In this past week's articles, we do a deep dive into the evolution of general american linguistics as well as take a brief look at the subconscious mental comprehension of certain phrases, given a specific context. So in the King/Sumner paper by our very own Stanford Linguistic Department, we take a look at the response time of people given a speaker of standard voices (GA), and those of a non-standard voice (AAVE or African American Vernacular English). I found it fascinating that the study found people respond quicker to standard phrases faster to voices categorized as GA, while the opposite was found true that people respond quicker to non-standard phrases when spoken by voices categorized as AAVE. I think the reasoning is that on a subconscious level, we as a society have come to associate certain sounds with certain linguistic patterns and phrases as well as the speaker's background. This is a very interesting topic of linguistic research because it touches on the fundamental growth and spread of different linguistic practices. Professor Rickford, in his 1997 paper, touches more in depth on the data available about the AAVE growth and experience. The paper itself didn't necessarily do the same type of study as the King/Sumner paper, but Rickford did uncover early on the notion of AAVE, back when it was not necessarily something many linguistic enthusiastic/researchers were focused on researching, and made headway in helping uncover the AAVE's influence on linguistics as a whole as well as its influence on publication of new works of literature.
The last article by Lupyan covered the notion of subconscious perceptions of phrases and how slight variations in word choices make huge differences in our mental constructs and propagation of the ideas conveyed and imagined. The central posit of the paper revolves around the notion of a "triangle" or better yet, a "3-sided polygon". It is indeed interesting that different students drew widely different triangles given slight deviations in wording. For example, when asked to draw a triangle, students would more likely draw equilateral triangles and when asked to draw a 3-sided polygon, students would draw more uneven and unevenly shaped triangles. This results from a common linguistic perceptual notion that if the students were expected to draw a more "normal" triangle, the study would have explicitly stated it. This study uncovers the dramatic difference in perceptual notions 2-3 word differences have in our collective understanding of ideas and concepts.
Through all three of these articles, I came to find an appreciation for the variety and differences in how even an established language like American English, can have wildly nuanced views of understanding, both from a word choice perspective like the Lupyan paper or from the differences in standard english and non-standard english. I do wonder how much of these differences actually contribute to a misunderstanding between people as even though I do now notice how I subconsciously perceive different phrasing and standard/nonstandard english differently, I don't go so far as to misunderstand someone. Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of living and breathing language is the fact that it is highly moldable and represents the constant growth and evolution of the set of study of linguistics that defines our speech, papers and understanding of the world. It's amazing that through all of this, we are still able to function as a society but also gain more in depth knowledge of the unknown through these precise research studies that helps us learn more about the language we all speak of a species.
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