Language: a tool for communication or miscommunication?

 Language is shaped by subjective experiences; words can mean different things for different people. Lupyan captures this idea in the reading by conducting experiments about what he calls the “paradox of the universal triangle”.  Lupyan makes the people in his study draw, recognize, visually judge and infer based on visual and non-visual cues in order to understand how people represent triangles in their minds symbolically. He finds that people have mental representations of a correct triangle in their mind and a true abstraction of a triangle does not exist – people find some triangles more “triangular” than others, particularly equilateral triangles which we are often exposed to first.  

Similarly, Lupyan found that people draw different types of triangle drawn depending on the instruction given to them: draw a triangle or draw a three-sided polygon. He finds that asking people to draw a three-side-polygon is not specific enough for them to draw the correct idea of a triangle in their mind. So, in this way, we realize mental representations are context-dependent and specific.  If everyone has their own context-dependent mental representations behind words, how do we communicate the same ideas across language? Lupyan argues that category names like triangle allow us to achieve some alignment in mental representations and thus can make communication easier.  

However, language is still often misconstrued and a tool for miscommunication. Rickford, in the reading, explains the cultural significance of language, particularly African-American Vernacular English. He establishes the difference between AAVE and Standard English and discusses how AAVE is predominantly associated with a negative outlook. As a result, he says, speakers of AAVE are treated with less respect and as inferior by speakers of Standard English. In this way, language miscommunicates the African-American culture. Rickford also argues that linguists gather extensive data from the African-American community but hardly give back to them in a meaningful way. He states that language should be used to empower the African-American community and their culture and more African-Americans should be attracted into the field of linguistics – a field African-Americans are greatly underrepresented in.

Therefore, I do believe that language is an extremely powerful tool for communication. But, to quote Spider-Man, “with great power comes great responsibility.” It is our responsibility to make an active effort to ensure language does not miscommunicate ideas or is not used to further stereotypes, in the case of African-American Vernacular English. Rather, language should be used to understand, embrace and empower the many unique cultures of the world and all of the cultural differences.