17
Nov 15

Putting It Together

How would you define culture and language? I define as a state of being. It’s a part of you. People always say that they aren’t cultured but knowing a language is part of a culture! Language is a verbalized symbol that is built in us. You can be illiterate and still learn to speak and have language is a part of who you are. In the field of education, knowledge of past and present histories and culture, tell us nature’s limitations and what the world is striving on whether it is abuses of language or benefiting language.

Someone who knows many cultures will generally find it hard to adjust to his or her own traditions. That’s the struggle of culture. For example, I am an Indian who knows Hindi and Marathi before I ever learned English. It is my third language and when I finally learned English after moving here, it was really hard to adjust to the American culture and the Indian culture and eventually I adapted to the American culture and slowly started losing my Indian culture even though my family teaches me about my traditions and values.

A scientific approach to this is that it proves the effects of problem solving, which is created by humans. We continually test our beliefs and assumptions and we conclude with the judgement’s we face every day for those beliefs and assumptions. Another example would be the belief of whether or not there is a God or if there is life after death. Religious people would say, “yes there is life after death,” but those who base their world around science believe that “no there is no such living this after death.” This is who we differentiate the world “out there” from “in here”. It’s what we believe and whether other people believe it as well. It depends on you abstract it without making an inference. Our language habits is applied to knowledge as well. Since language serves as a determining factor in how we shape the world, we look what the “real world” has to offer. Our language habits are shaped from our experience and without our experiences, how would we know about our beliefs and culture. It’s how we perceive the world from our experiences and whether the consequences are good or bad, we make that interpretation for ourselves.

This video of Big Bang Theory: Jewish Heaven is an example of assumptions and experience. Sheldon wants to meet Stephen Hawking and his friend Howard has the opportunity to work with Stephen Hawking and when Sheldon starts to persuade Howard to let him meet the genius, Howard says no. This is where Sheldon makes assumptions about Howard’s religion and culture of being Jewish. Although is pure comedy, it shows a great example of assumption and inference and how we shape our language habits.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXblAAtUZEU


09
Nov 15

A View About Doing What You Know

We learn from our mistakes every day. We learn from our experience every moment of our lives. It’s something we control and something we cannot control. “Language provides the means through which most our learning occurs”(thisisnotthat.com). This means that we learn from language, but we also learn our experiences. The quality of our language is dependent on the qualities of our learning and how our knowledge impacts our experiences. For example, when I got my first bad grade in a class, I learned that my studying habits were really bad and from that experience of having a bad grade and getting in trouble with my parents, I tried different study habits and improved my grades. We live off our experiences and mistakes and try improve our choice of living.

According to the article, it is not societal that our problems are not risen from the lack knowledge but from how we do not apply the knowledge we process. We ask questions like, “what it means to ‘follow your bliss?'”and how we let new experiences in new environments create innovative thinking. Everything we do is based on that time of day. In the video below, musical artist drake talks about how he grew up in an environment different from most of his friend, which was growing up in a half jewish and half black home. He discusses the environment he was in and the experiences he faced in this comical SNL monologue.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqTXwvo4MY0

Knowing what we do is a type of orientation that suggest “revisions” to language habits. These habits include differentiating facts from inferences, assumptions and beliefs. This means that the habits include the differences between a rumor and fact. The language habits also include avoiding “either/or” and knowing the differences between descriptions and judgements. As humans, we are prone to listen to gossip whether we like it or not. It’s just a fact of life for us. Unfortunately, social media has taken over this orientation of inference and assumption. Facebook has started posting articles about celebrity deaths when in fact those particular celebrities are alive. People believe anything that the media says without looking at the facts. This is how rumors are spread and this how language is used negatively. Lastly, language habits avoid “to be” verbs and recognize when you are being objective. They take responsibility for the individual meanings you generate from what you read, see and experience. This is how facts are formed over inferences and assumptions.


03
Nov 15

A View About Language

Words have such a high power over us. We use words in different languages as well and perceive that language differently than others. We exchange language through listening, speaking, interpreting and writing. When a language is spoken, everyone interprets it differently. The meaning of those words don’t necessarily mean what we think it means. “Meanings” of words are different for every individual who engages in communicative exchange. When an exchange student comes to America and tries their best to speak our language, his or her interpretation of English is much different than our interpretation of music. As an international student, I was able to understand the struggle of that because my English was different from someone who lived in the Middle East. When a listener cannot understand the speaker, the listener risks not understanding what the speaker is saying, but interprets something completely different.

Language enables us to mislead and misinform someone who interprets something completely different. Our perception of language is different from someone who never learned a specific language. In countries like India and Ghana, English is not an easy language to learn especially at an older age. When we are young, we are prone to adjust to specific languages. For example, I moved to America when I was three years old and I didn’t know one bit of English when I got here. My preschool kept me after school to teach me how to read, write and speak English where I grasped very easily. Now if the same thing happened to my eldest cousin in India who is 27 years old, he would not be able to adjust to English so easily because he grew up with our mother tongue, Marathi. The ability to differentiate languages is hard which is why it misleads and there is a miscommunication between the listener and the speaker.

In the movie V For Vendetta, not many people are able to understand what V is saying in the movie. The youtube video below tells us something different. It is a literal translation of V is saying. If you have ever watched V For Vendetta, V’s language is completely different from how we interpret it and how the character interprets his roll.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXEIwEc1dxY

According to our thisisnotthat article, the appropriate language behavior is that we are prone to integrate what happens outside of our skin with the way we process language internally. We interpret and think about whats happening within our nervous system. The way we misinterpret language is through the struggle of understanding ourselves and others. We forget to ignore the simple facts and try our best to interpret something more complex. The structure of our language, which is our map, should be similar to the structure we in the non verbal cues, which is our territory.


26
Oct 15

A View about Behavior

Every notice how sometimes our behavior never matches with the event we are at? For example, you are at a party with your friends and they are having a great time and the party is actually a lot of fun, but you find the party boring for some reason. A View About Behavior is about how we react to the events and people we encounter every day. We go to school every day but our attitudes about it don’t ever match up. As college students are body’s are telling us, “yes, go to school. You’ll get a good education,” but our minds are telling us, “yeah, I have no motivation right now to even think.” So our behavior about the school day changes entirely and we have the mind set to not feel motivated to do anything. This article talk about how we have the cognitive means to respond conditionally. In a psychology class we are taught about Pavlov’s theory about how a dog’s cognitive response trains the dog to behave a specific way.

Alfred Korzybski says that we think of general semantics as a methodology for understanding and how we perceive and construct meaningful life events. This includes our language behaviors. We use the process of abstracting to determine our reactions to specific events. The example I gave above about going to a party thinking that it would be fun, but turns out to be boring in your opinion. We use the process of abstracting to analyze stereotypes and we invite problems of misunderstanding through facts and inferences.

Lastly, the article talks about how it is easy for a mapmaker to misrepresent a region of a map and how we distort and misinterpret our experiences and thoughts. Our behavior depends on how we interpret our experience and humor is a big part of that as well. We recognize our biases and make discriminating judgements when we stereotype through humor. The article lastly quotes that “You’ve got to be taught to be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made, and people whose skin is a different shade.” This is how our behaviors are effected by our perception and how we interpret race.

Below the video is called, “If My Brain Were A Person,” which is about how life would be if our brains were a person and they were telling us what to do. Enjoy!


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