Creation+of+Language+Questions

Back to Home>Back to Perception and Language The below additional questions are take directly from the IB Subject Guide for Examinations beginning in 2008. They are useful to consider if you are looking for additional stimulus.

Language and culture

 * If people speak more than one language, is what they know different in each language? Does each language provide a different framework for reality?
 * How is the meaning of what is said affected by silences and omissions, pace, tone of voice and bodily movement? How might these factors be influenced in turn by the social or cultural context?
 * What is lost in translation from one language to another? Why?
 * To what degree might different languages shape in their speakers different concepts of themselves and the world? What are the implications of such differences for knowledge?

Language and thought

 * How have spoken sounds acquired meaning? What is the connection between the sounds and what they are taken to represent? Given that a word such as “tree” groups together a lot of different individual objects, what is lost in using language to describe the world? What are the advantages?
 * Is it possible to think without language? How does language facilitate, extend, direct or limit thinking?
 * To what extent does language generalize individual experience, classifying it within the experience of a linguistic group? On the other hand, to what extent do some kinds of personal experience elude expression in language?
 * Can language be compared with other human forms of symbolic representation, such as conventionalized gestures, sign language for the deaf, dance, painting, music or mathematics? What might language share with these other forms in the communication of what we know? In what ways might it be considered distinct?
 * How do “formal languages”, such as computer-programming languages or mathematics, compare with the conventional written and spoken languages of everyday discourse?

Language and knowledge

 * How does the capacity to communicate personal experiences and thoughts through language affect knowledge? To what extent does knowledge actually depend on language: on the transmission of concepts from one person or generation to another, and on exposure of concepts or claims to public scrutiny?
 * How does language come to be known? Is the capacity to acquire language innate?
 * In most of the statements heard, spoken, read or written, facts are blended with values. How can an examination of language distinguish the subjective and ideological biases as well as values that statements may contain? Why might such an examination be desirable?

Linking questions

 * To what extent is it possible to overcome ambiguity and vagueness in language? In what contexts might ambiguity either impede knowledge or contribute to its acquisition? Does the balance between precision and ambiguity alter from one area of knowledge to another?
 * What do we gain, and what do we lose, when we name something? Do different areas of knowledge manage differently the balance between particularity and generality?