When we ask students, "Why learn a second language?" We often hear, it will open doors to new cultures, help you make new friends, order food, get you to your hotel. I love..."so you can find the bathroom." But beyond those answers sometimes we are all stumped at expressing and understanding the depth of our all encompassing dependence on language?
We know, as language educators, that learning a new language helps to develop neurons and dendrites, and understand cultures, make connections, communicate with others. and express ourselves. I just read an article, however, that stretched my thinking and I learned something new about how language affects how we think and what we do.
The article also poses many questions that could be used in our units such as: Can patterns in language play a causal role in how we think? Can our language affect our perception of time and space? For folks who have work language learning at the academic and/or research level, please forgive my naievete, but for me, I found this article to be incredibly fascinating. For me the most interesting thing about language is how it expresses a culture, a community, or an individual but I've mainly used literature as the way to understand others. The linguistics side of language study has always seemed so formulaic and dry, but again, I haven't had much exposure. If this article is any indication of what I've been missing, I definitely have a lot to learn and explore on the language side of "Language and Literature."
Does language affect the way we think?
For instance, a group of researcher have found that artists who speak languages where nouns have grammatical gender, often create art where images represent the word's gender. For instance, German painters are more likely to paint "death" as a man, and in Russia "death" is more often painted as a woman; both matching the grammatical gender of the noun in that language.
Space, time, and other concepts may also be affected, developed, or understood differently depending on your language. For instance in English we use terms for directions that are relative to ourselves: left, right, in front, behind. An Aboriginal group in Australia uses absolute cardinal direction:east, west, north, south, to describe the location of something. We might say, "the pencil is to the left of your foot," whereas they might say "it is to the south southwest." Scientists believe this has helped them develop skills. They cite a study where members of their community can identify cardinal directions in unfamiliar settings and even inside buildings which would be difficult for English speakers who may not have the same ability to navigate.
Does language affect who we are and what we do? To learn more read this fascinating article by Lera Boroditsky https://www.edge.org/conversation/lera_boroditsky-how-does-our-language-shape-the-way-we-think
The quandry I have is how to bring these types of rich discussions about language into a language acquisition class. How do I balance learning about languages with the challenge of language learning? Can we bring these types of questions into a room in English, or stay in the target language and focus on language acquisition.
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