How we perceive the world

This weeks reading is from two authors, Lupyan and Rickford. Lupyan starts this week's topics with a discussion of the idea of representation and the idea of the perfect "triangle". Lupyan says that the idea of a "triangle" is the ideal case to test whether we humans have formal concepts (i.e. do we all share the same generalized idea of what a triangle is). This problem is present across tons of disciplines, one example being the difficulty of defining the word "chair"(four legs and a back, but what about chairs with three legs? and chairs without backs? or chairs with 5 legs? It is very difficult to accurately define a chair). However there are certain aspects of a triangle (i.e. that its degrees add up to 180, it has 3 sides etc.) that we all know and understand, but then do we all have the same representation of what a triangle is? Lupyan finds that we do not, that our idea of a triangle is context sensitive and that we all draw some sort of different typical triangle when we hear the word "triangle" vs the words "3-sided polygon".

The Rickford paper discusses how linguists have long used the African American Vernacular English (AAVE) for their research and studies. The field of linguistics has learned scores of information from studying the AAVE and its effects on how people live, however the field of linguistics has been doing nothing in return for those communities who use the AAVE. Rickford believes that linguists have done a poor job of including the induction of African Americans into linguistics, feeding back information from their research into these communities, and attempting to better the communities they use for their research. This sort of unequal balance cannot stand, and the study of AAVE is crucial to mending our society. Every passing day the huge gap of inequality between those who speak "proper" english and those who don't grows. The fact that even today we judge and put down those who speak differently from us is outrageous, and the field of linguistics has a lot to offer in studying and learning how language is affecting certain communities, and how to change the way these communities are treated.