Unitha Cherry
SDLC
Reading Reflection #2
After reading How the Brain Handles Language, I was first fascinated with the idea the damage to a particular part of the brain could result in a reduced ability to understand speech, but you would still be able to speak and then vice versa for comprehension and speech in Boca’s area. I think that it is to some degree scary to know that speech, such a vital part of everyday life is controlled by such a seemingly small part of the brain. It also made me wonder what about speech would make the act harder to preform because in theory people who had damage to either Boca’s area or Wernicke’s are should still be able to read and thus would not have their reading or writing comprehension affected. I enjoyed the breakdown of what speech is and what it involves. The example of the hi, how are you made me think about how language becomes so second nature that it feels almost innate but that there are a million and one different processes going on inside the brain to connect the dots. I was amused by the analysis on tongue slips primarily because I speak very fast when excited or slur my words horribly when tired and more often than not say thigs that don’t make sense for example hold my brothers car keys and asking repeatedly if they were his “key cars” looking quite puzzled but not being able to notice what was wrong. It makes sense that sometimes because words sound the same or involve the same tongue and mouth movements your brain would make mistakes. It also poked a giant hole in the idea of Freudian slips having any psychological because it is truly a simple mistake. The article made me think about all the ways that because come up with their own ways of communicating specifically people who are selectively mute or have developmental delays. Their forms of communication are not any less valid because they are more often nonverbal, but I think looking into how the brain makes up for that and how then then process speech would be very interesting. For the How we mean article I was interested in the idea that there is a relationship between how a word sounds and what it refers to. I first find issue with the concept because Plato spoke Greek and without a doubt that may have been the case but in English not so much. It is easy to make that assumption when your language is combinations of other words or builds off of root words but not all languages are like that and in that regard, I am more of a conventionalist because I do believe that naming and words can be wholly arbitrary. I will concede that language is a delicate balance of the two and to me the most important factor is the sense of a word in language. I liked the portion about sense and reference and it made me think about all the words primarily insults that people use for each other but because they have a sense of the word they are aware it is not the reference but some new meaning as a result of how languages change.
Comments
Hi Unitha- this is an excellent summary! I've revised the title of these submissions to "Ning Post #1" to avoid conflation with the reflection papers. Keep up the good work!