HOMEC
Homo loquens
Are we truly human without language? Do people who speak different languages inhabit different worlds? How do languages provide cues and clues about cultural attitudes? Do bilinguals think more flexibly?
How do languages evolve? How do youth culture, population mobility and technological innovations in affect the way languages change in time? Why might we assert that a language is “a dialect with an army”? Who decides correct usage in a given language? How do we differentiate between a pidgin and a creole? Why have various sign languages around the world proved so very successful and Esperanto such a miserable failure?
What is the difference between a blink and a wink? Is body language language? How does the meaning of gesture vary across cultures?
Are music and mathematics languages? What about ballet or basketball or traditional Thai cooking? How does the manipulation of the language used, in the political arena and in the media, limit what can be known and questioned?
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Homo loquens refers to questions concerning speech and language.
Each human language is chock full of cultural, historical and socio-ethical assumptions.
We dwell in language. Our own language is already inextricably bound with who we are and we can never jump out of it. It is not as if language is some kind of tool that we can put aside after use.
The rules and internal consistencies of language go largely unexamined in everyday use. Our languages are the vehicles for much of our surface thinking. They mediate who we are and what we have come to know about the world. If we have multiple languages we reap the benefits of multiple social and cognitive windows.
Do we have “mentalese,” the proto-language of the brain that facilitates thinking below the level of conscious awareness? If mentalese does exist, is it untouched or enhanced by the acquisition of a native language?
What do the comprehension of everyday language and the processes underlying vision have in common? Are there analogues in the process of vision with the gestalt effects that empower speech recognition? Can similar parallels be made with listening to music? Are seeing, language comprehension and music appreciation everyday manifestations of the underlying logic of brain? Why does speech recognition continue to represent a major challenge in the development of artificial intelligence?
