Miranda

Here is an article that was excerpted from Guy Deutscher's newest book, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages. He talks about the common conception that language shapes our thoughts. I encourage all of you to read the article (or the book!) and exchange some thoughts. :autumnleaves:

In the New Scientist, there was recently an interesting article written by Christine Kenneally, the author of The First Word. The article is essentially describing a critique of Chomsky's highly popular theory of UG. It also touches on the Sapir-Whorfian topic of how language shapes our thoughts. You can find the article here, if you don't have the hard copy: Language lessons: You are what you speak - life - 01 June 2010 - New Scientist I'm interested in sparking some discussion. Thoughts? :lol:

Just to clarify, I was meaning the term "Newspeak", not the full language it represents. If that makes a difference. And I was wondering...is "hapax legomenon" a hapax legomenon?

How about..."Newspeak" or "doubleplusungood"? These only occur in 1984, but people seem to know what they mean when spoken... I'm trying :wink:

But if you include hermaphrodites, then sex is on a spectrum, yes? :evil:

UncleAl, you're joking, right?

I have to agree with Boerseun on this one. Ask and you shall receive. There are many studies done on primates to invesigate their ability to symbolize, categorize, and communicate overall. I suggest reading about Kanzi, Koko (gorilla), Washoe (chimpanzee), or Nim Chimpsky, to name a few. (I don't usually condone citing only Wiki for research, but I'm going to do so for the sake of simplicity.) Actually, the research for embodied cognition is quite interesting. George Lakoff is a good start if you want to know more about the subject.

I agree all the way up to your last sentence, which just needs a little re-phrasing. Gender roles are socially constructed. Thus, an 'alternative lifestyle' actually is an adherence to a gender role, but it's true that it doesn't make it any more biologically valid. Ones 'sex' is based on the biological, physical characteristics. So, we could teach about how there is a spectrum of sexes, and a spectrum of gender roles that we like to believe are based in biology, but that in reality those gender roles are inherently arbitrary constructs that have little to do with your sex.

HAH! This is great. :)

Thanks for the quick replies! I agree. I hate getting forwards but for some reason I always receive them. It's one thing to be sending forwards that say "bless your family" and whatnot...those don't bother me much...but some of the ones I get are just rediculous. I don't know if I should make it an issue to my supervisor or not. Mostly because I keep my atheism a secret, which is why I received an anti-atheist email to begin with...people here think that everyone is religious. I'll look into company policy just to be on the safe side.

Judging by these last two quotes, there is a contention on this thread. I agree to having concepts before linguistic capabilities. Language is not necessary for making associations between two things and thus symbolizing them. Pavlov's Dog is an example of non-linguistic symbolism. The dog associated the sound of a bell to food, making the bell sound symbolic for the dog. Linguistic abilities are the most developed excercise of symbolized thought, but not the prerequisite for it. This sounds more like conciousness to me. Cognition refers to the brains ability to process or apply information, concious or unconcious. AI can have cognitive processes without linguistic functionality, correct? Thus the ability to form concepts (cognition) would be the precurser for language, not the end result. But when we're talking about our symbolic nature, that would require a more developed level of concept forming, or cognitive processing, right? I'd essentially like to get back to the issue of the thread. The way I see it, we form a concept, and then apply language. Perhaps I just have a contention with the Sapir-Whorfian view of language influencing thought. How does something arbitrary like words and syntax have any effect on cognition? I don't see it. Language reflects, not effects! :)

I recently received an e-mail at work. It was a forwarded joke about a bear killing and eating an Atheist. It wasn't that funny (I can post it here if you want). Upon reading it I felt kind of bothered, considering I'm an atheist. From the list of left over email addresses on the page I knew it had been sent by quite a few of my co-workers. I replied to most of them, simply asking "is this supposed to degrade atheists?" and no one answered except one befuddled co-worker who abruptly apologized later. I then got another forward today about famous people who have died in horrible ways because they slandered "god" or "jesus". Even if I was religious, I wouldn't necessarily find such jokes funny, nor appropriate for work. I don't know any atheists that send comical emails about the tragic deaths of Christians (not to say that there aren't some out there, I just haven't seen any). Have any of you experienced any religious tension or discrimination in the workplace (atheist or not)?

Excuse me while I attempt to re-trace what we're talking about, as I have gotten a bit lost. Are we trying to determine whether one can have cognitive function prior to language, or symbolic thought prior to language? I would assume that the latter would only come after the onset of language, but that we surely had 'thought' processes beforehand.