Lera Boroditsky's How Does Our Language Shape The Way We Think

Everyday millions of people across the globe use the internet; many never even leave the computer desk. In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid” the author Nicholas Carr, brings up the point that our brains are losing their attention span. He explained that many, including himself, are finding it harder to read long groups of text and articles. Though Carr brings up a good point, his argument lacked factual information, was a little dull, contained next to no credible sources, and is all over the board with he’s ideas, all of these things made his argument weak. Carr’s opening paragraph really grabs your attention, by using quotes from the movie A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick’s.

In “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, the author, Nicholas Carr, is arguing against the effect of our increased access to information. He is unsettled by the common idea that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence. Carr describes how am immediate access to a rich store of information from the Net has shaped his process of thought by reducing his capacity for concentration and contemplation. He is worried that placing efficiency and immediacy above all else is weakening our capacity to make rich mental connections that form when we read deeply without distraction. Carr uses an anecdote of the printing press to demonstrate how equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.

Rhetorical Analysis In the article “Is Google Making us Stupid?”, author Nicholas Carr expresses his idea that the internet is taking over society and our thinking process. Google is affecting our abilities to read books, longer articles, and even older writings. Carr believes that we have become so accustomed to the ways of the internet, and we are relying on Google 's ability to sort through the details for us so we don 't have to, in order to get the information we find necessary more efficiently. He finds that this process has become almost too handy, and that it is corrupting us from becoming better educated.

Baldwin describes language as a mean for survival,”What joins all languages, and all men, is the necessity to confront life, in order, not inconceivably, to outwit death” This quote empathizes the importance of understanding that how a language is communicated

Baldwin shows children and adults the value of having a language in which one is able to communicate one's own experience is essential to everyday life.

In paragraph fifteen Boroditsky begins to analyze how people who speak different languages arrange space and time. Boroditsky starts by talking about

In her writing, Tan often describes her experiences as the child of Chinese immigrants, growing up in northern California and living in American culture. Tan explains how she has learned to embrace the many Englishes her mother speaks and how her background has also caused her to have different Englishes. While others classify her mother's English as "broken" she finds no fault in it. In Tan's view, just because something is broken does not necessarily mean that it is in need of fixing. In her essay, author Amy Tan addresses the connections between languages and cultures in describing the different Englishes her mother uses.

There are five main literary lenses: genetic, formal, transactional, sociocultural, and text to text. The first lens, genetic, looks at how the author relates to the book. This usually reflects on how the author came up with the idea for their book. Laurie Halse Anderson usually finds inspiration in people who are going through difficult life situations. The inspiration for Speak came from two places in particular.

Throughout generations cultural traditions have been passed down, alongside these traditions came language. The language of ancestors, which soon began to be molded by the tongue of newer generations, was inherited. Though language is an everlasting changing part of the world, it is a representation of one’s identity, not only in a cultural way but from an environmental standpoint as well. One’s identity is revealed through language from an environmental point of view because the world that one is surrounded with can cause them to have their own definitions of words, an accent, etc. With newer generations, comes newer forms of languages.

Our identity is a place upon many attributes of a human being. Whether the person is someone who goes on promoting themselves to the world or not, and it shows how people communicate to others around them. Language is one of the main components that unveils the person’s identity in their everyday life, and they are many different ways to approach a person’s language. Relating to the article of Yiyun Li, “To Speak is to Blunder,” she knows two languages that has its positive and negative outcomes in her life. I to relate to her understanding of language, but a different view of what language means to me.

On the one hand, some argue that language constructs our thoughts. From this perspective, Deborah Tannen, from the language constructs thought community, states that “This is how language works. It invisibly molds our way of thinking about people, actions, and the world around us” (Tannen 14). On the other hand, however, others such as Richard Selzer, might say that language is used to represent our thoughts, but it can fall short. One of his view’s main proponents are, “these extremes of sensation remain beyond the power of language to express” (Selzer 28).

Language development is a critical part of a child’s overall development. Language encourages and supports a child’s ability to communicate. Through language, a child is able to understand and define his or her’s feelings and emotions. It also introduces the steps to thinking critically as well as problem-solving, building and maintaining relationships. Learning a language from a social perspective is important because it gives the child the opportunity to interact with others and the environment.

Seeing as language is a way of one expressing itself we can connect language to identity. As in order for one to demonstrate itself we have to be able to express our feelings and emotions and we do so through communication. Some characteristics of language is that it's dynamic, meaning that it changes constantly for example, the English people speak now is not the same English that people used to speak hundreds of years before. Language changes and modernizes itself in order to evolve and has many variations through dialects. Different language communities have certain ways of talking that will set them apart from others and those differences are known as dialects.

The questionable and ambiguous nature surrounding the notion that children play an active role in acquiring language has been debated by many theorists of different perspectives. These three perspectives include the learning view, the nativist view and the interactionist view. In this essay I will discuss each perspective with reference to psychological theories and research that relates to each view. The learning perspective of language acquisition suggests that children acquire language through imitation and reinforcement (Skinner, 1957). The ideology behind this view claims that children develop language by repeating utterances that have been praised by their parent, therefore gaining a larger vocabulary and understanding of phrases over

Language is an important part of our life. Language and communication cannot separate. People use the language as a means of communication to express their ideas and feelings. They communicate either with each other using language in every social interaction; communicate with others directly or indirectly in the spoken and written form. Therefore, language is an important thing of communication in social life.