This chapter was surely one of my favorites. I was lucky enough to learn English from a young age through various media and since then I have realized some differences in my ways of thinking between English and Turkish. This chapter helped me understand some of it better and made me realize some differences I didn’t think of before.
Does speaking different languages orient individuals to see and experience the external reality differently?” was the question in one of the articles and they tied this to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It was briefly mentioned as the “First, some perceptual experiences are presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions.” and I decided to research this kaleidoscopic flux more and I learned that the kaleidoscope is a cylindrical optical instrument that produces colorful, symmetrical patterns by reflecting light. Inside it, there are mirrors arranged in a specific way, along with small, colorful objects. When you look through the viewing hole and rotate the tube, the objects move, creating constantly shifting patterns. It is similar to the perception of the world according to the Whorf. What we perceive is not inherently structured or categorized. Instead, our sensory experiences are a chaotic mix of stimuli (colors, sounds, shapes, events) much like the constantly changing, disordered patterns seen in a kaleidoscope. These impressions are raw and unorganized, and the human mind makes it meaningful and orderly.
Culture, language and emotion article mentioned that the stronger emotions are felt in one’s native language. I found this to be quite true because in a very recent past a friend of mine visited me. We talked about the past days while playing some music in the background. Even though we both listen to English and Turkish music, all the songs we played were melancholic, regardless of the language. We listened to both types for a time and after a while decided to skip the English music because “It just didn’t feel the same”. Again the article also mentions that participants make more utilitarian choices in their second language when faced moral dilemmas. I found this the most interesting out of everything this week. I considered the language’s effect on the individual even in morality but I didn’t think that it could have happened to the very same person. It is explained as the increased emotional distance to one’s second language which explains my previous music example.
In the Chinese-Korean article holistic attention was the main point and Koreans prioritized contextual information over focal information and it was higher than Chinese or English speakers. This article was particularly important because of the assumption of taking east as a whole in the East vs West discussions. They have very distinct differences between themselves and would be very faulty to take them as one pan-Asian community and I am glad they made this research to distinguish them.
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