Re: [xmca] Language May Help Create, Not Just Convey, Thoughts and Feelings

[Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu>]

Wow! I like the "isness" concept! It sure beats "wasness" as in static or
petrified or atrophied or tending toward entropy.

On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com>wrote:

> Dear Robert Lake:
> In the absence of any conclusive information on the meaning of any thing,
> we humans rely on the effects of our words, (as sounds), to inform us of how
> we are affected by that which makes up our environment. This informing seems
> to take place subliminally and to provide us with a sensesence of the isness
> of, (the nature of), any thing for which we have a name. I suppose that
> spoken language can be thought of as regulated singing. Singing could be
> likened to free-form dancing while talking could be likened to square
> dancing or to some other form of dance with rules.
>
>                Joseph Gilbert
>
>
>
> On Nov 20, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Robert Lake wrote:
>
>  Serpel and Joseph,
>>
>> I appreciate your dialogue on this.
>>
>> Have you read Jesperson's thought on this.
>>
>> *Men sang out their feelings long before they were able to speak their
>> thoughts. But of course we must not imagine that "singing" means exactly
>> the
>> same thing here as in a modern concert hall. When we say that speech
>> originated in song, what we mean is merely that our comparatively
>> monotonous
>> spoken language and our highly developed vocal music are differentiations
>> of
>> primitive utterances, which had more in them of the latter than of the
>> former. These utterances were at first, like the singing of birds and the
>> roaring of many animals and the crying and crooning of babies,
>> exclamative,
>> not communicative -- that is, they came forth from an inner craving of the
>> individual… *
>>
>> *       They little suspected that in singing as nature prompted them they
>> were paving the way for a language capable of rendering minute shades of
>> thought; just as they could not suspect that out of their coarse pictures
>> of
>> men and animals there should one day grow an art enabling men of distant
>> countries to speak to one another.*
>>
>> *   * 0. Jesperson, *Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin*(
>> London:
>> Allen & Unwin,1922), pp.436-437.
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 12:04 AM, Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com
>> >wrote:
>>
>>  Serpel;
>>> I suggest you explore your own emotional/somatic reactions to the vocal
>>> sounds of whatever language you wish. If you do not feel any reaction,
>>> then
>>> look for what emotional states the sounds suggest? Spoken language is
>>> founded upon sounds of the body, sounds that convey states of the body's
>>> emotions. The use of these sounds as words, to refer to things, is based
>>> upon their being expressive emotionally. Scientists have been distracted
>>> by
>>> the referential function of spoken language and have neglected to study
>>> the
>>> primal function of vocal body language, the conveyance of what's going on
>>> with the moment-by-moment emotional process.
>>>
>>>               Joseph Gilbert
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Nov 19, 2010, at 10:18 AM, Serpil S Sonmez wrote:
>>>
>>>  I thought this is a very timely article after
>>>
>>>> Vygotsky/Sapir/Whorf/Saussure discussions.
>>>> Best,
>>>>
>>>> Serpil S. Fox
>>>>
>>>> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101103111206.htm
>>>>
>>>> The paper appears in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
>>>> "Charlemagne is reputed to have said that to speak another language is
>>>> to
>>>> possess another soul," says co-author Oludamini Ogunnaike, a graduate
>>>> student at Harvard. "This study suggests that language is much more than
>>>> a
>>>> medium for expressing thoughts and feelings. Our work hints that
>>>> language
>>>> creates and shapes our thoughts and feelings as well."
>>>>
>>>> Implicit attitudes, positive or negative associations people may be
>>>> unaware they possess, have been shown to predict behavior towards
>>>> members of
>>>> social groups. Recent research has shown that these attitudes are quite
>>>> malleable, susceptible to factors such as the weather, popular culture
>>>> --
>>>> or, now, by the language people speak.
>>>>
>>>> "Can we shift something as fundamental as what we like and dislike by
>>>> changing the language in which our preferences are elicited?" asks
>>>> co-author
>>>> Mahzarin R. Banaji, the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics
>>>> at
>>>> Harvard. "If the answer is yes, that gives more support to the idea that
>>>> language is an important shaper of attitudes."
>>>>
>>>> Ogunnaike, Banaji, and Yarrow Dunham, now at the University of
>>>> California,
>>>> Merced, used the well-known Implicit Association Test (IAT), where
>>>> participants rapidly categorize words that flash on a computer screen or
>>>> are
>>>> played through headphones. The test gives participants only a fraction
>>>> of a
>>>> second to categorize words, not enough to think about their answers.
>>>> "The IAT bypasses a large part of conscious cognition and taps into
>>>> something we're not aware of and can't easily control," Banaji says.
>>>>
>>>> The researchers administered the IAT in two different settings: once in
>>>> Morocco, with bilinguals in Arabic and French, and again in the U.S.
>>>> with
>>>> Latinos who speak both English and Spanish.
>>>> In Morocco, participants who took the IAT in Arabic showed greater
>>>> preference for other Moroccans. When they took the test in French, that
>>>> difference disappeared. Similarly, in the U.S., participants who took
>>>> the
>>>> test in Spanish showed a greater preference for other Hispanics. But
>>>> again,
>>>> in English, that preference disappeared.
>>>>
>>>> "It was quite shocking to see that a person could take the same test,
>>>> within a brief period of time, and show such different results,"
>>>> Ogunnaike
>>>> says. "It's like asking your friend if he likes ice cream in English,
>>>> and
>>>> then turning around and asking him again in French and getting a
>>>> different
>>>> answer."
>>>>
>>>> In the Moroccan test, participants saw "Moroccan" names (such as Hassan
>>>> or
>>>> Fatimah) or "French" names (such as Jean or Marie) flash on a monitor,
>>>> along
>>>> with words that are "good" (such as happy or nice) or "bad" (such as
>>>> hate or
>>>> mean). Participants might press one key when they see a Moroccan name or
>>>> a
>>>> good word, and press another when they see a French name or a bad word.
>>>> Then
>>>> the key assignments are switched so that "Moroccan" and "bad" share the
>>>> same
>>>> key and "French" and "good" share the other.
>>>>
>>>> Linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf first posited in the 1930s that language is
>>>> so
>>>> powerful that it can determine thought. Mainstream psychology has taken
>>>> the
>>>> more skeptical view that while language may affect thought processes, it
>>>> doesn't influence thought itself. This new study suggests that Whorf's
>>>> idea,
>>>> when not caricatured, may generate interesting hypotheses that
>>>> researchers
>>>> can continue to test.
>>>>
>>>> "These results challenge our views of attitudes as stable," Banaji says.
>>>> "There still remain big questions about just how fixed or flexible they
>>>> are,
>>>> and language may provide a window through which we will learn about
>>>> their
>>>> nature."
>>>>
>>>> Ogunnaike, Dunham, and Banaji's work was supported by Harvard's
>>>> Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Mellon Mays
>>>> Foundation.
>>>>
>>>> ]
>>>> __________________________________________
>>>> _____
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>
>>>>
>>> __________________________________________
>>> _____
>>> xmca mailing list
>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> *Robert Lake  Ed.D.
>> *Assistant Professor
>> Social Foundations of Education
>> Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
>> Georgia Southern University
>> P. O. Box 8144
>> Phone: (912) 478-5125
>> Fax: (912) 478-5382
>> Statesboro, GA  30460
>>
>>  *Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
>> midwife.*
>> *-*John Dewey.
>> __________________________________________
>> _____
>> xmca mailing list
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>
>
> __________________________________________
> _____
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>


-- 
*Robert Lake  Ed.D.
*Assistant Professor
Social Foundations of Education
Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
Georgia Southern University
P. O. Box 8144
Phone: (912) 478-5125
Fax: (912) 478-5382
Statesboro, GA  30460

 *Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
midwife.*
*-*John Dewey.
__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca