2.3 – Does language shape the way we think?

I first encountered Boroditsky’s study on language 3 years ago when I taught an introductory epistemology course, Theory of Knowledge (TOK), for the first time. One “unit” in that course is Knowledge and Language, and the textbook recommended Boroditsky’s TED Talk to get students to start thinking about the effects of language on knowledge. While a lot of the examples overlap between the two mediums, there are far more details and examples in the hour-long lecture. In this task I will point out 6 different parts of the hour-long lecture that resonated with me.

At 1:46 Boroditsky mentioned that there are over 7000 languages in the world, with many more in the past. This was actually one point that I felt was better communicated in the TED Talk rather than the lecture, as at the end of the TED Talk Boroditsky lamented that half of the languages in the world may be gone in the next century. This point resonated with me as a speaker of a dying language, Taiwanese (also known as Taigi, Hokkien, and Min Nan). With each language being unique in some way, such as gendered nouns and verbs, numerous words for one thing while another language only has one word for it, terms that are essentially untranslatable, and unique sounds, as we lose a language we lose an unique way to think and view the world. While I do my best to maintain my Taiwanese use, the reality is that while 66% of Taiwanese people ages 65 and older uses Taiwanese as their main language, that number is reduced to 7.4% for people ages 6-14 (Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics 2021). One can find more of my thoughts on Taiwanese, the political and historical reasons behind this decline, (though at one point turned into a rant), on my 2.2 reading reflection.

At 6:17, Boroditsky provided examples of Navajo verb stems for consumption, and how the word differs depending on the texture of the food. The presence of something extremely specific that isn’t present in English reminds me of Chinese counting words/units. While some words in English require counting words, such as two pieces of paper, often times we can put a number in front of the plural form of the noun (three pages, four dogs, etc.). In Chinese (both Mandarin and Cantonese), there is a need to place counting word/unit in front of every noun. Paper, photos, cards, and other flat objects uses the counting word 張 (zhang), although interestingly faces uses this same counting word. 台 (tai) can be a counting word for mechanical objects such as motorcycles and computers, though flying transportation objects such as planes and helicopters use the counting word 架 (jia). In a way, these counting words are similar to how English group certain things (a murder of crows, a school of fish), but while one can get away with saying “three fish” in English, in Chinese one needs to add a counting word, 隻 (zhi) between the number and the noun. This difference in language could potentially lead to different kinds of associations and categorizations: while an English speaker may not group a computer with a motorcycle, one can understand why a Chinese speaker would group them together when given this insight about their language.

At 7:42, Boroditsky brought up an interesting counterargument to the idea that language affects how one thinks. Rather than the difference of languages affecting cognitive processes, the potential argument is that speakers of different languages are paying attention to the same things but are expressing it differently. This counterargument was quickly debunked in my head; from my dabbling of undergraduate psychology courses, priming is a method to affect how one perceives something. An example would be if I were to just play a Youtube video in class to introduce a topic without any introduction, versus me saying a few things about the topic with words such as “pay attention to…” prior to playing the video. Rather than everyone paying attention to everything, language primes its speakers to pay attention to certain things that would be lost on a speaker of a different language.

At 11:16, Boroditsky discusses how speakers of different languages express time differently. A few years ago I was actually a volunteer for a similar research, where after filling out a questionnaire about what languages I am fluent in, the researcher (over Zoom) spoke a word or a phrase (such as past, future, yesterday, etc.) and asked me to point in a direction. They were specifically looking for polyglots, and now in reflection I wonder if I would have pointed in different directions if I was given the words in English versus words in Chinese. Certain Chinese documents orient up and down first, then right to left, while English goes left to right first then up and down. There’s also the potential that despite spending the first eight years of my life in Taiwan, the majority of the  subsequent thirty years in Canada has led me to follow the English orientation regardless of the language cues.

At 40:38, Boroditsky discusses the importance of what a thing is called, using examples such as patriot vs activist vs terrorist. This is particular relevant in TOK as we discuss various things such as bias and spin, analyzing the lean of certain media sources that, for example, call it “pro-life” as opposed to “pro-choice” or “anti-abortion.” Interestingly, this section was not in the TED Talk. One thing related to this topic that was present in the TOK textbook is how, without even a phrase or word in the popular vernacular to describe something, it becomes difficult to put that idea into words. The TOK textbook uses the example of sexual harassment: prior to 1975 when the term was coined, it was difficult to describe the horrible experience that many women suffered through.  By coining and spreading the term, “no longer did they have to explain to their friends and family that ‘he hit on me and wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I had to quit.’ What he did had a name” (Blakemore 2018).

At 51:45, Boroditsky answered a question about universality of languages. While this isn’t universal but just common, but one example that came to mind is kiki vs bouba. In many studies, participants were given two images: one of a spiky object and the other with rounded edges, and were asked to name one “kiki” and the other “bouba.” Most participants across cultures and languages named the spiky one kiki and the rounded one bouba, and I observed the same trend with myself and my students.

 

As a side note, it’s interesting that there was a large section of the lecture that did not resonate with me. My experiences with gendered nouns were the years in elementary and secondary that I had to study French, and I did not have enough proficiency and familiarity with French to let the gendered nouns affect my perception of certain objects. In Chinese, while pronouns are gendered in written form (他 vs 她, the second one is the female form; the radical on the left is 女 meaning woman), they have the same pronunciation (ta). The discussion on differentiating between purposeful action and accidental action also did not resonate with me.

Finally, another side note is that while Boroditsky’s 2011 article mentions syllables of numbers for counting, this example was not part of either the TED Talk or the lecture. In my 2.1 reading response post I have shared my thoughts about this.

References

Blakemore, E. (2018, January 8). Until 1975, ‘Sexual Harassment’ Was the Menace With No Name. History. https://www.history.com/news/until-1975-sexual-harassment-was-the-menace-with-no-name

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

Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics. (2021, September). 2020 Population and Residence Preliminary Census Results. Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics of the Republic of China. https://www.stat.gov.tw/public/Attachment/1112143117MKFOK1MR.pdf

SAR School for Advanced Research. (2017, June 7). Lera Boroditsky, how the languages we speak shape the way we think [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGuuHwbuQOg

TED. (2018, May 2). How language shapes the way we think | Lera Boroditsky | TED [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKK7wGAYP6k

2.2 – Oral Tradition

About halfway through MacDonald’s TEDx Talk, I was a little bit skeptical because I thought he was contradicting himself. On the one hand, he stated that there’s a lot of cultural background to tap dance, and on the other hand, he suggested that social media/technology is enhancing the art. While I agree that, as he has pointed out, technology enables the learning of tap through the increased accessibility of videos, I felt that learning through this method loses some of that rich cultural background he mentioned before. His story of Bunny Briggs cleared up this supposed contradiction and I was able to see his point of view.

As someone essentially unfamiliar with tap except for a brief segment in one Frasier episode, yet, having dabbled in music and music theory, I feel that I can appreciate the abilities for MacDonald (and tap dancers in general) to keep time and produce a rhythm using only their feet. Someone who experienced tap throughout their life might gain a far more deeper appreciation for it, and this reminds me somewhat of the Dunning-Kruger effect where while beginners may highly underestimate the skill it takes for something, eventually that illusion is shattered and people who are far more versed in something can accurately gauge the difficulty of it. That said, I feel that this applies to all types of knowledge, rather than languages.

At this point I paused and reflected: if we are to define language as a method of communication, then is there something that we can apply the previous premise, Dunning-Kruger/greater appreciation after learning more about it, to something that isn’t necessarily a form of communication? Music instruments, photography, other forms of visual art, even crafting/knitting something can be argued as a form of communication. By “knowing” one of these “languages,” we enrich our view of the world with greater understanding and appreciation of other “speakers” of that language.

As for de Luca’s video, the difference between language and dialect is a topic of discussion for my introductory epistemology course. As an instructor, I provided my students with a list of things such as “Mandarin vs Cantonese,” “Urdu vs Hindi vs Punjabi,” and “Danish vs Norwegian vs Swedish,” and “Parisian vs Quebecois,” and asked them to tell me if they’re different languages or different dialects. Mutual intelligibility is one criteria to differentiate them, but it doesn’t apply to all cases.

To bring up a personal example that answer the prompt for each video, one of the languages I speak is Taiwanese, also known as Taigi, Hokkien, and Min-nan. It originated in the Fujian province of China, and  settlers from Fujian (such as my ancestors eight generations ago) brought it to Taiwan ever since the 1600s. It was the main language of Taiwan, alongside Hakka (another Chinese migration group to Taiwan) and the indigenous languages, up until 1895 when Japan colonized Taiwan. Due to draconian language policies of a totalitarian Chinese Nationalist government that took control of Taiwan after World War II, Taiwanese is now a dying language, going from 66% of people ages 65+ using it as their main language, to now only 17% or so of elementary students being able to speak it fluently. It is unintelligible from Mandarin.

I was born in Taiwan near the tail end of its martial law era (38 years, second longest in world history) and the draconian language policies have been mostly lifted. Yet, its oppression took on a different form: rather than outright punishments and/or fines if you were caught speaking Taiwanese in school which my parents experienced, the ostracization of Taiwanese became more subtle: intelligent, posh characters in media were portrayed as speaking Mandarin, while the gangsters and country bumpkins spoke Taiwanese. Because of this, and a whole slew of other reasons, though I communicated with my family in Taiwanese, in public (and at school), it was always Mandarin.

Fast forward to me moving to Canada where there were few other Mandarin speakers (this was in the mid 90’s, most Asian immigrants in Vancouver at the time were from Hong Kong), and I ended up using Taiwanese far more than Mandarin. Decades of that, and finally finding out about real Taiwanese history (I drank the Chinese Nationalist kool-aid when I went through elementary school), made me now quite proud to be a Taiwanese speaker. Whenever I meet another Taiwanese speaker, whether it’s here in Canada, back in Taiwan, or even in Japan, there’s always instant warmth and familiarity that I don’t get with Mandarin or English. This is mainly because hearing another person speak Taiwanese provides a great deal of insight towards a person: their roots in Taiwan began somewhere between 1600-1895, what geographical region in Taiwan they’re likely from, and knowing that there’s a shared history of Japanese colonial rule followed by the world’s second longest martial law under the Chinese Nationalists.

2.1 – Our Brain on Language

I first encountered Boroditsky’s study on language 3 years ago when I taught an introductory epistemology course, Theory of Knowledge (TOK), for the first time. One “unit” in that course is Knowledge and Language, and the textbook recommended Boroditsky’s TED Talk to get students to start thinking about the effects of language of knowledge. While a lot of the examples overlap, there were some examples in Boroditsky’s article that were not present in the 14 minute TED Talk.

The first one that jumped out at me was base 10 and Mandarin (though Cantonese applies here as well). While like English there are the ones, the tens, the hundreds, and then the thousands, Mandarin has an additional “unit” or “place value” – wan (萬), the equivalent of ten thousand, which is the beginning of what I call “compound units.”

In English, what I call “place values” are every fourth digit: thousand, million, billion, trillion, and so on. “Compound units” are simply tens and hundreds; they get added on to the place value. For example, 10,000,000 has a “place value” of million and a “compound unit” of ten, combining to give ten million. Visually, the English number system lines up with the comma separators, allowing quick and easy identification.

Meanwhile, Mandarin is systematic in a completely different way. The aforementioned “place value” of wan has all possible “compound units” before it: tens, hundreds, and thousands. 100,000 is ten wan. 1,000,000 is a hundred wan. 10,000,000 is a thousand wan. Then, a new “place value” comes next: yi 億, and its compound units has all the place values before it: ten, hundred, thousand, and wan.

Speaking as someone born in Taiwan and moved to Canada at the eight and is multilingual (in terms of proficiency, English > Taiwanese > Mandarin, though I’m fluent in all three), visually I find the English system much easier to work with, and because of this, sometimes I have trouble code switching when discussing numbers with my family members. 100,000 for me is a hundred thousand, but the term “hundred thousand” isn’t used in Taiwanese or Mandarin, the proper way to express it is “ten wan.”

Boroditsky’s comment on syllables and memorizing numbers was one that wasn’t in her TED Talk and was something I thought about as well. Though most single digit English numbers (with the exception of zero and seven) is single syllable, every single digit Mandarin number is single syllable (for that matter, every “word” is a single syllable in Mandarin), and I always code switch to Mandarin whenever I memorize numbers. Curious if this gave me an advantage, I decided to test it out using the Human Benchmark Number Memory activity, and with only a single trial, I successfully memorized 12 digits when thinking in Mandarin while memorizing 11 digits when thinking in English, suggesting not a significant difference. That said, a single trial doesn’t lead to any valid conclusions, and there could have been patterns in certain stages such as repeating digits that made memorization easier.

As for the hour lecture, there are a lot of overlaps between that and the TED Talk, with obvious more detail in the former. For example, the memoirs of a Russian boy who learned French from his grandmother example wasn’t given in the TED Talk. Similarly, the videos of her studies on language and memory of who performed an action accidently is present in the lecture and not the TED Talk. One key thing missing from the TED Talk that was in the lecture was “the importance of what a thing is called.” Though she does not provide many examples there, one that is brought up in the TOK textbook is labelling groups as “pro-life” versus “anti-abortion.”

As a side note, I’ve come across the puzzle at the end of that presentation and never managed to solve it. That hint of needing pencil and paper makes me want to give it another try…

 

1.7 – What’s in your bag?

I’m Matt (he/him), a first generation Taiwanese-Canadian who’s at the end of his MET journey; ETEC 540 is my final course. Throughout the nine previous courses I have gained a fair number of tools, philosophies, and ideas to apply to my practice. While on the one hand I’m sad that this particular learning journey is almost over, on the other hand I’m looking forward to the extra free time (and let’s be honest, the pay bump). You can find more details about myself at the About Matt page.

I actually spent a fair amount of time selecting a bag for this assignment. Depending on the time of year and/or day of the week, my backpack can go through any of the following configurations:

  • a measuring tape and a to-buy list as I’m constantly stopping by various stores to pick up items for the new townhouse I just moved into at the start of the month
  • a mosquito face net, bug repellents, sun screen, snacks, hiking shoes, hiking poles, and a giant water bottle if I’m able to go on a hike
  • a power-bar, two to three days worth of clothing, and some of items shown below if I’m travelling out of town for a BCTF conference

At the end of a bit of deliberation, I went with the “typical” configuration pictured below. This is what’s typically in my bag on a weekday up until a few weeks ago when I moved in to my new home. Going from top left to top right and then bottom left to bottom right, items include an umbrella, an accordion folder of student work I need to mark, laptop adapter, laptop, Compass card holder, foldable reusable grocery bag from T&T (an Asian grocery store chain), a Vancouver Canucks Demko mask, earplugs, wireless headphones, a Steam Deck (a portable gaming device), my BCTF Local Representative nametag, various coloured pens, my key ring (keys to four different buildings, a Health Canada bottle opener, T&T reward point card, and a bubble tea keychain accessory), and my wallet.

Prior to moving to my new home which is walking distance from work, most of these items, barring the umbrella, the mask, the earplugs, and the nametag would have been used on a daily basis. I commuted to work via public transportation, so the Compass card (Metro Vancouver’s public transportation payment system) holder, the headphones, and the Steam Deck were used to and back from work. I opted for a card holder rather than putting the Compass card in my wallet in order to have quick access rather than constantly fumbling with opening and closing my wallet. The Compass card is linked to my credit card and is set to recharge every time it is below a certain threshold of stored monetary value.

The accordion folder, different coloured pens, the laptop charger, and the laptop itself are for my job as a secondary teacher which was needed essentially every weekday. The reusable grocery bag helped whenever I needed to stop by a grocery story on my way home from work, and there is of course my wallet, filled to the brim with Starbucks gift cards in addition to the typical identification, credit cards, and some cash.

The name tag is kept in a zipped inner bag of my backpack and is used whenever I attend BCTF events. In a year I attend approximately eight different BCTF events such as Representative Assemblies where elected teachers from across the province propose, debate, and vote on various policies and recommendations. The Canucks mask is left-over from the COVID days when there was a mask mandate, though every now and then it’s still useful, such as me visiting my clinic or a Lifelabs location where there is still a social expectation to wear a mask.

Finally, the earplugs are for the occasional instances when I attend concerts, Canucks games, or supervise dances at my school. I’m at the age where I better protect my ears against further damage.

 

The contents of my bag gives a quick, accurate glimpse of my self-image. My bag and its contents show an array of interests and cultures I engage with such as the mask showing that I’m a Canucks fan or a sticker on my laptop revealing one of my pastime being anime. In addition, going with the latest definition of text being strictly something that is written, then there are several texts on these objects that allow people to infer various literacies (in the knowledge definition, rather than the read/write definition) I may have. My BCTF Local Representative nametag demonstrates that I’m an union activist, and therefore, should have some degree of familiarity with Robert’s Rules of Order. The video game stickers on my laptop allows one to correctly assume that I am familiar with video game jargon. The bilingual text of the reusable grocery bag states the name of an East Asian grocery store chain suggests that I should have some ability in identifying various Asian foods sold there that other Canadians may not be familiar with.

The Steam Deck is one of two items that allow me to access text technology in my bag. It allows me to access the various games on my account on the digital video games distribution service Steam. Most of my favorite game genres feature copious text: strategy games in which one navigates menus and read descriptions of buildings and units, story-rich roleplaying games in which characters engage in lengthy voice-acted dialogue, and visual novels which are essentially voice-acted choose-your-own-adventure stories that include background music and images. The Steam Deck illustrates my engagement with text in leisure activities.

My laptop is the other text technology item, and illustrates my engagement with text as a part of my profession. Used almost extensively for work and/or my union responsibilities (other than the occasional browsing of Reddit or engaging in games such as Wordle or Connections), my laptop contains all the texts I use in my lessons, whether they’re discussion prompts, handouts for students, videos that highlight certain concepts, and digital versions of quizzes and exams. In the past decade or so of my teaching career, I experienced the transition of teachers using whiteboards and overhead projectors as their main method of showing text to students to now where teachers find it extremely difficult to teach without a computer.

 

There are several points of interest that an archeologist studying the contents of my bag can note, which may allow them to infer more details about our society. One is the discrepancy between most of my teaching resources being digital, while students’ work are still mostly on paper. This may lead an archeologist to conclude that we as a society are still in the midst of transitioning from paper to digital, and through studying other artefacts of this time period, an archeologist may hypothesize that one key reason is the digital divide between different socioeconomic groups resulting in not everyone having a digital device.

Another point of interest is the mobility of devices: with my laptop and Steam Deck, I can conduct 95% of work related to my career, my union responsibilities, and my leisure activities anywhere. Though I have a desktop computer at home which I prefer to use over my laptop and Steam Deck for various reasons such as being connected to speakers and accessories such as keyboard and mice, I can perform the exact same task on the laptop and Steam Deck. This is further enhanced by cloud technology which allows for a a seamless transition of files across devices; on days when I decide to leave my laptop at work I can still create a handout on my home desktop computer and upload the file to a server so that I could access it at work, and the Steam Deck also has cloud servers so that progress on one device is automatically sent to the other.

The final point of interest an archeologist may note is that unlike most people, the bag I carry to work contains a device dedicated to leisure (the Steam Deck), potentially allowing them to reach a wrong conclusion that there is sufficient downtime as a teacher for me to use that device. Perhaps by studying it alongside the Compass card they would deduce that it’s for my commute on public transportation, which allows them to perform further analysis on the pros and cons of public transportation during this time period. If they had the ability to access the account associated with my Compass card they would obtain insight to my daily travels: what stops do I get on and off, and at what times. Studying that and contrasting it to artefacts from other bags could allow to reach conclusions about our society such as the fact that time is a precious commodity; most people prefer to get to work quicker by driving a personal vehicle, despite the monetary and environmental benefits that comes with choosing public transportation. Although the contents of my bag for almost the entirety of the past decade shows that I opted for the additional downtime and the monetary and environmental benefits of public transportation, if they were to study my bag now and managed to access the account associated with the bank card in my wallet as well as identification cards with a new address, they’ll see that I eventually opted to live within a walking distance from work.

1.4 – Defining Terms

Pre-Reading Definitions

text – a method of communication via writing/words

technology – artificial objects/techniques that enhance human ability and/or efficiency

OED Definition and Etymology

text

“The wording of anything written or printed; the structure formed by the words in their order; the very words, phrases, and sentences as written.”

Same root as textile/texture, woven, style

technology

“The branch of knowledge dealing with the mechanical arts and applied sciences; the study of this.”

Root, technologia, “treatise on the liberal arts…” “systematic treatment of grammar.”

Ngram

Both text and technology has a trend of two periods of much usage before centuries of relative inactivity, before an increase in its usage in the mid to late 20th century. Usage of the word technology had spikes at 1505 and 1536, then had a period of being relatively unused until 1950. Meanwhile, the spikes for the word text lags slightly behind technology at 1533 and 1579, before a slow increase in usage until a sudden jump in 1973.

Also of note is that there has been two time periods where technology was used more often than text: a few years around 1505 and between 1970 to 2000.

Questions

Analyzing etymology is a typical technique in, for example, science class, to help students understand vocabulary. Words such as subscript, subduct, biomimicry, bioluminescence may seem intimidating to a student in junior science until we analyze the parts of the word to gleam its meaning. That said, I find that in the case of text, the etymology was far more surprisingly and while it makes sense in hindsight, it does not provide a lot of new information on the modern usage of the word. Prior to this activity I wouldn’t have associated text with textile, and though there is a logic in associating the two terms (weaving words to create text, weaving threads to create cloth), I feel that due to how often we see the word “text” there is no need to gleam its meaning from its roots, unlike unfamiliar science words such as subscript, subduct, biomimicry, and bioluminescence.

 

 

1.2 – Willinsky, arXiv, Gatekeeping, Privacy

Willinsky’s 2002 article brings up several topics that I discuss in one of the courses I teach, Theory of Knowledge (TOK), an introductory epistemology course for secondary students. Various aspects of the article such as the issue that many academic journals are behind a paywall, the contrast between experts and the public, and arXiv as an example of an open-access database of academic journals have been brought up as topics of discussion in my course. Willingsky’s suggestion of open access to publication could be a potential solution to the rising issues of disinformation spreading on the internet (such as the rise of flat earthers) by making research and the critical comparison of articles commonplace.

That said, I feel that there is large differentiation between making scholarly articles open access and asking students to publish, and after weighing the merits and issues, I’m inclined to shy away from asking students to publish in my own practice. One concern that came to mind is the recent rise in online harassment and other unacceptable behaviour, especially around certain topics such as social justice and LGBTQ2S+ rights. For example, on Twitter/X someone posted images of the classroom of a Surrey secondary Social Justice teacher, highlighting LGBTQ2S+ flags and posters about issues of colonialism, claiming that the Surrey teacher is indoctrinating children and that “she needs to be fired immediately.” When said Surrey teacher pointed this out, she was met with a flood of comments calling her a groomer, pedophile, and other hurtful outlandish messages. I shudder to think about the kind of vitriol that would be flung at educators and students if the students publicly published their thoughts in courses such as Genocide Studies and Social Justice.