I found it fascinating that Dr. Boroditsky noted [3:50] that in some languages you actually have to specify exactly where you got your information from. This immediately made me think of my students and their writing assignments where they must provide evidence for the information that they are trying to present. Many of my students have a hard time understanding that they must provide sources in order to back whatever point it is that they are trying to make. I think it would be interesting to see if students of the same age have a similar issue in their formal writing. Would they be better at providing sources? Or would they be worse because they feel that the framing from the structure of their language provides all the sourcing needed?

The advertisement presented by Nestle at [12:10] and the confusion it caused in Arabic countries was amusing to me. I have a degree in anthropology and have finally found a situation in which my degree would have been of great value. A simple check over with an anthropologist or linguist to see if the advertisement would work in a non-Western country would have saved Nestle from coming across as ignorant to the people they were trying to advertise their product to.

Dr. Boroditsky discussed [18:30] how teaching people to speak differently could also teach them to think differently. I found this particularly fascinating as it made me curious as to what level of change in speaking is required to change how a person thinks? Does it need to be significant and radical change in the way a person speaks before their thinking changes or can it be small patterns of speech that will change a person’s thinking? I would love to see some data on how this change occurs and what it does for a person better or worse. I would also think that learning to speak the same way that another cultural group speaks would ingratiate a person into another group of people. I know when I worked in northern Saskatchewan, I would often pick up the speech patterns of the local crews which would always amuse my friends when I returned to southern Saskatchewan for the school year. I believe I did this to try and fit in better with the locals and I would be curious to know if it changed the way I thought in any meaningful way for the four months a year I was away for work every year.

Seeing as how English is my only language and I have very limited knowledge and experience with any other language, I found it quite interesting to learn that other language get more specific with things such as colour. Dr. Boroditsky [19:30] used the example of blue and how Russian uses goluboy to distinguish light blue from dark blue which is sinly. English instead uses blue to encompass all shades of blue and then adds modifiers of dark, light, navy, etc. to distinguish the shades more closely. I would be curious to know if English language learners who come from languages with more specific words for things such as colour shades find English to be confusing for its lack of specificity in that regard.

Dr. Boroditsky [29:00] spoke about the changes in agency that can be seen based on how something is written or spoke about. The example she laid out of how Cheney shot Harry Wittington and how it was spoke about changed who was actively involved was quite interesting to consider. Boroditsky pointed out that the simple fact and reporting would be that Cheney shot Harry Wittington. However, when Cheney spoke about it he made it sound like he were a casual observer who happened to pull the trigger at the same time his friend was hurt. When Bush spoke about it he made it sound like Cheney had the terrible fortune to have to stand there and watch as someone else hurt Wittington in front of Cheney. The Onion made it sound like Cheney was a known threat to Wittington. All of these examples of the framing and use of language serve to show just how important the appropriate and proper contextualizing of an event using language is. The language used can completely change the perspective of a story while still providing the same information.

The last piece that Dr. Boroditsky [36:00] made a point of that stood out to me was how language can change the view of something that is as concrete as math. As a student who was indoctrinated to the metric system, it was almost unthinkable that some places use counting systems that do not employ the base ten system. The idea of using a base 27 system as they do in New Guinea is beyond my own grasp. I do not think that I would be able to wrap my mind around it to be able to use it to any level of effectiveness. However, I imagine learning that counting system in the native language and culture that uses it would make more sense than trying to learn it coming from my own current background of information.

I found Dr. Boroditsky’s lecture to be quite fascinating as she does an excellent job of showcasing just how language can be used to shape the way a person thinks. I had wrongly assumed that there were some fundamental truths such as math and colours that would translate across languages and cultures. I also had not been aware that simply changing language can influence how it is a person speaks. I would love to be able to talk to someone who has learned English as a second language and learn about some of the things they had a hard time wrapping their minds around due to the differences in perspective and understanding created by the way they learned to think in their native language.