Task 2: Does Language Shape the Way we Think?

I watched Dr. Borditsky’s lecture after I read her article and I was surprised and immediately drawn to how languages can impact our understanding to such an extent. I analyzed her lecture through my lens as a multilingual learner and the struggles I experienced but also how my understanding of the world may not have been wrong but different based on the languages I was using. These takeaways can be used for students as many of my students are multilingual as well and have different understandings when approaching math and science education.

[07:11] “Whenever you utter a sentence you are only uttering a tiny proportion of the information you know about the scenario”

• For my native languages of German and Farsi this is exceptionally important as in German the verb only appears at the end and you need to listen intently throughout to see where the sentence is leading. Hence often when I am speaking English and trying to understand people I face miscommunication problems as I do not understand the idioms at times and although the idioms in English may explain the entire situation, it would be foreign to a different culture and more information would be needed. This lost in translation is exceptionally important especially in journalism as I often hear western media altering the translations from German or Farsi to fit their narrative, either exaggerating or reducing them to threatening or harmless statements. 

[11:50] If you read or write a language that goes right to left, you will also organize time from right to left.

• I think this is important because in Farsi everything is right to left and in mathematical precalculus classes we use the unit circle in math from right to left in Canada as well. I have noticed that students who also have a language that go right to left understand which quadrant is which and how to interpret sine and cosine graphs more effectively than Canadian raised students. 

[18:37] Language has causal power, you can change how people think by changing how they talk.

• I found this fascinating because it relates to Christine De Luca and how she entirely changed her tone and dialect when she read the English poem as she spoke a new language (Wikitongues, 2014). The emotions and inflections changed entirely and she went back to her true emotions when she spoke Shetlandic. It’s also similar to how if a language has gendered words then children acquire an understanding of their gender sooner than children who speak non-gendered languages (Boroditsky, 2011)

[24:00] Assigning voices appropriate to the grammatical gender in their language

• As a multilingual learner these types of tasks were difficult because in Farsi there is no gender, not even to say “he” or “she” everyone is gender-neutral and we just have a formal and informal way of addressing the third person. So when I was asked to personify inanimate objects in English in Canada I often found it difficult as I couldn’t think of it as male or female and assign adjectives that would be gender specific, instead I used gender neutral adjectives that were ubiquitous with most useful objects. 

[39:56] “It gave us entry into this whole world of number and math”

• I think this is important for students and people coming from more disadvantaged parts of the world. My grandmother for her entire life remained illiterate as back then girls and women were not allowed to gain an education due to religious laws. Similar laws are being reimposed in the middle east by extremists again, but she never was able to learn as a young adult and afterwards she told us she was too embarrassed to learn. Because of this she was completely reliant on her husband and her family for living in the modern world, she also was not able to work on her cognitive facilities because she couldn’t read or experience media in her old age when all of us had to leave our country. She was unable to join us again because of her lack of literacy and was more comfortable with the language she knew. As educators we need to understand that a student may be the first in their family to be learning math or literacy and the support that we take for granted in our homes here may not be the same for all families. 

[51:14] “the biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred”

• I think this is the most important takeaway because as educators we think that by teaching students through all these differentiated text technologies the students must have understood the concept. Yet students and adults will always miss key points from any lesson. Beyond the classroom, globally communication is breaking down between nations and people within each nation. The divide seems to be greater than ever between citizens of the same nation and neither side is able to communicate effectively anymore. 

[53:47] “Reading fiction improves your theory of mind”

• As a student I used to love reading fiction, historical fiction, and especially mythologies when I was younger. However as a secondary teacher I may be lucky to see one student in a classroom of thirty choosing to read a book during a break while the rest are on their devices playing games or tiktok. At senior levels this drops even more and I have never seen a senior the past five years read a book for enjoyment in school. Is this one of the underlying reasons, the weakening of the theory of mind, that has resulted in people becoming more resistant to trying to understand another person’s perspective?

References:

Boroditsky, L. (2011). How language shapes thought. Scientific American, 304(2), 62-65.

Wikitongues. (2014, September 21). WIKITONGUES: Christine speaking Shetlandic [Video]. YouTube.