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November 3, 2011 at 7:15 pm
Lance Armistead
Have any recent studies been published with further insight into the causes of of categorical perception shifts in bilinguals? If higher language use is related to more immersion in the culture, and both language use and culture are linked to categorical perception shifts towards perception traits of that monolinguals in that second language and culture, then how can the variables of language and culture be controlled for? It seems that it would be very difficult to find bilinguals (especially advanced ones) who have not been exposed to the target culture in some way.
November 7, 2011 at 4:19 pm
Hyun Hee Kim
I agree, Lance. That is why it might not be easy to find the “right” participants for this kind of study, I think. But, I think we can at least try to control variables of language and culture in certain extend as it is shown in ch 11. Like the study on Japanese blues, the research might choose Japanese monolingual as Japanese students who are in Japan. Since Japan and Korea are homogeneous country, it is possible to state that they are mono linguals although there are schools with English courses, I guess?
November 4, 2011 at 3:12 pm
caleb ho
Like Lance, I was left with several questions:
1) about how it’s possible to separate the way situational socio-cultural factors shape a given individual’s mental representation of an abstract category (and which categories?) from the linguistic side-effects on the same conceptualization. Is it not true that abstract conceptualization of categories in a language changes over time to reflect & the changing values of society and cultural at large? Take for example “LOVE”. I believe popular use of this word differs vastly from what was socio-cultrually acceptable hundreds of years ago.
It is probably a safe starting point for research to look at concrete and very self-contained areas of language such as color, space, and motion but it feels like the debate about linguistic relativity is far from over.
2) By using bilinguals, who Grosjean and others argue are qualitatively different from monolinguals in both language and soci-cultural regards, and which DeGroot and many neurolinguists believe are neurologically & cognitively unique from monolinguals, what findings are safe to transpose to the monolingual linguistic relativity debate?
3) what is the (neutral?) goal of the linguistic relativity debate? If we are able to one day conclusively say that areas A, B, and C in language, but not D, E, and F have such and such effects on a language speaker’s conceptualization of reality will it bring about world peace, better language education, better cross-language/cross-cultural teamwork?
November 5, 2011 at 6:05 pm
Yanjin Li
I feel Caleb’s Q3 is an interesting topic. I also had the similar question when we first stared reading about the language relativity.
From this article, I just want to know more studies that cover different languages and that focus on the same area – motion’s perception. As its conclusion is that our native language does not influence our way of events perception, it is impossible to draw such a over general conclusion without taking a look at people’s way of event perception across languages, because the prior hypothesis before the conclusion is that the fashion of event perception is universal and ubiquitous. But if the hypothesis is not true in itself, how can we say the conclusion is not questionable?
November 5, 2011 at 7:12 pm
Anastasia Sorokina
The research shows that exposure to L2 might change color perception in bilinguals. The names for colors represent socially constructed concepts. What other concepts/domains of lexicon can be used to examine cognitive processing in bilinguals?
November 5, 2011 at 7:36 pm
Amy Atkinson
My question was also similar to Caleb’s. What is the goal of linguistic relativity research other than showing that people who speak different languages also think differently? It is common knowledge that cultures are different and thus produce people with different worldviews. Since language and culture are inextricable, why is it so important to know how much of this is specifically attributable to language?
November 7, 2011 at 2:00 pm
braddinardo
I guess my questions after this weeks readings are similar to that of Amy’s. Since we can’t extrapolate language from culture or visa-versa, what is the goal or purpose of knowing what effect language has on someone’s worldview? The reading was interesting, but I was left wondering what the implications might be on a pedagogical level.
November 5, 2011 at 10:44 pm
Karen Graf
Since studies have shown that speakers of different languages vary in the way they map and use spatial language and non-linguistic spatial concepts, I am wondering if this research has been applied to pedagogical practices or better understanding of how students with an L1 that possess a different type of comprehension of spatial concepts from the L2 being acquired, learn and perform on certain tasks, possibly how a modified approach to introducing and teaching these concepts in the L2 could enhance students’ understanding and production of spatial concepts in the target language.
November 6, 2011 at 11:24 am
Jialing Wang
I’m a little confused with the shift in perception. Many other students also have similar confusion that is it bilingualism changes people’s cognition in perception of, let’s say, color, or social factors influence it? How to demarcate the different factors? In the researches, researchers tried to distinguish different variables such as the length participants stayed in the L2 speaking countries. however people’s adaptation and acception of a foreign culture is different. It’s really hard to judge the sociocultural impact on a person merely depending on the length of exposure.
Also, it seems to be commonly accepted that bilingual’s perception in many domains. But how to understand the perception? Does that mean, when a bilinguals (consecutive bilinguals) are exposed in L2, they see a color in a different way as they saw it when they are monolingual? Or just because, for example, in L2 there is a finer categories of colors, so bilinguals name a color in a better way in L2. If so, in latter situation, the cognition is not changed. It’s just a different way to name a same thing in their minds.
November 6, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Wan-Chen Lee
Like Caleb and Amy and as a student from TESOL backbround, I think it is common knowledge that cultures are very different so that people or other races produce with different concepts and values. I agree that Amy’s question when I read the readings this week. Why do researchers want to know how much this influence can relate to language?
November 7, 2011 at 11:30 am
Tiantian Guo
First, I am wondering the importance of choosing color perception as an evaluation to test the universality versus relativity. As far as I concerned, there are lots of different color perceptions among monolinguals. Under this circumstances, what are the differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in terms of different color perceptions?
Second,
Second, I think several aspects would influence wider range of differences on both color perception and spatial language comprehension and production. I assume the aspects which would make a difference include at least proficiency, personality, education background, etc. So I have questions about the accuracy of those experiments.
Third, from the article of whether language guides event perception or not, it is interesting to learn that people are alike in how they perceive events in nonlinguistic task. So does it indicate that only when people are asked to produce the perception of event, the differences come into being?
November 7, 2011 at 12:29 pm
William Mira
Since it seems that most people are discussing the color and bilingual cognition chapter I suppose I’ll do the same. One thing that stood out to me was from the final study with Japanese/English bilinguals. I was surprised by the lack of an effect of experimental setting. If a proficient bilingual had internalized the color systems from each of their languages, I would think that they would use them both based on the situation. Perhaps the simple act of conducting the study in a certain language was not enough of a stimulus. What if the same participants were in a hardware store buying blue paint for their house. I would think it would be more likely that they would exhibit a shift in their perception of color to match that of the store employee helping them.
November 7, 2011 at 4:12 pm
Hyun Hee Kim
I feel that this quote really summarized the three studies on Color and bilingual cognition as see the following:
The current findings suggest that bilinguals may have a much more complex conceptual organization than previously thought, and may exhibit the full range of possibilities proposed with total separation and total integration of the two poles of a continuum, depending on several dynamic variables like proficiency, cultural immersion, and frequency of language use, highlighting the multicompetent nature of the bilingual mind. (p. 257).
The three studies really challenged me to see language acquisition in new perspectives. As the authors stated, SLA cannot just based on the one view such as social cultural or cognitive because they are influencing each other.
Next week, when I visit Korean church in Athens, I might test my Korean friends, who are studying in UGA now, how they perceive the color. In English Green is called “cho-rok-saek” in Korean. “The light green” (lighter color than green) is called “yeon-doo-saek” in Korean. The Blue is called “Pa-rang-saek” while lighter blue called “ha-nul-saek”, which can be translated word by word into “sky” “color” respectively.
As Thanasopoulos et al. suggested there is close relationship between language, culture, and thought. As the authors stated, language use can affect categorical perception patterns in advanced bilinguals.