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November 10, 2011 at 7:25 pm
Lance Armistead
In regards to the differences seen in the perception of time between native Chinese high/low proficiency English speakers, I agree that culture is probably not much of an influence because in the Chen and Su study the participants had only studied the English language in Taiwan and had generally not spent time in English-speaking countries. However, whether the change is conceptual or linguistic is still not clear. How could future studies control for these two variables? It seems that using prime sentences in the participants’ native language is not enough.
November 11, 2011 at 1:50 pm
Anastasia Sorokina
Lance,
As far as I know, that exposure to culture has a bigger effect on cognition in bilinguals. The longer the stay in L2 speaking country, the bigger the shift toward L2 mentality. For example, Russian language does not have a concept of “personal space”. Nevertheless, Russian-English bilinguals would use this term in their native (Russian) language. They would simply translate it word-to-word. On the other hand, advanced Russian-English bilinguals who have never been to an English-speaking country, would never use the term in their L1 or L2
November 11, 2011 at 2:15 pm
Anastasia Sorokina
In the study on gender, the author said that “the more languages people learn, the closer they might get to an understanding of reality that is not affected by the biases induced by their first language.” i do not think that studies on bilingual cognition should comment on whether languages limit perception and induce biases. It is more beneficial to explore and examine how exposure to L2 affects cognition in bilinguals based on the empirical data.
My question is: What are the dangers of mixing Applied linguistics with Philosophy? How can researchers avoid biases in interpretation of the results?
November 12, 2011 at 6:26 pm
Yanjin Li
I have the similar concerns with both Lance and Anastasia. In terms of the cultural difference alternative explanation to the experiment result of Chen and Su’ study, I also think living in the L2 speaking country can accelerate the speed of cognitive adaption from L1 to L2. However, my feeling is that cultural internalization is much more difficult than learning the language itself.
Since the cultural difference is usually viewed as the alternative other than pure language difference, which causes response time difference on such tasks as categorization task and priming task; if we really intend to make a study more reliable and valid, we need to adopt a methodology which can exclude the cultural factor to a large extent. My thinking is that we can recruit two groups of participants – bilinguals who learn the L2 based on classroom instruction and who have never been to a L2 speaking country before; and bilinguals who have been living in a L2 speaking country for a long time (the threshold need to be specified and the philosophy need to be elaborated). Personally, I do not think those differences occurred among different participant groups in those experiment are caused by the sociocultural background difference, because each language has its own style and characteristics on this and that aspect, for instance, time perception, grammatical gender perception. Therefore, native speakers of each language in this world internalize the unique way of expressing tense, interpreting the gender of each object around us, and reacting to the accidental events and so on.
November 13, 2011 at 12:29 am
Caleb
To continue the discussion about linguistic experiments, their underlying assumptions, and what conclusions can be drawn, I agree with you guys that language and culture are deeply intertwined. What’s more, looking at the Chinese time-experiments made me realize another flaw in underlying assumptions. Bilingual studies, when they measure performance of bilingual subjects, assume that the participants learned the TL ACCURATELY.
When I looked at the example sentences purporting to demonstrate Chinese speakers use context to infer time in spite of seemingly identical syntactical structures, I read the example sentences over and over and I didn’t find myself agreeing with the translated meanings of the sentences. When I asked my wife, a Chinese NS, she immediately got the ‘right’ meaning behind the two examples.
I was born in Taiwan and learned Chinese as my L1 b/f coming to America at 2 and a half years to learn English as my L2. Though my L2 is now my dominant language, I grew up with my L1 at home, lived abroad in Taiwan for 4 years, and speak mostly Chinese to my wife. I (and most of my acquaintences) consider myself a fair speaker of Chinese so why did I misinterpret the Chinese time-example sentences?
Was it because of strong influences from English culture? Cross-linguistic influences from my dominant English? Or perhaps a simpler possibility altogether is that I never learned the nuances of time-related Chinese syntax completely accurately. In my unique bilingual circumstances, I grew up learning & using Chinese only on-and-off, so maybe I didn’t study some abstract dictionary definitions of time-syntax, nor did I have enough exposure to be able to infer accurate meanings about Chinese time-syntax.
Cross-linguistic influences, and/or cultural influences are all very likely and possible. While this just adds another layer to the circular chicken vs. egg debate, I also think that based on my own example, it’s important to verify whether or not the subjects ever accurately learned the domain in the TL of whatever linguistic area is being researched.
November 12, 2011 at 9:57 pm
Karen Graf
As several studies have shown, effects of a grammatical gender L1 can influence a bilingual’s semantic gender L2. While the chapter mentions a study in which the participants learned proper names for objects and animals better when the English L2 name was consistent with the object’s L1 gender grammar, I am interested in research that has shown negative effects on L2 acquisition when the native and target language differ in terms of being grammatically gender and grammatically genderless.
November 13, 2011 at 11:10 am
Jialing Wang
Contrary to Anastasia’s opinion, I strongly agree with the statement “the more languages people learn, the closer they might get to an understanding of reality that is not affected by the biases induced by their first language.” We have to admit that every culture has some limitation and biases on perception. And the most direct reflection of the cultural limitations and biases is language. And the benefits of learning another language is not only mastering a communication skill, but also the ability to view the world from a different perspective. As Dr. Hasko said in last class, if the L2 is more sensitive in some categories, the bilinguals will be more sensitive in categories. From the research in the book, there are some limitations in temporal phase of an action event for Chinese. But for some Chinese-English bilinguals, this limitation got counterbalanced at some degree. From my personal experience, I think learning English helps me look at the world in a critical view at some points. For example, in Chinese, the “brown sugar” is named “hong tang”, meaning “red sugar”. When I was kid, I used to think the color of brown sugar (water) is red. But since the first time I learned it’s English name is brown sugar, I started feel its color is not real red, even though i don’t think it’s pure brown either. However, this understanding, i think, is closer to the reality which is less influenced by the stereotype of either language. Learning several languages can help people developing critical thinking and reduce the limitation brought by a certain language.
November 13, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Wan-Chen Lee
After reading everybody’s question, I have some comments. First, as for Anastasia’s reply to Lance, “exposure to culture has a bigger effect on cognition in bilinguals. The longer the stay in L2 speaking country, the bigger the shift toward L2 mentality
.” I agree with her comment on cultural exposure in L2 speaking country and have bigger shift toward L2 mentality. Because of Chen and Su’s study, it reminded me of my experience to tell stories to my ex-coworker’s daughter. Before I went to America, she was 5 years old. Although she had learned some simple English terms, I can consider her as a low-proficiency in English. During the story time, she describe her stories based on pictures which she saw on the book. I found out sometimes we had very different description of temporal phrases similarly like Chen and Su’s method. Therefore, I found out that she didn’t have background knowledge of time tenses. Future and past tense all appeared in the present tense. I noticed the difference was because I was an English teacher in a middle school at that time. Therefore, I compared her to my students. It actually had a very similar result. Before they learned English, Chinese didn’t have very distinct linguistic features to express in a daily conversation. However, my students got trained in English at school. I noticed that some of their daily conversation sentences changed. However, these were examples happened in my life before. I still can’t make sure the change is because of conceptual or linguistic factor.
November 13, 2011 at 4:18 pm
Christopher Adams
I found it interesting that gestures were so important to understanding certain languages. I know that several times in Spain, my roommate would be talking and use an exaggerated gesture to intensify the degree of the verb or adjective. I wonder how educators can teach gestures for Spanish when there are so many dialects with different gestures and words meaning different things?
November 14, 2011 at 10:55 am
William Mira
After reading the chapter about emblematic gestures and being introduced to the work of McNeill, I began to think about the role of “gesture” in sign langauge. McNeill argues for the close connection between gesture and voiced language and it seems to me that sign language would be an interesting topic of research to explore the possible cognitive connections. Sign languages share features of language such as syntax but these features are carried out through gesture rather than speech. Are sign languages a collection of emblematic gestures? Or is it more closely related to McNeill’s conception of a gesture?