Imagine that you have received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of your target language and culture. How would you get started, and what would you investigate? How would different structural components presented in class appear in your work?
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Since I was young, I've always considered Malay to be an easy language to learn. That's because apart from things like reduplication and tenses, seemed really similar to English. However, I recognize that that wasn't always the case, as I had a lot of friends who struggled with the language. I said in previous reflections that I struggled with language learning because of how I was perceived back in school. It almost seemed that despite learning the language through formal education, the lack of exposure to the language in more informal settings has impacted the way I proceeded the language and learn it overall. As such, if I were to receive a hypothetical research grant to study Malay linguistics and culture, there are two things that I would like to potentially explore: the extent to which knowledge of one language can impact the ease of learning Malay, and the social aspect of acquiring Malay through formal education versus informal conversation.
Working on this would revolve around bringing out the fundamentals of the language and extrapolating the differences between my target language and other languages. This is where our previous class is and discussions on the structural components of words morph themes and sentences have a big role. Through interviews with speakers of different languages and a standardised test (ironic that I'm saying does despite consistently ranting about the academic-fication of language), we would be able to explore this phenomenon more.
I would like to conduct a study on how gender affects the Korean language. My interest grew after learning about how Korea’s gender roles influence distinct family member titles for husbands and wives. This prompted me to explore other possible linguistic influences. While reading through articles, I found that gender influences the use of certain adjectives, sentence endings, and pronouns. For example, men tend to use the sentence ending “다” more often than “요,” while women tend to use “요” more often than “다.” Additionally, women tend to use the pronoun “저” more often than “나” when referring to themselves, while men are more likely to use “나.” I have always used “저” in formal speech, and while I’ve noticed some individuals using “나” more frequently, I assumed that it was just due to their speaking style or tone.
If I were to pursue this study, I would conduct surveys that ask participants for their thoughts on how gender affects language in Korea. I would also ask questions about the frequency with which they use certain sentence endings, adjectives, and pronouns, as well as the terminology they use. My primary focus will be on pragmatics and semantics, examining how gender shapes both the meaning and usage of language.
If I received a research grant to study Korean linguistics and culture, I would focus on how cultural values, especially respect and hierarchy, manifest in modern digital communication. Building on my background in anthropology and psychology, I would investigate how younger generations navigate traditional honorific systems while communicating in casual formats like texting, gaming chats, and social media platforms. This research would explore whether the shift to digital communication reflects a redefinition of linguistic norms and cultural values or if these platforms reinforce traditional structures in innovative ways.
To begin, I would conduct interviews with Korean youth across diverse regions, including urban and rural areas, to gather insights into their language practices and perceptions of honorifics in digital spaces. I would also collaborate with sociolinguists and digital communication experts to analyze real-life text samples for patterns in politeness levels, speech acts, and emergent slang or abbreviations.
Drawing from structural components like pragmatics and sociolinguistic competence, I’d examine how context influences speech styles, such as when and why honorifics are used in online discourse. Incorporating my skills in qualitative methods and cross-cultural analysis, this project would illuminate the evolving interplay between tradition and modernity in Korean linguistic practices, bridging cultural heritage with contemporary communication.
This sounds like it would be a fascinating study! The ways hierarchy affects language is something I'm interested in too. It'd be interesting to see if certain patterns emerge across different mediums or environments.
If I was given a grant to conduct a linguistic study of Portuguese, the first thing I would do is enroll in LING 203 and try and learn as much about proper linguistic research as possible. Following that, I decide on a research topic. While I haven’t found anything as cool as the English opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose noun syntax rule, for Portuguese here are two linguistic topics I believe would be interesting to study
First, I remember being sick a few weeks ago and having a really hard time communicating with my language partner in Portuguese. I remember having an especially difficult time nasalizing and I felt my Portuguese sounded very American. Assuming my difficulties were due to Portuguese being such a nasalized language -- and my nose was clogged -- I asked my language partner if he also struggled to speak good Portuguese when he was sick. To my surprise, he told me that his Portuguese was fine, but his English was terrible. Why is it that speaking one's second language when they're sick is so hard? Are some languages like Portuguese harder to speak when your sick than others or does it depend entirely on what the native speaker's language is? I admit it doesn’t sound like world-changing research, but I think it's interesting and believe others might too.
Something else interesting to investigate would be the use of diminutives in Portuguese and trying to get a deeper, more nuanced understanding of them. In English, diminutives aren’t that common and several distinct affixes are attached to the lexical morpheme. For example, book turns to booklet, chip turns to microchip, and duck turns to duckling. Diminutives in English are less terms of endearment and more a useful way to describe a smaller version of something.
In Portuguese, diminutives are very different. They’re used all the time, there's typically only one affix, and they’re multi-purpose. For example: flor = flower, florinho = small flower, but they’re also used for politeness/softening for example: can you spare a momentinho = a quick moment (another way of saying I promise it won't take long). Diminutives are also used for sarcasm (probleminha = a little problem) or, like English, to describe small versions of things. Understanding diminutives is essential to understand colloquial Portuguese and through my research I would try and help non-native Portuguese speakers better understand the rules.
I really like how you used personal experiences to shape hypothetical and potential research outcomes. I feel like those questions and investigations that come out from personal experiences tend to lead to a more productive outcome. While I know this is a hypothetical question I would be interested in seeing where you go with this. As a speaker of Chinese, I know that tones are very important and meaning can be easily misconstrued if you pronounce something incorrectly. This does sound really cool!
There are unique Korean cultural concepts that do not exist in America. First, there is “jeong” which is equivalent to a deep connection, affection, or sense of belonging that can be felt between people. This usually generates feelings of warmth, attachment, and sympathy. Second, there is “noonchi”, which is most closely related to the art of subtly reading a room and being self and socially aware. These two cultural concepts can affect language use, and as a result, have an effect on social dynamics. For example, jeong and noonchi can have an impact on whether someone would use formal (jondaemal) or informal (banmal) speech, as well as any honorifics they may use. Jeong and noonchi are deeply embedded in every day conversations and influence social interactions more than we are aware of. In this way, language can profoundly shape Korean culture, as so many social dynamics are encoded in language and the way we speak. As for the structural components of linguistic study, I would want to focus my attention on sociolinguistics and pragmatics, as I think it would be interesting to study politeness on a semantic level, rather than as a personality trait. I would conduct my study through interviews and surveys and use the qualitative approach, as well as combining it with some ethnographic fieldwork.
This is really interesting! I didn't realize until now that those two terms might not have direct equivalents in other cultures. It makes me wonder how these concepts would be perceived in different societies.