1.

To understand the nature and concepts of

language and its thoughts;
2.To explain the language in a social context;
3.To understand the animals and language;
4.To discuss how to understand the conversation
neuropsychology and language.
 How does language affect
the way we think?
You're a loser who sits and cries! You do not belong here.

I was watching you play with your sister and you

were very patient."

I want to spend the rest of my life with you.

I'm sorry; I do not feel the same way as before.

Let's call it quits.
One of the reasons that we can understand non-literal uses of language is that we
can interpret the words we hear within a broader linguistic, cultural, social, and
cognitive context.

• In this lesson, we will focus on the cognitive context of language—we look at

how language and thought interact.
• We will discuss some uses of language in its social context.
• We will explore animal language because it puts human language in perspective.
• We will examine some neuropsychological insights into language. Although the
topics in this lessons are diverse, they all have one element in common: They
address the issue of how language is used in the everyday contexts in which we
need it to communicate with others and to make our communications as
meaningful as we possibly can.
 Language and thought
• One of the most interesting areas in the study of language is the
relationship between language and the thinking of the human
mind.
• Many people believe that language shapes thoughts.
• Many different questions have been asked about the relationship
between language and thought.
 Language and thought
Differences among Languages
• Different languages comprise different lexicons. They also use different
syntactical structures.
• These differences often reflect variations in the physical and cultural
environments in which the languages arose and developed.
• The syntactical structures of languages differ, too. Almost all languages
permit some way in which to communicate actions, agents of actions, and
objects of actions.
• What differs across languages is the order of subject, verb, and object in a
typical declarative sentence.
• Also differing is the range of grammatical inflections and other markings that
speakers are obliged to include as key elements of a sentence.
 Language and thought
Bilingualism and Dialects
• Suppose a person can speak and think in two languages. Does the
person think differently in each language?
• Do bilinguals—people who can speak two languages— think
differently from monolinguals—people who can speak only one
language?
• What differences, if any, emanate from the availability of two
languages versus just one?
• Might bilingualism affect intelligence, positively or negatively?
 Language and thought
Bilingualism—An Advantage or Disadvantage?
• What happens when bilinguals are balanced bilinguals, who are
roughly equally fluent in both languages, and when they come from
middle-class backgrounds.
• In these instances, positive effects of bilingualism tend to be found.
• Executive functions, which are located primarily in the prefrontal
cortex and include abilities such as to shift between tasks or ignore
distracters, are enhanced in bilingual individuals.
• Even the onset of dementia in bilinguals may be delayed by as much
as four years.
 Language and thought
Bilingualism—An Advantage or Disadvantage?
But negative effects may result as well. Bilingual speakers tend to
have smaller vocabularies and their access to lexical items in
memory is slower.
Additive bilingualism - a second language is acquired in addition to a
relatively well-developed first language.
Subtractive bilingualism - elements of a second language replace
elements of the first language.
It appears that the additive form results in increased thinking ability.
In contrast, the subtractive form results in decreased thinking ability
 Language and thought
Bilingualism—An Advantage or Disadvantage?
• Researchers also distinguish between simultaneous bilingualism,
which occurs when a child learns two languages from birth, and
sequential bilingualism, which occurs when an individual first learns
one language and then another.
• Either form of language learning can contribute to fluency.
• It depends on the particular circumstances in which the languages are
learned
 Language and thought
Factors That Influence Second Language Acquisition
• A significant factor believed to contribute to acquisition of a language is age.
• Some researchers have suggested that native-like mastery of some aspects of
a second language is rarely acquired after adolescence. Other researchers
disagree with this view.
• They found that some aspects of a second language, such as vocabulary
comprehension and fluency, seem to be acquired just as well after
adolescence as before. Furthermore, these researchers found that even some
aspects of syntax seem to be acquired readily after adolescence.
• The mastery of native-like pronunciation often seems to depend on early
acquisition. But individual differences are great and some learners attain
native-like language abilities even at a later age
 Language and thought
Factors That Influence Second Language Acquisition
Learning completely novel phonemes in a second language may be easier than
learning phonemes that are highly similar to the phonemes of the first language.
Adults may appear to have a harder time learning second languages because they
can retain their native language as their dominant language.
Young children typically need to attend school in the new language, may have to
switch their dominant language. So, they learn the new language to a higher level
of mastery.
This does not mean that we cannot learn a new language later in life, but rather,
that the earlier we learn it, the more likely we will become highly proficient in its
use.
Each individual language learner brings distinctive cognitive abilities and
knowledge to the language-learning experience.
 Language and thought
Slips of the Tongue
• An area of particular interest to cognitive psychologists is how people
use language incorrectly.
• Studying speech errors helps cognitive psychologists better understand
normal language processing.
• One way of using language incorrectly is through slips of the tongue—
inadvertent linguistic errors in what we say.
• They may occur at any level of linguistic analysis: phonemes,
morphemes, or larger units of language
• In such cases, what we think and what we mean to say do not
correspond to what we actually do say.
 Language and thought
Slips of the Tongue
• Slips of the tongue may be taken to indicate that the language of
thought differs somewhat from the language through which we
express our thoughts
• Often we have the idea right, but its expression comes out wrong.
• Sometimes we are not even aware of the slip until it is pointed out to
us.
• In the language of the mind, whatever it may be, the idea is right,
although the expression represented by the slip is inadvertently wrong.
• This fact can be seen in the occasional slips of the tongue even in
preplanned and practiced speech
 Language and thought
People tend to make various kinds of slips in their conversations
• In anticipation, the speaker uses a language element before it is appropriate
in the sentence because it corresponds to an element that will be needed
later in the utterance. For example, instead of saying, “an inspiring
expression,” a speaker might say, “an expiring expression.”
• In perseveration, the speaker uses a language element that was appropriate
earlier in the sentence but that is not appropriate later on. For example, a
speaker might say, “We sat down to a bounteous beast” instead of a
“bounteous feast.”
• In substitution, the speaker substitutes one language element for another.
For example, you may have warned someone to do something “after it is too
late,” when you meant “before it is too late.”
 Language and thought
People tend to make various kinds of slips in their conversations
• In reversal (also called “transposition”), the speaker switches the positions of
two language elements. An example is the reversal that reportedly led
“flutterby” to become “butterfly.” This reversal captivated language users so
much that it is now the preferred form. Sometimes, reversals can be
fortuitously opportune.
• In spoonerisms, the initial sounds of two words are reversed and make two
entirely different words. The term is named after the Reverend William
Spooner, who was famous for them. Some of his choicest slips include, “You
have hissed all my mystery lectures,” [missed all my history lectures] and
“Easier for a camel to go through the knee of an idol” [the eye of a needle]
(Clark & Clark, 1977).\
 Language and thought
People tend to make various kinds of slips in their conversations
• In malapropism, one word is replaced by another that is similar in sound but
different in meaning (e.g., furniture dealers selling “naughty pine” instead of
“knotty pine”).
• Additionally, slips may occur because of insertions of sounds (e.g.,
“mischievious” instead of “mischievous” or “drownded” instead of
“drowned”) or other linguistic elements. The opposite kind of slip involves
deletions (e.g., sound deletions such as “prossing” instead of “processing”).
Such deletions often involve blends (e.g., “blounds” for “blended sounds”).
 Language and thought
Metaphorical Language
• Metaphors juxtapose two nouns in a way that positively asserts their
similarities, while not disconfirming their dissimilarities (e.g., The house
was a pigsty).
• Related to metaphors are similes which introduces the words like or as
into a comparison between items (e.g., The child was as quiet as a
mouse).
• Metaphors contain four key elements:
• Two are the items being compared, a tenor and a vehicle.
• And two are ways in which the items are related. The tenor is the topic
of the metaphor (e.g., house).
 Language and thought
Metaphorical Language
• For example, consider the metaphor, “Billboards are warts on the landscape.”
The tenor is “billboards.” The vehicle is “warts.”
• The tenor is “billboards.” The vehicle is “warts.” The ground of the metaphor is
the set of similarities between the tenor and the vehicle (e.g., both are messy).
• The tension of the metaphor is the set of dissimilarities between the two (e.g.,
people do not live in pigsties but do live in houses).
• We may conjecture that a key similarity (ground) between billboards and warts
is that they are both considered unattractive.
• The dissimilarities (tension) between the two are many, including that
billboards appear on buildings, highways, and other impersonal public
locations. But warts appear on diverse personal locations on an individual
 Language and thought
Various theories have been proposed to explain how metaphors work.
The traditional views have highlighted either the ways in which the
tenor and the vehicle are similar or the ways in which they differ.
The traditional comparison view highlights the importance of the comparison.
It underscores the comparative similarities and analogical relationship between
the tenor and the vehicle (Malgady & Johnson, 1976; Miller, 1979; cf. also
Sternberg & Nigro, 1983). As applied to the metaphor, “Abused children are
walking time bombs,” the comparison view underscores the similarity between
the elements: their potential for explosion.
In contrast, the anomaly view of metaphor emphasizes the dissimilarity
between the tenor and the vehicle (Beardsley, 1962; Gerrig & Healy, 1983;
Searle, 1979). The anomaly view would highlight the dissimilarities between
abused children and time bombs.
 Language and thought
The domain-interaction view integrates aspects of each of the preceding
views. It suggests that a metaphor is more than a comparison and more
than an anomaly. According to this view, a metaphor involves an
interaction of some kind between the domain (area of knowledge, such
as animals, machines, plants) of the tenor and the domain of the vehicle
(Black, 1962; Hesse, 1966). The exact form of this interaction differs
somewhat from one theory to another. The metaphor often is more
effective when two circumstances occur. First, the tenor and the vehicle
share many similar characteristics (e.g., the potential explosiveness of
abused children and time bombs). Second, the domains of the tenor and
the vehicle are highly dissimilar (e.g., the domain of humans and the
domain of weapons) (Tourangeau & Sternberg, 1981, 1982).
 Language and thought
Another view is that that metaphors are essentially a non-literal form of class inclusion
statements (Glucksberg & Keysar, 1990). According to this view, the tenor of each
metaphor is a member of the class characterized by the vehicle of the given metaphor.
That is, we understand metaphors not as statements of comparison but as statements
of category membership, in which the vehicle is a prototypical member of the category.
Suppose I say, “My colleague’s partner is an iceberg.” I am thereby saying that the
partner belongs to the category of things that are characterized by an utter lack of
personal warmth, extreme rigidity, and the ability to produce a massively chilling effect
on anyone in the surrounding environment. For a metaphor to work well, the reader
should find the salient features of the vehicle (“iceberg”) to be unexpectedly relevant as
features of the tenor (“my colleague’s partner”). That is, the reader should be at least
mildly surprised that prominent features of the vehicle may characterize the tenor. But
after consideration, the reader should agree that those features do describe the tenor.
 Language and thought
• Metaphors enrich our language in ways that literal statements cannot
match.
• Our understanding of metaphors seems to require not only some
kind of comparison.
• It also requires that the domains of the vehicle and of the tenor
interact in some way.
• Reading a metaphor can change our perception of both domains.
• It therefore can educate us in a way that is perhaps more difficult to
transmit through literal speech.
• Metaphors can enrich our speech in social contexts.
 Language in a Social Context
The study of the social context of language is a relatively new area of
linguistic research.
One aspect of context is the investigation of pragmatics, the study of
how people use language.
It includes sociolinguistics and other aspects of the social context of
language.
Under most circumstances, you change your use of language in
response to contextual cues without giving these changes much
thought.
Similarly, you usually unselfconsciously change your language patterns
to fit different contexts.
 Language in a Social Context
Language in Different Contexts

To get an idea of how you change your use of language in different contexts,
suppose that you and your friend are going to meet right after work.
Something comes up and you must call your friend to change the time or place
for your meeting. When you call your friend at work, your friend’s supervisor
answers and offers to take a message. Exactly what will you say to your friend’s
supervisor to ensure that your friend will know about the change in time or
location? Suppose, instead, that the 4-year-old son of your friend’s supervisor
answers. Exactly what will you say in this situation? Finally, suppose that your
friend answers directly. How will you have modified your language for each
context, even when your purpose (underlying message) in all three contexts
was the same?
 Language in a Social Context
• When we are with people who share background, knowledge, motives, or goals,
establishing common ground is likely to be easy and scarcely noticeable.
• Gestures and vocal inflections, which are forms of nonverbal communication, can
help establish common ground.
• One aspect of nonverbal communication is personal space—the distance
between people in a conversation or other interaction that is considered
comfortable for members of a given culture.
• Proxemics is the study of interpersonal distance or its opposite, proximity. It
concerns itself with relative distancing and the positioning of you and your fellow
conversant.
• When on our own familiar turf, we take our cultural views of personal space for
granted. Only when we come into contact with people from other cultures do we
notice these differences.
 Language in a Social Context
Speech Acts
When we communicate with others, we can use either direct or
indirect speech.
• Direct Speech Acts addresses the question of what you can
accomplish with speech and fall into five basic categories, based on
the purpose of the acts.
There are essentially five things you can accomplish with speech.
Language in a Social Context
 Language in a Social Context
• Indirect Speech Acts is a way in which we make a request without
doing so straightforwardly.
Types of Indirect Speech Acts
There are four basic ways of making indirect requests:
• asking or making statements about abilities;
• stating a desire;
• stating a future action;
• and citing reasons.
Language in a Social Context
 Language in a Social Context
• When an indirect speech act, such as “Must you open the window?” is presented in
isolation, it usually first is interpreted literally, for example, as “Do you need to open the
window?”
• When the same speech act is presented in a story context that makes the indirect
meaning clear, the sentence first is interpreted in terms of the indirect meaning. For
instance, suppose a character in a story had a cold and asked, “Must you open the
window?” It would be interpreted as an indirect request: “Do not open the window.”
• Subsequent work showed that indirect speech acts often anticipate what potential
obstacles the respondent might pose. These obstacles are specifically addressed through
the indirect speech act
• “May I have … ?” addresses potential obstacles of permission.
• “Would you mind … ?” addresses potential obstacles regarding a possible imposition on the
respondent.
• “Do you have … ?” addresses potential obstacles regarding availability.
• Indirect requests that ask permission are judged to be the most polite
 Language in a Social Context
• Similarly, indirect requests that speak to an obligation
(i.e., “Shouldn’t you…?”) are judged as the most impolite
(Clark & Schunk, 1980).
 Language in a Social Context
Pinker’s Theory of Indirect Speech
• Steven Pinker and his colleagues (2007) recently developed a three-part
theory of indirect speech.
• Its basic assumption is that communication is always a mixture of
cooperation and conflict.
• Indirect speech gives the speaker the chance to voice an ambiguous request
that the listener can accept or decline without reacting adversely to it.
• According to the three-part theory, indirect speech can serve three
purposes:
• Plausible deniability
• Relationship negotiation
• Language as a digital medium of indirect as well as direct communication
 Language in a Social Context
Plausible deniability. Imagine a policeman pulls you over when you are
driving and wants to give you a traffic ticket. By saying, “Maybe the
best thing is to take care of this right here,” you can imply that you
might be willing to pay a bribe to get off the ticket. If the policeman is
inclined to accept, he can do so. If he is not interested in the bribe, he
cannot arrest you for the attempted bribe (you hope!) because you
never made an explicit offer. You purposely were indirect in order to
ensure, to the extent possible, plausible deniability (in this case, of
your attempt to bribe). Similarly, sexual overtures are often made in an
indirect way in order to ensure deniability should the object of the
overtures react negatively
 Language in a Social Context
Relationship negotiation. This occurs when a person uses indirect
language because the nature of a relationship is ambiguous. For
example, one purpose of an indirect sexual overture may be plausible
deniability (the first purpose). But the overture also may be indirect to
avoid offending the targeted individual if he or she is not interested in a
sexual relationship (relationship negotiation). In this case, indirectness
is a way of helping two people mutually resolve the nature of their
relationship.
 Language in a Social Context
Language as a digital medium of indirect as well as direct
communication. Language can serve purposes other than direct
communication. For example, suppose the emperor believes he is
wearing fine robes when he is in fact naked. A boy shouts out, “The
emperor has no clothes.” The boy is not telling the others anything
they do not know—they can see the emperor has no clothes. What he
is telling them is that it is not just they as individuals who see no
clothes—everyone sees the emperor wearing no clothes. The boy has
communicated something digitally—that all know the emperor is
naked—that before was ambiguous.
 Language in a Social Context
Characteristics of Successful Conversations
In speaking to each other, we implicitly set up a cooperative enterprise.
Conversations thrive on the basis of a cooperative principle, by which we seek to
communicate in ways that make it easy for our listener to understand what we mean.
According to Grice, successful conversations follow four maxims:
• the maxim of quantity
• the maxim of quality
• the maxim of relation
• the maxim of manner.
• Maxim is a set of norms which language users adhere to in order to uphold the
effectiveness and efficiency of communication.
• These are also called conversational postulates.
 Language in a Social Context
• To these four maxims, we might add an additional maxim: Only one
person speaks at a time.
• Given that maxim, the situational context and the relative social
positions of the speakers affect turn taking.
• Sociolinguists have noted many ways in which speakers signal to one
another when and how to take turns.
• Sometimes people flaunt the conversational postulates to make a
point.
• Sometimes when a conversation on a topic is becoming heated, one
purposely may switch topics and bring up an irrelevant issue.
Language in a Social Context
 Language in a Social Context
Gender and Language
• Gender differences have been found in the content of what we say.
• Young girls are more likely to ask for help than are young boys.
• Older adolescent and young adult males prefer to talk about political views, sources of
personal pride, and what they like about the other person.
• In contrast, females in this age group prefer to talk about feelings toward parents, close
friends, classes, and their fears
• Conversations between men and women are sometimes regarded as cross-cultural
communication
• Young girls and boys learn conversational communication in essentially separate
cultural environments through their same-sex friendships.
• As men and women, we then carry over the conversational styles we have learned in
childhood into our adult conversations.
 Language in a Social Context
These cultural differences result in contrasting styles of communication.
These in turn can lead to misunderstandings and even break-ups as each partner
somewhat unsuccessfully tries to understand the other.
Men see the world as a hierarchical social order in which the purpose of
communication is to negotiate for the upper hand, to preserve independence, and
to avoid failure
Each man strives to one-up the other and to “win” the contest. Women, in
contrast, seek to establish a connection between the two participants, to give
support and confirmation to others, and to reach consensus through
communication.
To reach their conversational goals, women use conversational strategies that
minimize differences, establish equity, and avoid any appearances of superiority on
the part of one or another conversant.
 Language in a Social Context
Women also affirm the importance of and the commitment to the
relationship.
They handle differences of opinion by negotiating to reach a consensus
that promotes the connection and ensures that both parties at least
feel that their wishes have been considered.
They do so even if they are not entirely satisfied with the consensual
decision.
 Language in a Social Context
Men enjoy connections and rapport. But because men have been
raised in a gender culture in which status plays an important role, other
goals take precedence in conversations.
It has suggested that men seek to assert their independence from their
conversational partners. In this way, they indicate clearly their lack of
acquiescence to the demands of others, which would indicate lack of
power. Men also prefer to inform (thereby indicating the higher status
conferred by authority) rather than to consult (indicating subordinate
status) with their conversational partners.
The male partner in a close relationship thus may end up informing his
partner of their plans.
 Language in a Social Context
In contrast, the female partner expects to be consulted on their plans. When
men and women engage in cross-gender communications, their crossed
purposes often result in miscommunication because each partner misinterprets
the other’s intentions.
It has suggested that men and women need to become more aware of their
cross-cultural styles and traditions. In this way, they may at least be less likely to
misinterpret one another’s conversational interactions.
They are also both more likely to achieve their individual aims, the aims of the
relationship, and the aims of the other people and institutions affected by their
relationship.
Such awareness is important not only in conversations between men and
women. It is also important in conversations among family members in general
(Tannen, 2001)
 End of
Chapter 10