Language and Normatives

Whether it is a language of thought that shapes our speech or our speech that shapes our mental representations, there is an undeniable connection between the two. While reading Lupyan, I was reminded of an activity used for bonding and to practice describing things where in a partnership, one person is blindfolded and has paper and pen while the other is given an image and has to try to have their partner replicate it. When participating in the activity, the vastness of a word and/or the typicality of a concept can become quite clear. Lupyan's experiments show that equilateral and isosceles triangles are more normative, or that there is a difference in interpretation of the word triangle and three-sided polygon. As we saw in class with the activity where a different word was shown along with the word princess, stimuli or prompting can affect our thoughts and words...but how much of the English language does the majority of society have a similar idea of normative (as we saw with triangles)? What effect does this have on communication or our ideas in society? It seems harmless that scalene triangles are underrepresented when triangles or three-sided polygons are called upon, but what about other ideas? It can help or hurt to be considered a part of a normative or stereotype, as seen through stereotype threat. How much is language responsible for the continuation of a normative? Rickford does point out that certain groups are often not helped by sociolinguistics.
I think these readings are starting to point to how powerful word choice is and how careful we must be in selecting it. With this and Atkins analysis of near synonyms, it may be crucial to expand our vocabulary and understand very subtle differences in words in order to convey the meaning we are intending and to adjust someone from a typical representation to a specific one we are discussing.