Lupyan and Rickford

The Lupyan readings made me think a lot more about abstract ideas and concrete examples. The example about drawing a triangle versus a three sided polygon makes me think about how we conceptualize things. When asked to draw a triangle people tend to draw a more stereotypical triangle. However, when people are asked to draw a three sided polygon they get slightly more creative with how they represent it. I think that it is so interesting that we are able to convey the abstract idea of things (like triangles) even though whenever we conceptualize this idea we are thinking of a specific instance of the idea rather than the idea itself.

I think that Rickford's article is very interesting because it speaks to an imbalance in the linguistics field. Rickford asserts that linguists have gained a lot from the African American community, and that the African American community has not gained nearly as much from the experience. Some ways to improve the community are presented in the article. He suggests portraying African Americans better in written works as well as employing African Americans in the field of linguistics.

While these readings do not seem readily related, I think that they both speak about how we, as a society, view speech. Lupyan addresses the way that we deal with abstract ideas and how we are able to communicate and understand things that we are not necessarily able to articulate perfectly. Thus suggesting that the social understanding of words like triangle and three sided polygon is heavily linked with how we individually perceive those ideas. Similarly Rickford speaks about African American speech and how it is influenced by culture and about how these speech patterns affect how society looks upon the speaker. Both of these cultural speech phenomena speak volumes about how language is a cultural and societal tool, and that we are as influenced by language as it is influenced by us.