As Dr. Boroditski notes around 18:25 of this video “When you teach people to talk in a new way, you teach them to think in a new way.” This probably the most powerful statement and piece of truth I have taken from this video and this assignment.
You’d think after growing up within the French Immersion program throughout grade school and now as a language educator for over a decade, I would have come to this realization by now? But it wasn’t until I listened to Dr. Boroditski’s presentation that I came to understand that by switching languages, that one can also alter the way they think.
Her examples of gender use within certain languages (22:00) resonated with me as a French speaker. Growing up I remember listening and singing the “Mr. Moon” nursery rhyme in English, but as I grew older and started to learn the French language, it seemed odd to me that the moon is referred to “La lune” with a feminine connotation. And as I came to realize through this presentation, genders for certain words alternate between various languages.
Now that I am teaching French and these gender terms to new French learners, having to explain and rationalize why certain words are masculine or feminine proves very difficult, especially to certain students who are strong supporters of the LBGTQ2+ community. Thankfully, over the last few years there has been a push to reform French into becoming a more inclusive language and consider using more gender neutral terms (Timsit, 2017).
For myself, now that I realize there are some major difference in my own thinking when I decide to speak French in an English dominated part of the world, I must also ask myself what what effect does this language-based “code-switching” (Washington-Harmon, 2020) have on my teaching practice and my students? Do I shift or alter my own behavior to appeal to my French-speaking students compared to my English-speaking students (Washington-Harmon, 2020)?
Lots of self-reflection going on after this task.
References
Boroditsky, L. (June 2017). How the languages we speak shape the way we think. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/iGuuHwbuQOg
Timsit, Annabelle. (2017, November 24). The Push to Make French Gender Neutral: Can changing the structure of a language improve women’s status in society? The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/11/inclusive-writing-france-feminism/545048/
Washington-Harmon, Taylyn. (2020, August 13). Code-Switching: What Does It Mean and Why Do People Do it? Health.com. Retrieved from https://www.health.com/mind-body/health-diversity-inclusion/code-switching