Language and Thought
LIN 350 / CGS 360 / PHL 365 Fall 2009
Instructor: Dr. Pattie Epps
Email: [email protected]
Office: 506 Calhoun; phone 471-9015
Office hours: TTh 3:30-5pm
TTH 2-3:30, Parlin 101
Course uniques: 33235 (CGS); 41490 (LIN); 43455 (PHL)
Does the language we speak influence the way we think? And does our social, cultural, and physical
environment help to shape our language, even on the level of grammatical structures? This upper-division
course examines the relationship between language, culture, and thought, bringing together aspects of
linguistics, anthropology, and cognitive science. We will consider whether the structure of our language
and grammar influences the way we attend to things in our daily lives, such as the shapes of objects, the
materials they are made of, their position in the landscape, or the genders of people and animals. We will
explore how the role of our experience as physical and social beings is reflected in linguistic structures,
such as metaphor and noun classification. Within this investigation, we will explore current debates on the
nature of the relationship between language and thought, and will gain insight into the ways in which
languages are structured and how these structures may vary cross-linguistically.
Texts:
Dedre Gentner and Susan Goldin-Meadow (eds.) 2003. Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of
Language and Thought. Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press.
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: U. Chicago Press.
(Available in the bookstore and on reserve at PCL)
Additional readings (available on Blackboard, http://courses.utexas.edu).
Requirements:
a) READING ASSIGNMENTS: You are expected to have read the required readings by the class day on
which they are listed on the syllabus. The recommended readings (available on Blackboard) will be
relevant to class discussions; you are encouraged to have a look at these as well. I will post some
questions on Blackboard relating to the reading assignment a day or two in advance of each class
meeting. These are to guide you in your thinking about the subject matter as you read; you are not
expected to hand in written answers, but I will call on students to address them in class discussions.
KEEP IN MIND that many of these readings are primary sources and are in some cases quite technical;
do not be discouraged if there are sometimes parts that you do not understand. You should try to
comprehend the main points, guided by the reading questions I provide you.
b)
2 TAKE-HOME TESTS (20% each): Short essay format; open book/notes, but NOT to be discussed
with other students.
c)
TERM PAPER (10-12 pages; initial proposal write-up 10%, paper: 30%): Further guidelines will be
handed out in class. Possible topics:
• Development of topic addressed in class project (should involve significant development of
project ideas).
• In-depth study of some aspect of the innateness/relativity debate.
• In-depth study of some issue or problem relevant to the language/cognition issue; e.g.
bilingualism, linguistic aphasia, animal communication, gesture, a topic discussed in class,
etc.
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d)
GROUP PROJECT (15%): 20-minute class presentation by group of 4-5 people + approx. 500-word
summary of project, results, and personal contribution submitted by each individual (due on day of
presentation). Further guidelines will be handed out in class. Possible topics:
• Design and conduct an experiment to test some hypothesis regarding linguistic relativity.
• Analyze the language in a political speech or other text (with particular attention to metaphors
and frames).
• Design and conduct an experiment testing the isomorphism of language and gesture vis-à-vis
some variable relevant to language and thought.
• etc.
e)
ACTIVE PARTICIPATION in class activities (5%): This class is heavily dependent on in-class lectures
and discussions, so active participation is very important. Active participation means 1) doing the
reading; 2) contributing to class discussions. For each class, I will call on 1-3 students (chosen
essentially at random) to present a brief response to one of the reading-related questions I post on
Blackboard.
f)
REGULAR ATTENDANCE: Attendance will be verified by sign-in sheet. You are allowed up to
three ‘free’ absences (regardless of the reason); after this, each absence drops your final grade
for the course by 2 points. Emergencies and extended illnesses will be considered on a case-by-case
basis. Use your 3 free absences wisely.
Class policies:
ATTENDANCE AND HOMEWORK SUBMISSION
Attendance will be verified by sign-in sheet and evaluated according to the requirements above.
Late assignments will be downgraded (1 letter grade per day late) without a documented medical or other
genuinely serious reason.
COMMUNICATION AND FEEDBACK
Announcements will be posted from time to time on Blackboard – please check regularly. Particularly
urgent announcements may be sent to the class by email.
Feedback about the class is always welcome (structure, assignments, lecture/discussion, etc.).
SCHOLASTIC (DIS)HONESTY
Your work should be your own. On papers and take-home tests, be sure to cite all sources of information
appropriately. For details and further guidelines on UT policy, check the university’s website on scholastic
dishonesty: http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/sis/scholdis.php
SPECIAL NEEDS
If you have special needs of any kind, please let me know before the second class meeting so that we can
attempt to meet these throughout the semester. The University of Texas at Austin provides, upon request,
appropriate academic adjustments for qualified students with disabilities. For more information, contact
the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, Services for Students with Disabilities, 471-6259.
RELIGIOUS HOLIDAYS
If any class deadlines fall on religious holidays that you observe, please let me know at least two weeks in
advance so that I can accommodate your needs. You should both tell me in person and send me an email.
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Week 1. Preface
Aug 27
1. Moulton, Janice, George Robinson and Cherin Elias. 1978. ‘Sex Bias in Language Use: “Neutral”
Pronouns That Aren’t.’ American Psychologist 33: 1032-1036.
Week 2. Nature vs. nurture
Sept 1. Fundamental debates
1. Pinker, Stephen. 1994. ‘An instinct to acquire an art,’ ch. 1 of The Language Instinct. New York:
Wm Morrow.
2. Levinson, Stephen. 2003. ‘Language and mind: let’s get the issues straight!’ ch. 2 of Language in
Mind.
Sept 3. Linguistic universals, linguistic diversity
1. Evans, Nicholas and Stephen Levinson. Forthcoming. ‘The myth of language universals: language
diversity and its importance for cognitive science.’ Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
Recommended:
Chomsky, Noam. 1975. ‘On Cognitive Capacity.’ In Reflections on Language, New York:
Random House, pp. 3-35.
Week 3. Constructing categories
Sept 8. The relativity of perception
1. Kuhl, Patricia et al. 1992. ‘Linguistic experience alters phonetic perception in infants by 6 months
of age’. Science 255:606-8.
2. Biederman, Irving, and Margaret M. Shiffrar. 1987. ‘Sexing Day-Old Chicks: A Case Study and
Expert Systems Analysis of a Difficult Perceptual Learning Task.’ Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 13(4): 640-645.
Sept 10. From percept to concept
1. Lakoff, George. 1986. ‘Classifiers as a reflection of mind,’ in Noun classes and categorization,
Colette Craig (ed.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 13-51.
Recommended:
Rosch, Eleanor. 1978. Principles of Categorization. In Cognition and Categorization, Rosch, E.
and B. Lloyd (eds). Erlbaum NJ, pp. 27-48.
Week 4. Metaphor
Sept 15. Metaphor and the embodied mind
1. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, pp. 3-55.
2. Evans, Vyvyan and Melanie Green. 2006. ‘The embodied mind,’ in Cognitive Linguistics,
Edinburgh University Press.
Sept 17. Sources of metaphor
1. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, pp. 56-77.
2. Bickel, Balthasar. 2000. ‘The Grammar of Space and Sociocultural Practice.’ In Evidence for
Linguistic Relativity. Susanne Niemeier and Rene Dirven, eds. Benjamins: Philadelphia. Pp. 161192.
Recommended:
Geerarts, D. and S. Grondelaers. 1995. ‘Looking back at anger: Cultural traditions and
metaphorical patterns.’ In Language and the Cognitive Construal of the World. J.R. Taylor and
R.E. MacLaury, eds. Berlin: Mouton, pp. 155-179.
Week 5. Metaphor, meaning, and the brain
Sept 22. Neurolinguistic accounts
1. Lakoff, George. 2009. ‘The neural theory of metaphor.’ Update of an earlier version in R. Gibbs,
2008, The Metaphor Handbook, Cambridge University Press. Available online at
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1437794.
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Recommended:
Bates, Elizabeth. 1994. ‘Modularity, domain specificity, and the development of language.’
Discussions in Neuroscience 10:136-156.
•
TEST 1 ASSIGNED
Sept 24. Approaches to word meaning: frames, domains, and schemas
1. Evans, Vyvyan and Melanie Green. 2006. ‘The encyclopaedic view of meaning’, in Cognitive
Linguistics, Edinburgh University Press.
Recommended:
Berry, J.W. and J.A. Bennett, 1992. ‘Cree Conceptions of Cognitive Competence.’ International
Journal of Psychology 27(1): 73-88.
Week 6. Rhetoric: language and thought in the ‘real world’
Sept 29. Language and political discourse
1. Lakoff, George. 2004. ‘A man of his words,’ from ch. 1 of Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know
Your Values and Frame the Debate, Chelsea Green Publishing (from
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/19811).
2. Howe, Nicholas. 1988. ‘Metaphor in contemporary American political discourse.’ Metaphor and
Symbol 3,2:87-104.
•
TEST 1 DUE
Oct 1. Language and advertising
1. McQuarrie, Edward F. and David Glen Mick. 1996. ‘Figures of Rhetoric in Advertising
Language.’ The Journal of Consumer Research, 22(4):424-438.
Week 7. Culture and grammar
Oct 6. Grammar and social cognition
1. Evans, Nicholas. 2009. ‘Your mind in mine: social cognition in grammar,’ ch. 6 of Dying Words:
Endangered Languages and What They Have to Tell Us. Oxford: Blackwell.
Recommended:
Curnow, Timothy J. 2002. ‘Types of interaction between evidentials and first-person subjects.’
Anthropological Linguistics 44:178-196.
Oct 8. Culture and the ‘invisible hand’ in language change
1. Evans, Nicholas. 2003. ‘Context, culture, and structuration in the languages of Australia.’ Annual
Review of Anthropology 32:13-40.
Recommended:
Enfield, N. J. 2002. ‘Introduction,’ ch. 1 of Ethnosyntax, pp. 3-30. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Week 8. Linguistic relativity
Oct 13. The relativity debate
1. Whorf, Benjamin. 1941. ‘The relation of habitual thought and behavior to language’, in Spier,
Leslie, A. Irving Hallowell and Stanley S. Newman (eds.), Language, Culture, and Personality:
Essays in Memory of Edward Sapir. Menasha, Wis., Sapir Memorial Publication Fund.
2. Gentner, Dedre and Susan Goldin-Meadow. 2003. ‘Whither Whorf?’ ch. 1 of Language in Mind.
Oct 15. The categorization of color
1. Berlin, B. and P. Kay. 1969. ‘Introduction.’ Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Growth.
University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 1-14 only.
2. Heider, Eleanor Rosch. 1972. ‘Universals in Color Naming and Memory.’ Journal of
Experimental Psychology 93 (1): 10-20
3. Davidoff, J., I. Davies, and D. Roberson. ‘Color categories in a stone-age tribe.’ Nature 398
(1999): 203-204.
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Week 9. Number and classification
Oct 20. Number and classification
1. Lucy, John A. and Suzanne Gaskins. 2003. ‘Interaction of language type and referent type in the
development of nonverbal classification preferences,’ ch. 15 of Language in Mind.
•
TEST 2 ASSIGNED
Oct 22. Grammatical gender
1. Boroditsky, Lera, Lauren Schmidt, and Webb Phillips. 2003. ‘Sex, syntax, and semantics,’ ch. 4 of
Language in Mind.
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CHOOSE WORKING GROUPS FOR CLASS PROJECT
Week 10. Space, time, and mathematical thinking
Oct 27. Space and time
1. Pederson, Eric, Eve Danziger, Stephen Levinson, Sotaro Kita, Gunter Senft and David Wilkins.
1998. ‘Semantic Typology and Spatial Conceptualization.’ Language. 74(3):557-589.
2. ‘Backs to the future,’ from PhysOrg.com (http://www.physorg.com/news69338070.html).
Recommended:
Levinson, Steven. 2002. ‘Correlation and causation: chicken or egg?’ in Space in Language and
Cognition. Cambridge: CUP, pp.210-13.
Bowerman, M., and S. Choi. 2003. ‘Space under construction: language-specific spatial
categorization in first language acquisition,’ ch. 13 of Language in Mind.
•
TEST 2 DUE
Oct 29. Numerals and arithmetic
1. Pica, Pierre, Cathy Lemer, Véronique Izard, Stanislaus Dehaene. 2005. ‘Exact and approximate
arithmetic in an Amazonian Indigene group.’ Science 306 (2005): 499-503.
2. Dehaene, S., E. Spelke, P. Pinel, R. Stanescu, and S. Tsivkin. 1999. ‘Sources of mathematical
thinking: Behavioral and brain-imaging evidence.’ Science 284 (1999): 970-974.
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ALL TOPICS FOR CLASS PROJECTS SHOULD BE DECIDED ON BY THIS DATE
Week 11. The cross-cultural structuring of experience
Nov 3. Schooling and literacy
1. Luria, A.R. 1976. ‘Deduction and Inference.’ In Cognitive Development, Its Cultural and Social
Foundations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 100-116.
2. Scribner, Sylvia and Michael Cole 1978. Literacy without Schooling: Testing for Intellectual
Effects. Harvard Educational Review 48 (4): 448-461. Minami and Kennedy 1991.
Recommended:
Danziger, Eve and Eric Pederson, ‘Through the looking glass: literacy, writing systems, and
mirror-image discrimination.’ Written Language and Literacy 1,2:153-69.
Nov 5. Language acquisition and motherese
1. Thompson, Andrea. ‘Baby talk knows no language barriers.’ LiveScience, Aug. 27, 2007.
2. Ochs, E. and Schieffelin, B. 1984 ‘Language acquisition and socialization: three developmental
stories’, in Culture Theory: Mind, Self, and Emotion, ed. by R. Schweder & R. LeVine.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 277-320.
Week 12. Learning language
Nov 10. Language acquisition and theory of mind
1. Tomasello, M. ‘The key is social cognition.’ Ch. 3 of Language in Mind.
Recommended:
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Tomasello, M. 2001. ‘Perceiving intentions and learning words in the second year of life’, in
Bowerman, M. and Levinson, S. Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
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PAPER PROPOSAL AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE
Nov 12. Animals and language
1. Hamilton, John. ‘A voluble visit with two talking apes,’ NPR Weekend Edition, July 8, 2006.
2. Kuczaj, Stan II and Jennifer Hendry. 2003. ‘Does language help animals think?’ ch. 9 of
Language in Mind.
Week 13. Language, culture, and thought: implications for identity and expression
Nov 17. Discourse
1. Sherzer, Joel. 1987. ‘A discourse-centered approach to language and culture,’ American
Anthropologist 89:295-309.
• PRESENTATIONS
Nov 19. Implications of language death
1. Woodbury, Anthony C. 1993. ‘In defense of the proposition, ‘When a language dies, a culture
dies’. Proceedings of the First Annual Symposium About Language and Society—Austin (SALSA),
Texas Linguistic Forum 33:101-129.
• PRESENTATIONS
Week 14. Presentations
Nov 24.
• PRESENTATIONS
Week 15. Presentations and final thoughts
Dec 1. [TBA]
Dec 3. Envoi
• PRESENTATIONS
FINAL PAPER DUE WEDNESDAY DEC 9 BEFORE 5PM.
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