{"id":37,"date":"2024-05-26T10:07:21","date_gmt":"2024-05-26T17:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540bw\/?p=37"},"modified":"2024-05-26T10:08:22","modified_gmt":"2024-05-26T17:08:22","slug":"task-2-does-language-shape-the-way-we-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540bw\/tasks\/task-2-does-language-shape-the-way-we-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Task 2: Does language shape the way we think?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u201cWe can plant ideas in each other\u2019s minds using a finite set of words that we recombine into an infinite set of meanings\u201d [00:43]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m thinking about this in the context of generative AI \u2013 a lot of the conversations around AI I\u2019ve been involved in are situated around the idea of original production and what constitutes that. For example, can generative AI create new things or is it just remixing things \u2013 if all my experience with language is remix, what is remix, is remix creation? From an art copyright standpoint remix is creation after a point, this sentence centers the idea all language expression is remix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWhenever you utter a sentence, you are only uttering a tiny proportion of the information you know about the scenario\u201d [07:15]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Thinking about text and technology, text as a construction, what you choose and select in terms of building materials and structure can result in many different spaces. Different places in the world with different contexts build homes in many ways \u2013 mitigating heat or trapping warmth, indoor outdoor living, or stark divides between interior and exterior. It makes sense that different places in the world would develop different structural needs for language in the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cIn the 1970s and 1980s in cognitive science it became essentially taboo, to think about how language might shape the way you think\u201d [09:50]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is fascinating to me because it\u2019s one of those things that seems so obvious\u2026  For example, when testing for reading comprehension you construct tests to explore a certain competency, but you can\u2019t test what isn\u2019t articulated and different languages would articulate different things \u2013 wouldn\u2019t the difference result in differing priorities or pathways for learning?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later Dr Borditsky speaks about \u201cwhat we attend to\u201d which I think is an interesting idea \u2013 sort of like the affordances of technology we need to consider what we are afforded by our use of language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe other thing that language does for us is helps us construe and construct events\u201d [26:05]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Again, with these concepts of construction, assembly. This comes up for me a lot in work. I work a lot via text, emails, texts, MS Teams. It\u2019s interesting to note in these written formats that I see a lot of this passive voice rearing its head in times when mistakes have been made. I do find myself deliberately constructing space between my team and events when I need to articulate there\u2019s no causal link between a mistake and our team, for example. I\u2019m also a guilty reader of online advice columns and when the passive voice creeps in you know the author has been up to some truly heinous misdeeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cBut on the other hand, cultures also reduce cognitive entropy\u201d [44:30]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is connected to a Derek Bruff newsletter I read last week around creativity, divergent thinking, and AI. Bruff mentions that problem solving is generally a combination of divergent thinking (brainstorming) and convergent thinking (what of these options is the best) (Bruff, 2024). He indicates AI can be a wonderful tool for brainstorming but can also make it difficult to come up with out of the box ideas \u2013 like Borditsky mentioned once you have the tool or idea it\u2019s difficult to come up one more level back to that divergent thinking, to reinvent the wheel so to speak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cDepending on the level that you define universality, there are of course things that you find across all languages\u201d [51:50]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Borditsky goes on to list some areas of universality but starts with the idea of human languages being learnable by humans \u2013 I find that a fascinating way of starting that response. This again takes me back to natural language processing and the increasingly blurry line between human and machine language. We\u2019re in the midst of a really significant change to those boundaries and while I\u2019ve been considering the impacts these changes will have on machine language, I think I\u2019ve not been considering what might be coming back the other way in terms of impacts on human language. In the defining terms activity we thought about this \u2013 ways that words have been evolving in light of the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Bruff, D. (May 16 2024). Creativity, divergent thinking, and AI<\/em>. Intentional Teaching Newsletter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SAR School for Advanced Research. (June 7 2017). Lera Boroditsky, how the languages we speak shape the way we think<\/em> [Video]. YouTube. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=iGuuHwbuQOg<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe can plant ideas in each other\u2019s minds using a finite set of words that we recombine into an infinite set of meanings\u201d [00:43] I\u2019m thinking about this in the context of generative AI \u2013 a lot of the conversations around AI I\u2019ve been involved in are situated around the idea of original production and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85741,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tasks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85741"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/40"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/etec540bw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}