It is interesting that I only knew that our brain is consisted of two hemispheres, the left one and the right one, but I had never paid attention to the fact that nerves were crossed between two hemispheres. Thus, there is no question that problems within right hemisphere paralyzes the left body. Although we do not speak until we learn to do so, I still reckon language as a biological phenomenon. Why can we talk? From Localization theory, I notice that each part of our brain contributes specifically to our behaviors, including talking and giving speeches. That means our body is designed to speak. As we ramble with our friends or have our daily dialogues coming out of our mouth without hesitation, we may have already forgotten that it is our biological body that helped receive and process exterior information. Thus, damage to cortex or Wernicke’s area can significantly reduce linguistic abilities. Then, it comes to a perplexing part of the readings. What is the meaning of meaning? Initially this sentence does not make any sense to me. Meaning is what it is: how an object is defined in a specific language. However, meaning is a concept far more complicated than definition. In order to know what people really mean, we have to consider situations, tones, contexts, and other factors. For example, does chin up literally mean getting your chin up? I think in most cases, “chin up” means stop depressing. To me, that is where cerebral processing seems intriguing. It is actually a lot to unpack when we think about how our brain processes information differently to outside elements. From this, I would say that language is not simply spoken words. We need to understand what meanings mean under different circumstances, and why they convey different messages under specific situation. Therefore, language learning is more of a study of culture and thinking structure.
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