Monday, September 7, 2009
Critical Thinking in Linguistics 115
Our Social Issues class incorporates the idea of critical thinking by making us ponder about how languages develop over time. By the professor giving us several examples of diglossic societies, mutually intelligible languages, and regional dialects, we the students can use this information to form our own hypotheses about how other languages have developed over the centuries. Since all this lecture information is relatively new to most of us, we can't rely on past information or experiences to think of ideas about other languages' histories. Instead, we have to "think outside the box" and come up with our own reasons as to why other languages have converged, diverged, or died out completely. This also brings in the idea of the accommodation of the uncertainty. Since we are not experts in the linguistics field, we cannot say for sure why and how languages have developed or faded away. We have to formulate our own guesses (although they may not be certain) and try to back up our ideas with the examples given to us in class.
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I would have to disagree with you in terms of deciding why specific languages have changed over time. I feel that typically there are clear signs and reasons why that happens. For example, it seems in most cases it is done to assert political independence. However, there are other various causes, which we typically cover in class. On the other hand, I would say that by teaching us the end result and then explaining why that occurred, Dr. Simpson teaches us how to come to that conclusion and use critical reasoning.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on the point you made about having to deal with uncertainty when we ponder the development or endangerment of languages. Although linguists have pointed out the most common factors such as demographics, politics, or size of the minority/majority population, it requires critical thinking to analyze and evaluate all these factors before reaching a conclusion on the specific cause of change in language.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to have to agree with Elisha, there are clear reason why languages have changed of disappeared. but i liked how you incorporated the idea of thinking outside of the box as a method of critical thinking
ReplyDeleteI think you propose an interesting way that we use critical thinking in Linguistics. I don't completely agree that this would be the best example though. I do agree with you that uncertainty exists when trying to decide why and how languages developed or faded away. However, critical thinking requires your final conclusion to be based on personal values, observation, or reasoned argument, and I don't think any of us have enough of these to back up our conclusion about the languages.
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