Psychology of Language

 

Psychology 27500

Winter 2008

 

 

Description

This course studies human language from the broad perspective of cognitive science. We will explore such questions as: Is language uniquely human, and if so, why? What knowledge does every language user have, and is that knowledge innate or learned? Does the language you speak affect the way you think? How is language acquired, how is it represented in the brain, and how does it shape our social and political lives?  The course is intended for undergraduates; a graduate course can be found here.

 

Website

http://www.psych.uchicago.edu/~regier/language/

 

Staff

Instructor: Terry Regier

Email: regier at uchicago dot edu

Office: Green 414

Phone: 773.702.0918

 

TA: Shiri Lev-Ari

Email: shiri at uchicago dot edu

Office: Beecher 207

Phone: 773.702.9081

 

Time & location

Lecture: Thursdays 1:30-2:50 in Harper 130.

Discussion: Tuesdays 1:30-2:50 in Foster 505.

 

Grading

Your grade will be based on:

  1. Weekly writing assignments (45%),
  2. Final paper (40%),
  3. Participation in class and discussion (15%), and
  4. Participation as a subject in an experiment (required for a passing grade).

 

Weekly writing assignments

A central goal of the course is to encourage you to explore existing research on language, beyond the assigned material.  To this end, you will be expected to do the following, for three specified weeks during the quarter:

  1. Find a recent journal article from the scientific literature that is relevant to that week’s topic.  Please choose an article other than those assigned, or those described in the assigned material.  In choosing an article, try to find one that makes a broadly interesting and fundamental point, and that is accessible to a non-specialist.  For this, it is useful to target high-profile general science journals, such as Nature, Science, or PNAS.  Please select primary research articles, not reviews.
  2. Submit a short (< 750 words) writeup that briefly describes the findings of the article you found, and conceptually integrates it with the assigned reading for that week.  For instance, you might argue that the article answers a question left open by the assigned reading – or even contradicts the reading entirely.  Please also highlight any interesting questions that are left open by the article you found.  Don’t worry about mastering the materials and methodology of every article; concentrate instead on the general conceptual point each one makes, and the overall logic of the argument. Please include a reference, abstract, and URL for the article.
  3. Be prepared to present the article you found, and its relevance to that week’s topic, in discussion.

 

These writeups should be submitted by email to Terry and Shiri, and should be received by 9am each Monday morning, in preparation for Tuesday’s discussion.  Here is a sample writeup.  Here is a list of papers that have been written up so far.

 

Students in the course have been divided into groups.  Group 1 consists of those students whose last names begin with letters A-K.  Group 2 is students whose last names begin with L-R.  And group 3 is students whose last names begin with S-Z. The readings and schedule below indicate for which weeks your group should submit written assignments. 

 

For each week in which you are not responsible for submitting a written assignment, please instead email us both a short question or comment on that week’s readings, to serve as a potential point of discussion.  Here are sample questions.

 

Research participation

You are required to participate in studies that fulfill 2 hours of course credit or to complete an alternative assignment (see below). You will need to register online with Experimetrix (https://experimetrix.com/uchicago) which lists studies that are currently seeking participants and allows you to sign up to participate for course credit.  Detailed instructions for signing up and using Experimetrix will be distributed in class. We have added this requirement because one of the best ways to understand behavioral research is through the first hand experience of participating in a study. However, if you prefer, you may fulfill this requirement by writing a two-page paper (see your instructor for details). DO NOT POSTPONE registering with Experimetrix and scheduling participation; you may not be able to find an appropriate study if you wait until the last few weeks of class.

 

Readings and schedule

All assigned readings are in electronic form, and are linked from this page. There is no need to buy a textbook.

The readings draw on these three texts, among other sources:

Carroll, D. (1994). Psychology of Language. 2nd edition. Brooks/Cole. [references]

Harley, T. (2001). The Psychology of Language: From Data to Theory. 2nd edition. Psychology Press.

Whitney, P. (1998). The Psychology of Language. Houghton Mifflin. [references]

 

Thu Jan 10: What is language?

Tue Jan 15: Discussion (written assignments from group 1)

Locke, John (1690).  Essay concerning Human Understanding. Excerpts.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1703/1989). Preface to the New Essays (pp. 291-295). In R. Ariew & D. Garber (Eds.), Leibniz: Philosophical Essays. Indianapolis & Cambridge: Hackett.

Whitney pp 2-17, 23-28.

 

Thu Jan 17: Knowledge of language

Tue Jan 22: Discussion (written assignments from group 2)

Harley pp. 27-37, 40-43.

 

Thu Jan 24: Language and non-human animals

Tue Jan 29: Discussion (written assignments from group 3)

Harley pp. 50-59.

Bloom, P. (2004). Can a dog learn a word?  Science, 304, 1605-1606.

Kaminski, J., et al. (2004). Word learning in a domestic dog: Evidence for “fast mapping”.  Science, 304, 1682-1683.

 

Thu Jan 31: Language and the brain

Tue Feb 5: Discussion (written assignments from group 1)

Carroll pp. 343-364.

 

Thu Feb 7: Language learning  (Paper topics due)

Tue Feb 12: Discussion (written assignments from group 2)

Chomsky, N. (1986). Preface & Knowledge of language as a focus of inquiry. In Knowledge of language: Its nature, origin, and use (pp. xxv-14). Westport, CT: Praeger.

Harley pp. 91-105, 118-130.

 

Thu Feb 14: Bilingualism

Tue Feb 19: Discussion (written assignments from group 3)

Hakuta, K. & Diaz, R. (1985). The relationship between degree of bilingualism and cognitive ability: A critical discussion and some new longitudinal data. In K. E. Nelson (Ed.), Children’s Language, vol. 5.  Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Kim, K., et al. (1997). Distinct cortical areas associated with native and second languages. Nature, 388, 171-174.

 

Thu Feb 21: Language and thought (1)

Tue Feb 26: Discussion (written assignments from group 1)

Whitney pp. 114-127

Gilbert, A., et al. (2006). Whorf hypothesis is supported in the right visual field but not the left. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103(2), 489-494.

Pullum, G. (1991). The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax. University of Chicago Press.   pp. 159-171.

 

Thu Feb 28: Language and thought (2)

Tue Mar 4: Discussion (written assignments from group 2)

Whitney pp. 127-137.

Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). The metaphorical structure of the human conceptual system. Cognitive Science, 4, 195-208.

[For fun]  Nelson, L. & Simmons, J. (2007). Moniker maladies: When names sabotage success.  Psychological Science 18: 1106-1112.  [Vaguely related news story]

 

Thu Mar 6: Language and society

Tue Mar 11: Discussion (written assignments from group 3)

Labov, W. (1972). The social stratification of (r) in New York City department stores.  Chapter 2 of Sociolinguistic Patterns, University of Pennsylvania Press.

Orwell, G. (1946). Politics and the English language.

[Optional] Hill, J. (1995). Mock Spanish: A site for the indexical reproduction of racism in American English.

[Optional] Klemperer, V. (2000). The Language of the Third Reich. Athlone Press.  Chapters 1,2 (“LTI”, “Prelude”) pp. 9-18, chapter 9 (“Fanatical”) pp. 57-61.

 

 (Reading period: Thu-Fri Mar 13-14)

 

Tue Mar 18: PAPERS DUE BY NOON.

 

 

Final paper

The purpose of the paper assignment is to provide you with an opportunity to pursue a particular topic on language that interests you.

 

Topic selection. The topic of your paper must be specific and well defined, and it should be developed in the context of an existing literature. We expect you to go significantly beyond the reading list for the course and discuss additional material that bears directly on your topic. Any topic that bears on the topic of language understanding and language use is potentially appropriate, whether or not the specific topic was discussed in class.

 

Searching for readings. To help in choosing a paper topic, and later in researching that topic, search the literature for possible readings that you could use for your paper. One way to find relevant material is to scan through the readings for the course, and articles you found for the weekly assignments, and see which topics interest you. If you find an interesting reading, look up the references that sound interesting, using the reference section of the reading. In turn, these readings may lead to further materials of interest. This allows you to look back from a particular paper to find the earlier papers that it references. You can also look forward, to see which subsequent papers reference a particular published paper. Using these methods recursively several times, you can usually converge on the most important works in a specific literature fairly quickly.

 

Topic approval. Once you have selected a paper topic and established an initial list of references, you must receive approval from your section leader. Please submit the following information on or before Thursday Feb 7 during our meeting for lecture that day:

1.      A brief yet specific description of your topic and how you plan to approach it (minimum length is 2 short paragraphs; maximum length is 2 pages).

2.     A tentative list of references.  (References are not counted in the 2-page length limitation.)

This information should be typed. You should proceed with your paper plan only once we have approved the topic.

 

Format. Your paper must be typed, double-spaced, with one-inch margins, and font at least 11 points in size. It should not exceed 10 pages in length, excluding references. Include a cover page with your name and a title (also not included in the 10 page limit).

 

Due Date. Papers are due no later than noon on Tuesday March 18, but feel free to submit papers any time sooner. Submit the paper at Terry’s office, Green 414.

 

Paper Structure

Your paper must contain the following sections. Start each section with the relevant section title provided below.

  1. The Question.  In this section, state the question that this research tries to answer. Next, explain why this question is important.
  2. Theories and Hypotheses.  What existing theories attempt to answer the question raised in Section 1? Briefly describe each of the major theoretical positions, and then describe the specific hypotheses that follow from them.
  3. Methods and Evidence.  In this section, describe how the theories were tested and what the specific results were that supported or challenged them. Make sure you explain the meaning of the results and exactly how they support or challenge the various theories.
  4. Conclusions and Extensions.  First, specify what one may conclude from the results you described. Then provide a critical evaluation, and try to spell out possible future directions for research. It is important that you try to give a coherent overall summary and evaluation of the research you cover. Additionally, offer any insights about this issue and its research literature that you discovered in your review and analysis. This might include your discovery of a systematic pattern of findings in the literature that previous researchers hadn't noticed; or it might be a hypothetical mechanism, not suggested by prior researchers, that explains the pattern of findings in the literature. You might also see ways in which the general findings from this literature could inform the development of a real-world application in education, public health, industry, etc.
  5. References.  References are not included in the 10 page limit, so they may take up an additional page or so beyond the ten pages containing the text of your paper.
  6. Abstracts.  For each journal article that you list in your reference section, include a photocopy of the page that shows the title and abstract. If some of the reading materials that you cited don't have an abstract (e.g., a book or a book chapter), then include a copy of the title page and another page or two from the text that summarizes its contents or gives a representative sense of them.

 

Plagiarism: To plagiarize is to present the words and ideas of someone else without attribution, as if they were one’s own.  This is a form of intellectual dishonesty. Anyone who plagiarizes in writing the paper will fail the course. 

 

Final Recommendations:  You may find it useful to build on our weekly mini-explorations of the literature.  Write for an intelligent non-specialist reader. When you make a general statement, give a concrete example. Make sure you edit your paper carefully and revise it several times; this will be reflected in the grade. The best way to do this is to ask another student for critical comments. Plan ahead so that you have enough lead time for revising drafts.  The instructor and TA will not read drafts of your paper – only the final version.

 

Links.