Blog Post 1 - How The Brain Handles Language

[Benjamin Reilman]

The part of the chapter "How the Brain Handles Language" by D. Crystal on Dominance was super interesting to me. In class we had mentioned how the learning types were pseudoscientific and that made me think about other ways that people describe themselves; whether it was personality tests like MBTI or how people described themselves as left-brained or right-brained. And it may be the case that one isn’t more dominant than the other but it is surprising to me that the science reflects the split of the right and left hemispheres as having different fields of use. Although the literature mentioned that this was different for left-handed individuals. It is also interesting that language is generally a left-brain dominant, but that this isn’t universal and there are individuals where language is a right-brain dominant activity. I am curious however if this left or right brain dominance changes how an individual learns or expresses language because the left hemisphere is more analytical and the right hemisphere is generally considered to be more pattern focused and creative. It would be interesting to see if left handed individuals who are right brain dominant for language if they acquire languages more often or they can acquire them more easily or whether they struggle more.