Problem 9 - language etc Flashcards
deontological prescriptions
-forbid certain behavior regardless of consequences
utilitarian prescriptions
-brining greatest food for greatest number of people
pragmatics - key word
- concerned with practical language use and comprehension
- related to intended rather than literal meaning
- taking account of current social context (tone, environment)
- meaning minus semantic
figurative language
-forms of language not intended to be taken literally
standard pragmatic model
3 stages
1) literal meaning is accessed
2) deciding weather literal meaning makes sense in context
3) if it seems inadequate -> search for non literal meaning
- > literal meaning should be accessed faster and automatically
- > non literal meanings are optional
graded salience hypothesis
- initial processing is determined by salience or prominence rather than by type of meaning (literal vs non literal)
- novel metaphors are less salient and familiar -> require additional processing
- salience is determined by frequency and familiarity
- less-salient meanings require extra inferential processes -> strong contextual support
predication model of metaphor understanding
- two components
1) latent semantic analysis component
2) construction integration component
1) latent semantic analysis component
- this represents the meanings of words based on their relations with other words in a 300-dimension space
- non directional process of finding commonalities between words
2) construction integration component
- uses info from first component to construct interpretations of statements
- argument is a predicate structure (eigenschaft)
- this component selects features of predicate that are relevant to the argument
- inhibits irrelevant predicate features
example: ‘Lawyers are sharks’
- > features such as vicious and aggressive are relevant
- > having fins and swimming are not
Evidence for the predication model of metaphor understanding
- Non-reversibility of metaphors
- Lawyers are sharks # Sharks are Lawyers
-> only those features of the predicate relevant to the argument are selected
- > changing the argument changes the features selected
- ‘my lawyer is a shark’ was harder too understand when preceded by a contextual sentence emphasizing the literal meaning of ‘shark’ (e.g. sharks can swim)
common ground
- the mutual knowledge and beliefs shared by a speaker and listener
- listener expect that speakers will mostly refer to info that is in the common ground
speakers have 2 methods to deal with common ground
1) shared responsibility = speaker asks listener to give him info in the case there is a problem with the common ground
2) cognitive overload = the speaker tries to keep track of his and the listeners’ knowledge, but that often requires excessive cognitive processing
Perspective adjustment model - Keysar
-can be very effortful for listener to keep working out the common ground existing between them and the speaker
-instead: listeners use a rapid and non-effortful egocentric heuristic:
=> a strategy in which listeners interpret what they hear based on their own knowledge rather than on knowledge shared with speaker
talking and thinking - western cultures
- gift of language is one of the highest valued
- language and thought are seen as related
- western people reveal who they are with what they say
talking and thinking - eastern cultures
- they do not see language and thought as related
- do not think that what one says is who one is
what if there are really differences in east and west between the relation of talking and thinking?
- we should be able to observe variation in performance on cognitive tasks, between cultures that speak more and those that speak less
- speaking should interfere with thinking on eastern cultures
solving Raven’s matrices
- study
- methods
- participants solve Raven’s matrices
- once in silence
- once with a vocal task (either say what they thought during the problem solving or repeat the alphabet)
Study: Raven’s matrices
-findings
Westeners:
- talking and thinking = same
- when talking expresses thinking -> no negative impact on performance
- when talking interferes with thinking (articulatory suppression) -> big impairment
Easteners:
- when talking expresses thinking -> impaired
- when talking interferes with thinking -> not really impaired
explanation for Raven’s matrices findings
- due to different types of thinking used in each culture
- analytic in west: focus in one part that can easily be expressed in words
- holistic in east: difficult to express thoughts in words -> multiple relations can’t be described at once
pen study
- first conduction: write down which pen one chooses
- second condition: say loud which pen they choose
- westerns: felt worse when the pen was taken away when they verbally chose a favorite pen
- > greater commitment to the pen
-asians: evaluation of situation is independent from expression (writing/talking)
Explicit VS implicit communication in high context cultures
- east
- people can be less explicit since much is already understood by implicit cues ( how something is said is more important than what is said)
-they can ‘read the air’
Explicit vs implicit communication in low context cultures
- west
- less shared information (rules) to guide behavior
- must communicate more explicitly to fill in gaps that could lead to misunderstandings
Sapir-Whorf
Whorfian/linguistic relativity hypothesis
- hypothesis: language determines how we think -> strong version, has universally been rejected
- language influences how we think but much thought occurs outside of language
- > weaker version, universally accepted
- > supported by Einstein
- language obliges people to think about certain ideas (die Brücke = female, unlike english)
Linguistic relativity and color perception
- proven that cultures that split up the color spectrum differently ( in different words) perceive them different as well
- > categorize them differently
- article: russian blues
