Quiz 11.05.-08

There are many aspects about the English language we might not think of since we use this language to communicate every day. Have you for example ever thought of that the language is discriminating to some groups? If you look closer, you can see that the language is both sexist and racist. There are more negative synonyms for the word “black” rather in the word “white”. This can be a problem because if you hear something often enough, you start to believe it. So, our language has a unique power to control our minds. Like, in Norway we have en expression that says, “Are you deaf or what?!” in a negative way. This might trick people to think that hard of hearing and Deaf people are stupid and slow.

 

But how did English turn out to be sexist? It actually makes sense: when the language English was made, woman had a totally different position in the society. Actually, woman almost belonged to men and they were only supposed to take care of their children and homes.

 

We have some theories about the Thought and Language debate. One of them is “Thought is governed by language” and this theory says that how we think is influenced by the language and refers to two different languages (English and Hopi) and says that they can’t understand each other because of the differentses. Then we have “The Weak Version” which says that language only affects the thoughts 

and the memory. Next we have “Eye Witness Testimony” that says words might affect what we think is right. Another way to explain it is to say that words can influence and mislead our thoughts.

Then “Language is governed by thought” which say the opposite. They say it is a reason that every language has some similar words and nouns and that’s because our thoughts make the language. And finally, the theory I like the most is that thought and language are interdependent. We think well with language and we need thoughts to make the language.

 

There are many ways to become a better speaker, some techniques (often called claptraps) are contrastive pair, list of three and positive evaluation of us. If you want to learn/see some speeches where claptraps are used, you

can just watch some of the president’s speeches. Another device is to “Repetition of words for effect” and this you can see in the famous speech “I have a dream” (Martin Luther King Jr.) and the new President Obamas’s speech where he repeated, “Yes, we can”. Here you can see Martin Luther King's speech (with subtitles) where he use many of the devices.

 

To sell something you have to convince your costumer that they want your products. That’s why sellers usually name their product with positive names. Those words are what we call “euphemisms”. You can often see them in TV shows where one of the characters wear something horrible and the other characters have to say something nice to not offend this person; “Your clothes are really… interesting…creative... and you don’t have to be afraid that anyone else will wear the same clothes, believe me!”.