Language affects more than we think

Lupyan completes four experiments about triangles to analyze how language affects our cognition and ability to represent abstract concepts. He presents a paradox between how we can somehow learn facts about a ‘universal’ triangle, yet also struggle to achieve true abstraction because our mental representations have specificity and context-dependence. We are influenced by other factors such as verbal category labels as eliciting cues. He also brings up an interesting point about how words don’t just label pre-existing concepts, but there may be a causal relationship between language and the formation of conceptual representations. This is the inverse of how we normally think of language and its purpose. Language lets us create labels that are categorical and also reflect an idealized state. These states would be impossible to achieve if we didn’t have language or words. Experiment 1 showed that people drew – and judged - typical and ‘better’ triangles when given the cue “triangle” instead of “three-sided polygon.” Lupyan also says category names can activate a more typical form of a concept in comparison to nonverbal cues. In experiment 2, people recognized triangles more easily and quickly based on the specific cue, showing that labels produce higher consistency. Experiment 3 showed that people perceived geometry in different ways based on the name of the shape. Lupyan’s main argument was that category names lead us to achieve alignment and stability in mental representations, making communication easier. Language isn’t just a way to communicate these states, but it is important in how we represent them in our cognition to begin with. Thinking about the role of language in cognition makes words seem so much important than just forms of communication. Reading this article made me understand more deeply how linguistics is connected to the fields of psychology and neuroscience, and I have a better appreciation of how language ties into the major of Symbolic Systems.

Rickford’s article discusses the sociolinguistic information we can glean from the African American community. He discusses the creole hypothesis, divergence hypothesis, and grammaticalization. The creole issue deals with how different the AAVE is from Standard English and White dialects. The divergence issue is whether or not the AAVE is becoming more different from White vernaculars than it was before. He says it is diverging in some ways but also converging in others. Grammaticalization is how lexical things become grammatical or how grammatical things become more grammatical. Unfortunately, Rickford complains that we have taken from the African American community but not given back. We should attract more African Americans into linguistics. He also writes about the unfair levels of arrests, imprisonments, and executions of blacks. I agree that we should do more to represent the African American community more positively and improve our elementary education. Language obviously plays an important role in cognition, as shown in Lupyan’s article, so education will have far-reaching effects on kids. Language is more than just teaching the ability to speak, so improving education will therefore affect the cognitive processes for children as well.