Assignments

Oct. 9th 2009 Assignment 4 (due Oct. 19th) Read the handout "It doesn't translate" Read the article "How Does Our Language Shape the Way We Think?" by Lena Boroditsky Write roughly 400 words on: either Five ideas/pieces of information in the handout/article that you found particularly interesting and why. (Reasons could include your own thoughts on the significance of the information, your agreement/disagreement with the interpretation of the data, ideas about how possible or impossible it would be to devise experiments to test the hypotheses, musings on the ramifications of these linguistic idiosyncrasies, suggestions for how linguistic influences are or could be overcome etc.) or Answer up to three of these question (as with the previous assignment, you are welcome to answer just one if you have a lot to say on the subject). - If people speak more than one language, is what they know different in each language? Does each language provide a different framework for reality? - How is the meaning of what is said affected by silences omissions, pace, tone of voice and bodily movement? How might these factors be influenced in turn by the social or cultural context? - What is lost in translation from one language to another? Why? - To what degree might different languages shape in their speakers different concepts of themselves and the world? What are the implications of such differences for knowledge? - What may have been meant by the comment "How strangely do we diminish a thing as soon as we try to express it in words"? (Maurice Maeterlinck) - Is it possible to think without language? How does language facilitate, extend, direct or limit thinking? .