Triangles & Linguistic Inequality

This week's reading presented two very intriguing topics; while Rickford talks about the unequal relationship between African Americans and the sociolinguistic community, Lupyan focuses more on the phenomenon of "verbal category labels" and how we can only think of particular examples even when given broad, general terms. Specifically, Lupyan tackles the universal idea of a triangle and discusses several experiments regarding the topic. 

On the surface, these two articles appear to address very disparate issues, but there definitely exist some subtle connections between the two. Lupyan talks about how we tend to think of very stereotypical examples of overarching terms; he discusses this occurrence in regards to triangles, but this can be applied to how we think of entire languages as a whole. For example, when given the word "language" itself, we have to think of specific languages, like English or French. Furthermore, if we were told to ponder the word "English", most people would probably think immediately of Standard English, completely disregarding equally important dialects such as African American Vernacular English and Creole English in the process. It is this phenomenon that makes us default to the "norm” and puts such communities at disadvantages in society.

There were several points in each reading that I found particularly interesting. I had never thought about how abstract language could be before I read Lupyan’s piece. As I read along, I realized that I personally would draw an upright, equilateral shape when asked to draw a triangle, corroborating his studies that displayed our tendencies to immediately think of the “common” shapes of isosceles and equilateral triangles. I definitely was a little surprised that the term “three-sided figures” could elicit such varied responses compared to the word “triangle”; this point again highlighted the strong associations and connotations that we immediately attach to individual words.

The Rickford piece talked about many aspects of injustice in African American communities and the disparity in academic and financial performance between white and black groups in the same area. Most of the information proved to be unpleasant yet unsurprising, as I have read similar case studies that discussed how accents and particular dialects led to discrimination in a primarily white-dominated society. Just one example applies to a video that we viewed in class, in which a researcher adopted multiple ethnic personas and only successfully secured an apartment room as a white male. However, the idea of the dialect reader and teaching children to communicate in their native language before transitioning to the “accepted” language of Standard English was one I hadn’t been exposed to before, and I would be interested to observe its effects if the program continues in the future.

Overall, an article about triangles and an article about injustice managed to link together due to linguistics and language as a whole. For me, this just goes to show the great influence that linguistics can have in society; from exploring common phenomenons to fixing social issues, linguistics seems to have an undeniable influence in our daily lives. A lot of our past readings have focused on the rules of language, and I thought it was really refreshing to see how the field could be used to impact society and be used for social good.