Professor Rickford’s reading approaches language and race. He discusses how AAVE users are often discriminated against at workplaces. He also gives statistics on children’s comprehension when comparing AAVE and SE. The term “Ebonics” (Ebony + Phonics) is new to me although, before, I have noticed a clear difference in the way African Americans talk. I find it interesting how AAEV often neglects conjugating verbs and adds “be” to the sentence. Perhaps because English has quite clearly defined rules, this difference is particularly highlighted when it comes to job opportunities. Even though I am from Vietnam, I particularly find this relatable. Vietnam has 53 minorities and most of them are often discriminated against when finding jobs. I personally know cases of minority people being rejected because they do not speak with the standard accent or dialect.
The Lupyan reading, on the other hand, examines whether the concept of a triangle is different when represented as “a triangle” or “a three-sided polygon.” The research shows that there is a systematical difference when people are asked to draw the shape based on two definitions. “Triangle” drawers tend to draw more typical triangles while “three-sided polygon” drawers are less inclined to draw the typical shape. This reading connects me with some TED Talks given by Steven Pinker, a psycholinguistic professor at Harvard University. According to Pinker, “words put handles on things so we can manipulate them, hold them down, offer them to others, feel bigger than the concepts they label.” I think the way Pinker phrases this hits the nail on the head. Without a word specified for a specific concept, it would be nearly impossible for us to use it. This reading also leads me to think about “names.” Names are also representations of a specific person. If I say “Meghan Sumner,” students enrolled in LINGUIST1 would think of the professor. However, if I just give descriptions of the professor without her name, they would have a harder time to figure out who the person is. In a similar sense, names label us so we can “manipulate” ourselves and offer “us” to others. These names not only provide us with physical characteristics, but they are inherently infused with other types of information. For instance, a name can give away some clues of the person’s gender. As we know more and more about that person, the name becomes a shortcut to their persona: how they act, what they like to do, when do they do a certain thing, etc.
I really like your connection to Pinker, who I remember talking about in my freshman Thinking Matters seminar in relation to whether or not humans are inherently violent in nature. His psychological analyses almost always seem to pinpoint things very clearly; I like how he gives voice to what Lupyan implies when he says that the idea of words as being simply assigned to a preexisting concept just isn't true. In your quote, when Pinker says that words can "manipulate [concepts]," he expresses something that captures my interest quite often, which is that the concepts that words express often evolve even if the words stay the same, or new words are invented to more accurately reflect concepts that were previously called something else. I find your connection of this idea to names very interesting, especially as it applies to the idea of identity, renaming oneself, and even changing pronoun use.
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