On Triangles, Generalizations, and Social Justice

In this week’s reading, Lupyan details how people apply typicality effects to their thoughts and language. These effects represent idealized perceptual states for certain objects, and they cannot be easily predicted from person to person because each person has a different viewpoint. To put it more simply, when we think about things, like triangles, we tend to think of particular triangles: triangles that are very typical or “triangle-ish.” This was proven in one of the experiments illustrated in the passage where subjects were asked to draw either a three-sided shape or a triangle. The subjects who were asked to draw three-sided shapes drew random looking triangles in all different planes and angles. Meanwhile, people who drew triangles drew them in usually an equilateral or isosceles fashion with a flat baseline. Our general idealized perceptual state for a triangle is a rather symmetrical or upright triangle and angled so that one point is facing straight up. This proves that people apply typicality effects because this is the typical triangle for the majority of people.

One part that I did find interesting about the three-sided shape and triangle experiment was that there were four abnormalities. These four irregularities all came from the three-sided group and three of them drew a three-dimensional shaped triangle, while the last one drew two triangles. This phenomenon just goes to show that not all words or phrases have innate typicality effects applied to them. “Three-sided” is not very commonly used and is a bit too broad for people to generalize, so people not only draw randomly shaped triangles when prompted with this phrase, but also become more creative with adding three-dimensional shapes and quantities.

This week’s reading also supplied a passage by Rickford, who delineated the tremendous amount on which sociolinguists focus on African American Vernacular English (AAVE) while not giving it back as much. Because of its rich background and diverse styles within English, AAVE is studies a lot by linguists in an attempt to recognize the root differences between it and English. However, these linguists are not utilizing the knowledge they gain because they are not educating the AAVE speakers who are traditionally lower-class African Americans. As a result, these African Americans are poorly educated and face things like high failure rates in school, high unemployment percentages, and higher prison populations than any other race in the United States. Rickford then provides two solutions for this problem: using our expertise in linguistics to encourage more African Americans to become linguists and to become more educated, and to engage in the normal charity activities such as working in a soup kitchen or volunteering for building or renovation projects.

I really enjoyed this passage by Rickford because it was a great change in pace from the previous readings. This passage had more of a social justice application in which we could actually use more often in the real world as compared to the more abstract lessons the earlier homework passages provided. As a result, it was a lot more fun to read and is making me a lot more interested in sociolinguistics.