Nature+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
> Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides. Rita Mae Brown Language is so much a part of human activity that it is easily taken for granted. The issues related to language and knowledge call for conscious scrutiny in order to recognize its influence on thought and behaviour. Language can be thought of as a symbol system, engaged in representing the world, capturing and communicating thought and experience. Language also can be seen as existing in itself, as something to be played with and transformed and shaped in its own right and something that can transform and shape thought and action.

Nature of language

 * What different functions does language perform? Which are most relevant in creating and communicating knowledge?
 * What did Aldous Huxley (1947) mean when he observed that “Words form the thread on which we string our experiences”? To what extent is it possible to separate our experience of the world from the narratives we construct of them?
 * In what ways does written language differ from spoken language in its relationship to knowledge?
 * Is it reasonable to argue for the preservation of established forms of language, for example, as concerns grammar, spelling, syntax, meaning or use? Is one language common to the whole world a defensible project?
 * What is the role of language in creating and reinforcing social distinctions, such as class, ethnicity and gender?
 * What is the role of language in sustaining relationships of authority? Do people speak the same way to inferiors and superiors in a hierarchy? Does the professional authority speak in the same way as the person seeking opinion or advice? Can control of written language create or reinforce power?
 * How does technological change affect the way language is used and the way communication takes place? How might innovations in language, such as Internet chat or text messaging, be assessed: as contributions to or assaults against how language and communication “should be”?
 * What may have been meant by the comment “How strangely do we diminish a thing as soon as we try to express it in words” (Maurice Maeterlinck)?