Optional: discussion topics

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These activities is not needed to complete the module; if you have completed the earlier activities you are already finished with the module. The information here is a list of suggested discussion topics for the group discussion session. For more details on what this is used for, see "Instructions for leading discussions".

Some people say language influences personality, i.e. that the language you use changes the way you behave, and that you might have a different personality when you speak one language than you do when you speak another language. (For example, here is an article making a claim like this.)

Have students discuss whether they think language influences their personality or the way they behave in a way that's related to linguistic relativity. Therefore, they will have to think carefully about what specifically causes their personality to change. (e.g., if someone switching language changes their personality to fit the context—for example, if someone uses English in a professional context and Chinese at home—that would not be evidence for linguistic relativity.) If language and personality are related in a way that's about linguistic relativity, there would need to be evidence for someone's personality changing because of specific grammatical features of the language they are speaking.

Chapter 4 of the McWhorter (2014) book is devoted mainly to controversial research about linguistic relativity and Chinese.

Read this chapter, and use it to think of something to have the class discuss in the discussion session. (This could be critiquing one of the particular studies or issues discussed in the chapter, brainstorming related issues, or whatever. Since this is the last week of class, the discussion topic is more open-ended; you'll have to think of a way to make discussion out of this one!)

Also note: as this module is typically the last module of this course, in addition to the regular discussion activities I also like to hold a general wrap-up activity when I teach this class. One thing I like to do for a wrap-up (either connected to this module or as its own activity apart from any module) is play Taboo (here's an explanation, if you're not familiar with the game). I prepare Taboo cards using concepts from the class explain how the game works, and divide students into small groups to play with each other (or, if the class is small, I just divide the deck of cards into several decks and give each student a different set). Here are some cards in PowerPoint file for this class: taboo_CBS592.pptx. For instance, suppose a student draws the card that says "Prescriptive" at the top, and that also has the words 'descriptive', 'grammar', 'rules', and 'linguistics'; that means that the students needs to use whatever explanation or clues they can use to get their group to guess the word "Prescriptive", but the student cannot say any of the other words on the card. After playing the game, I explain to the students that this is a useful way to check their understanding—i.e. if they think they understand some concept or term, but while playing this game they discover that they aren't sure how to explain it in their own words without using those other terms, that's a good signal that they might need to think about it some more to make sure they really understand it.

by Stephen Politzer-Ahles. Last modified on 2021-07-16. CC-BY-4.0.