you can change the way they think about it, as well. By reclaiming the words one uses, you reclaim their meaning and can take away the negative connotations. The controversy surrounds the true internalization of this and whether one can really change the way people think by changing their language or whether the idea of â??PCâ?? has just made some subjects taboo, which sweeps them under the rug rather than facing them.

Continue reading "To See or Not PC... There's the Rub" »

Posted by Jen Wilmore at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On page 116 Agar is joking about how no one seems to know what culture is, and that everybody uses the word "culture" without defining it. He said that there could be two participants in a conversation who are from very different national and linguistic traditions, and they might be able to communicate better than two people who are from similar national and linguistic backgrounds. If this is true, then what is the real connection between language and culture? Should language be used to define a culture, or should culture be used to define a language? This goes back to something we talked about in class the other day. If, for example, two people having a conversation spoke the same language but had different cultural background, would it be easier or harder for them to communicate than two people who were speaking different languages but had the same cultural background?

Posted by Wendy Paddock at 7:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I find Malinowski's work with the Trobriand islanders to raise many questions about the practicality of language and the influence of culture that are often not considered; even though Agar dismisses it (likely due to the lack of circle that he loves so much). The art of translation is a tricky one, and for the most part impossible. In a culture such as the Trobriand where the main goal of language is to get something accomplished in a given situation how is an outsider ever to understand? In order to translate, every aspect of the situation is needed such as why , when, where, who, and the goal or more simply the context of situation. This makes me think a little of a culture I once heard of that only distinguishes between light and dark colors. They achieve their goals with this simplistic differentiation, which we have a difficult time understanding. In a case like this, translation can simply not occur. So, should we even try?

It's very interesting that it may be more situational (as it often is within ones own language) than cultural in being able to translate and understand correctly. How does this not apply to all languages? Does this doom us as distant language learners? What can we learn about other languages by looking at practical use rather than cultural differences?

Posted by Vincent Donofrio at 1:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)