“How the brain handles language” focused on the structures and the functions of the human brain in its relation to the role of language. It showed that there are different structures that work together to send signals and transmit messages, allowing us to comprehend information. The main structure responsible for these functions is the cerebral cortex or the outer layer of the brain that is divided into specific regions, allowing us to decode information and carry other functions such as speech. Regardless of the multifunctional view of neurolinguistic processing, I don’t think that language is a purely a biological phenomenon. In order to produce and comprehend speech, the transmitters sending the message need to conceptualize it through processing and recognizing concepts such as semantics and syntactic structure. This helps to create phonological representation such as syllabus counts. Then through the motor control program, signals are received and coordinated to be sent to muscles in the vocal tract.
“How we mean” and “How we analyze meaning” focused on the term, semantics or the study of meaning in language. It turns out that there is not one specific definition in what “meaning” is but other concepts such as sense and reference along with the diversity in the usage of the term “meaning” can influence how we perceive it. This reading helped me to recognize and differentiate reference and sense from meaning. Sense is said to be “the meaning of a word within a language” while reference is “what a word refers to outside a language”. As a non-native English speaker, I find it hard to understand the meaning of a word when it appears by itself. However, when it’s used in a sentence and has a structure, I have a better chance of making sense of the word. The same concept can also apply when learning Persian. Thus understanding a word does not mean solely focusing on finding its meaning but also sensing what a word may mean with reference to the other words present in a sentence. Furthermore, learning concepts such as collocations and sense relations helps me to be aware of the network of words and the systematic relationship between words and their meanings.
The question that I have is in relation to the concept of one hemisphere being dominant and how it is projected to influence whether we are right-handed or not. I want to know what is the origin of this concept and if there are there new studies being conducted to re-test this theory? I am confident that researchers have done many studies to prove this claim, however, I do wonder if they took into consideration the cultural factors that may impact on which hand people will grow to use. In certain cultures, including the one I grew up in, kids are “trained’ to use their right hand regardless of which hemisphere maybe their dominant one. This training starts from the early stages of life when babies start learning how to hold a milk bottle or which hand to use to hold the spoon. If parents see that a child may be leaning more towards using their left hand when completing daily tasks such as shaking someone’s hand, eating, or writing, they redirect them through encouragement or punishment to use their right hand. One of the reasons is that left-handedness is seen as a bad omen. Another reason is that using your left hand to shake someone’s hand is seen as disrespectful. Furthermore, even some religions have emphasized the use of the right hand over the left hand. These reasons make me question if my parents hadn’t emphasized being right-handed, would have I been left-handed?
The claim that I find problematic is the emphasis on having a dominant hemisphere and what that means in regard to what tasks and activities you may be good in. For example, it argues that right-handed people are better at the logical organization, calculation, categorization, and language. While these may be true, I think solely relying on concepts like this can cause discouragement for people who may want to improve at one of the mentioned activities. For example, the repetition that those with the dominant right hemisphere are not good at learning a language can be misleading to those who are left-handed. On the other hand for a child who grew up to be right-handed as a result of cultural pressure, they may be good at learning a language where if they hadn’t been trained, they would have been left-handed. So would a scenario like this debunk this dominant hemisphere theory? I am more supportive of the theory of cerebral localization in which a single area of the brain is related to a specific behavior rather than generalizing a whole hemisphere as a leading or non-leading one.
Lastly, by understanding how to distinguish sense and reference, these readings will help to be mindful of making sense of a word that I may not know both in English and Persian. It’s also a good reminder that during translation or interpretation from one language to another, I can not literally translate each word or it will not make any sense. Also, I enjoyed learning about specific structures within our brain responsible for decoding information and coordinating speech. However, I am not a big fan of the dominant hemisphere theory and will continue to encourage people to learn a language regardless of the implications of this theory.
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