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An exploration of our relationship with language

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Gender And Sexuality Education Philosophy with Children Reflections on Pedagogy

13-14y Age Group

RHEA KUTHOORE

Oct 10, 2021 · 5 min read

Children spend a lot of their time at school in language classes. A majority of these classes are focussed on learning the nitty-gritty of a language: grammar and vocabulary. Besides language classes, children engage with literature. In these classes, a lot of energy is expended in developing comprehension skills and other literary competencies. Occassionally, children get the opportunity to play with and explore their relationship with languages -- Am I the word? Am I creating the word? Is the word creating me?
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As humans, we have a complex relationship with languages. When we pay attention to the web-like interconnectedness between languages, 'realities' and ourselves, we begin to see our thought processes and the world through new prisms. These classes have been designed to give children
a chance to explore our wonderfully intricate and ever-evolving relationship with languages. My hope is that such endeavours will make the process of learning a 2nd and a 3rd language less painful for children and that in seeing the relationship between languages, communities and the environment, children will understand the implications of the dying languages of the world.

My Questions

Some of the questions that interest me include: how do languages relate to nature and culture? What does language learning in a postcolonial world look like? In what ways are languages both bounded (limited) and boundless (limitless)? How do we create language and how does language create us? Do/can languages express realities of the world?

To begin thinking about some of these big questions related to languages, I asked the children: Why do we have languages in our world?

Here are their responses:

Activity

The next question that arose was: what does language indeed bridge and to what extent?

To explore this question, we did an activity. The children had to note down/draw what was communicated to them when they heard the following three statements:

1. Last night, it rained heavily.
2. When I was young, I loved chocolates.
3. I desire to be an actor/actress.

We shared our responses with each other and noticed the ways in which there were similarities and differences in how the same sentence was represented in our minds.

Here are their responses from this activity:

Click the image to see their responses

The responses led to a conversation about how languages play a dual role -- they represent ‘things in the world’ (as seen from the similarities in responses) and they also create ‘more meaning’ (as seen from our unique perceptions).

So, is language a relationship between each one of us and the world we perceive, rather than a mere representation of the world? Aren’t languages always evolving and boundless as they let us create new meanings? Alternatively, aren’t languages limited by the ways in which different people perceive? Consequently, are languages less of a bridge between 'us' and the ‘outer world’ and more of a way in which each of one of us, together and individually, make meaning of the 'world' around us?

Moreover, if language is a relationship 'we' have with the 'world' around us, then how do the languages we speak influence how we think? In other words, how do the languages we speak create the 'world' we perceive?

To gain perspective on the ways in which languages shape how 'we' think about 'our' world, we watched the insightful TED video by the Cognitive scientist, Lera Boroditsky.

After learning about how our thinking processes and realities are affected by the languages we speak, we decided to play an exciting game that involved translating from one language to another. For this game, we split into two groups. Both groups had English and Tamil speakers. The children from one group had to give an English or Tamil sentence to the other group, who attempted to translate the sentence without causing a drastic change in meaning. It turned out to be a very fun game and the children realised the difficulties in translating meaning.

Here is a picture of one of the children's homework assignment. She translated an English rap song into Hindi:

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Click the image to open the translation

Finally, we wrapped up our few classes on language and translation by watching 'Arrival.' The film opens up various important themes such as: the contextual nature of meaning-making, the issues with literal translations and the ways in which we learn new languages.

RHEA KUTHOORE is an educator who is passionate about facilitating philosophical and feminist thinking amongst young people.

Thinking Rhizomatically

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