DP essentials
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
It is a famous story that the Eskimo language has lots of words for snow. This is obvious because, of course, Eskimos live in the Frozen North, surrounded by snow, and so they find it necessary and useful...
DP essentials
On translation & poetry
Here is a beautiful poem : Stillborn 1943: Calling Limbo (For Nuala McCarthy) You were born dead and your blue limbs were folded on the living bier of your mother the umbilical cord unbroken between...
DP essentials
Oral versus literate
The distinction between the oral and the written is one of the elements of our human world that is so fundamental, like gravity, that we are often only dimly aware of it, and pay little conscious attention...
DP essentials
Encoding & decoding
So says Morris Zapp, in a conference lecture given near the beginning of David Lodge's Small World (1984). Like the novel as a whole, the lecture is witty, perceptive and provocative - Zapp sets out to...
DP essentials
Blind vision 2
The page Blind vision 1 introduced the subject area of research into how the brain works, specifically in relation to the phenomenon of synaesthesia. This page follows up with more news from the world...
DP essentials
Blind vision 1
In a sense, language is always translation - it interprets to us ideas and experiences, but can never transmit the original directly and fully. That said, language works wonderfully, of course, within...
DP essentials
Bilingual brains
Does being bilingual change the way you think ? An interesting interview with the distinguished research psychologist Ellen Bialystok, published in the New York Times, argues that bilingualism does indeed...
DP essentials
Bad language
I am quite sure that the content of this page will be pretty inappropriate for some of you, given the aethos of the school where you work - your head may be swimming as you think of the reactions of the...
DP essentials
Language metaphors
This page is intended to help students think in more depth about the nature of what language is, and what it does to the way we think. The material can be presented in two ways: The purpose of considering...
DP essentials
Language & money
In this TED talk, behavioural economist Keith Chen proposes that the structure of the language you use may affect the way that you see the world, and thus how you behave - and in the very specific ways...