Language Diversity and Thought

Language Diversity and Thought PDF Author: John A. Lucy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521387972
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
An examination of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis on the relationship between grammar and thought.

Language Diversity and Thought

Language Diversity and Thought PDF Author: John A. Lucy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521387972
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
An examination of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis on the relationship between grammar and thought.

Language Diversity and Thought

Language Diversity and Thought PDF Author: John A. Lucy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521384186
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Language Diversity and Thought examines the Sapir-Whorf linguistic relativity hypothesis: the proposal that the grammar of the particular language that we speak affects the way we think about reality. Adopting a historical approach, the book reviews the various lines of empirical inquiry that arose in America in response to the ideas of anthropologists Edward Sapir and Benjamin L. Whorf. John Lucy asks why there has been so little fruitful empirical research on this problem and what lessons can be learned from past work. He then proposes a new, more adequate approach to future empirical research. A companion volume, Grammatical Categories and Cognition, illustrates the proposed approach with an original case study. The study compares the grammar of American English with that of Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language spoken in southeastern Mexico, and then identifies distinctive patterns of thinking related to the differences between the two languages.

Linguistic Relativities

Linguistic Relativities PDF Author: John Leavitt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139494872
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
There are more than six thousand human languages, each one unique. For the last five hundred years, people have argued about how important language differences are. This book traces that history and shows how language differences have generally been treated either as of no importance or as all-important, depending on broader approaches taken to human life and knowledge. It was only in the twentieth century, in the work of Franz Boas and his students, that an attempt was made to engage seriously with the reality of language specificities. Since the 1950s, this work has been largely presented as yet another claim that language differences are all-important by cognitive scientists and philosophers who believe that such differences are of no importance. This book seeks to correct this misrepresentation and point to the new directions taken by the Boasians, directions now being recovered in the most recent work in psychology and linguistics.

Space in Language and Cognition

Space in Language and Cognition PDF Author: Stephen C. Levinson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521011969
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Languages differ in how they describe space, and such differences between languages can be used to explore the relation between language and thought. This 2003 book shows that even in a core cognitive domain like spatial thinking, language influences how people think, memorize and reason about spatial relations and directions. After outlining a typology of spatial coordinate systems in language and cognition, it is shown that not all languages use all types, and that non-linguistic cognition mirrors the systems available in the local language. The book reports on collaborative, interdisciplinary research, involving anthropologists, linguists and psychologists, conducted in many languages and cultures around the world, which establishes this robust correlation. The overall results suggest that thinking in the cognitive sciences underestimates the transformative power of language on thinking. The book will be of interest to linguists, psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers, and especially to students of spatial cognition.

Speaking Culturally

Speaking Culturally PDF Author: Fern L. Johnson
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780803959125
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Speaking Culturally examines the changing cultural demographics of the United States from a linguistic perspective. The author highlights the discourses associated with gender and with African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans.

Grammatical Categories and Cognition

Grammatical Categories and Cognition PDF Author: John A. Lucy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521566209
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
John Lucy uses original, empirical data to examine the Sapir-Whorf linguistic relativity hypothesis: the proposal that the grammar of the particular language that we speak affects the way we think about reality. The author compares the grammar of American English with that of the Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language spoken in Southeastern Mexico, focusing on differences in the number marking patterns of the two languages. He then identifies distinctive patterns of thought relating to these differences by means of a systematic assessment of memory and classification preferences among speakers of both languages.

Linguistic Relativities

Linguistic Relativities PDF Author: John Harold Leavitt
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780511991707
Category : Anthropological linguistics
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
"There are more than six thousand human languages, each one unique. For the last five hundred years, people have argued about how important language differences are. This book traces that history and shows how language differences have generally been treated either as of no importance or as all-important, depending on broader approaches taken to human life and knowledge. It was only in the twentieth century, in the work of Franz Boas and his students, that an attempt was made to engage seriously with the reality of language specificities. Since the 1950s, this work has been largely presented as yet another claim that language differences are all-important by cognitive scientists and philosophers who believe that such differences are of no importance. This book seeks to correct this misrepresentation and point to the new directions taken by the Boasians, directions now being recovered in the most recent work in psychology and linguistics"--

Other People's Children

Other People's Children PDF Author: Lisa D. Delpit
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1595580743
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
An updated edition of the award-winning analysis of the role of race in the classroom features a new author introduction and framing essays by Herbert Kohl and Charles Payne, in an account that shares ideas about how teachers can function as "cultural transmitters" in contemporary schools and communicate more effectively to overcome race-related academic challenges. Original.

Linguistic Diversity

Linguistic Diversity PDF Author: Lecturer in Biological Psychology Daniel Nettle, Ph.D.
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780198238584
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
There are some 6,500 different languages in the world, belonging to around 250 distinct families and conforming to numerous grammatical types. This book explains why. Given that the biological mechanisms underlying language are the same in all normal human beings, would we not be a moresuccessful species if we spoke one language? Daniel Nettle considers how this extraordinary and rich diversity arose, how it relates to the nature of language, cognition, and culture, and how it is linked with the main patterns of human geography and history. Human languages and language families are not distributed evenly: there are relatively few in Eurasia compared to the profusion found in Australasia, the Pacific, and the Americas. There is also a marked correlation between biodiversity and linguistic diversity. The author explains the processesby which this distribution evolved and changes still. To do so he returns to the earliest origins of language, reconstructing the processes of linguistic variation and diffusion that occurred when humans first filled the continents and, thousands of years later, turned to agriculture. He ends byexamining the causes of linguistic mortality, and why the number of the world's languages may halve before 2100. Linguistic Diversity draws on work in anthropology, linguistics, geography, archaeology, and evolutionary science to provide a comprehensive account of the patterns of linguistic diversity. It is written in a clear, lively and accessible style, and will appeal broadly across the natural and humansciences, as well as to the informed general reader.

Linguistic Justice

Linguistic Justice PDF Author: April Baker-Bell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351376705
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
Bringing together theory, research, and practice to dismantle Anti-Black Linguistic Racism and white linguistic supremacy, this book provides ethnographic snapshots of how Black students navigate and negotiate their linguistic and racial identities across multiple contexts. By highlighting the counterstories of Black students, Baker-Bell demonstrates how traditional approaches to language education do not account for the emotional harm, internalized linguistic racism, or consequences these approaches have on Black students' sense of self and identity. This book presents Anti-Black Linguistic Racism as a framework that explicitly names and richly captures the linguistic violence, persecution, dehumanization, and marginalization Black Language-speakers endure when using their language in schools and in everyday life. To move toward Black linguistic liberation, Baker-Bell introduces a new way forward through Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy, a pedagogical approach that intentionally and unapologetically centers the linguistic, cultural, racial, intellectual, and self-confidence needs of Black students. This volume captures what Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy looks like in classrooms while simultaneously illustrating how theory, research, and practice can operate in tandem in pursuit of linguistic and racial justice. A crucial resource for educators, researchers, professors, and graduate students in language and literacy education, writing studies, sociology of education, sociolinguistics, and critical pedagogy, this book features a range of multimodal examples and practices through instructional maps, charts, artwork, and stories that reflect the urgent need for antiracist language pedagogies in our current social and political climate.