Weekly newsletter of Ritu Pandey — Creative Brains Rock

How do we learn a language and how do we communicate? Let us look more into our brain, language, and communication.

Brain, Language, and Communication

Hi, Today’s topic is about language and communication. I would like to write about an incident that happened in my life.

I was doing research in organic and inorganic food. I collected the required literature and I had to do a pre-survey before I could proceed further in my research. I spoke to few people around, discussed with my supervisor, and framed few questions. When I was working on my research I found that not many people included organic fruits or organic vegetables in their regular diet. There were a number of reasons for them to not have organic food and we will not be discussing the reasons here. In the beginning of the survey, I did use the terms organic and inorganic but as I became a bit more confident, I started using the term organic and normal food. I used normal because a large population consumed inorganic food and hence I termed inorganic food as “normal food”. For example, when I asked people what they preferred, my question was framed as “What kind of vegetables/fruits do you buy?” And the options I gave them were “Option: A) Organic Vegetables/fruits or B) Normal Vegetables/fruits”. And the next question would be, “So, in general, you prefer organic food or normal food (please tick the right option)”. I substituted “inorganic” food with “normal” food in my survey.

I always had this idea that I was good at communication and so nothing could go wrong. I did not think to consult my Professor on using the term normal as I did not think it was wrong, and just went ahead and did the pre-survey. Once done, I happily went to my professor and discussed the results with her. I showed her my pre-survey and was pretty sure that she would be very happy with what I have done.

She looked at everything and she asked me three questions, the first one was, “Why have you classified food as “organic” food and “normal” food?” and “Was it difficult for people to understand the term “in-organic”?”. I replied saying no, people largely prefer in-organic food and so I thought, inorganic was the norm and hence I used the term “normal” food instead of “in-organic food”. She then asked me her third question, “So you mean to say that people who consume organic food are all abnormal?”

Wow…. I was dumbstruck. Until that day I had not realized that something that was not normal would mean abnormal. Yes, I knew English, I knew the opposite of normal was abnormal but never did I understand that when I keep using the word normal for a day today occurrence or a majority phenomenon, anything not within that scope could mean abnormal. It just shook me.

I stood there without an answer. She then told me “Words play a major role. When you use a word be careful about how and where you are using it”. Excellent right. By the way, my Professor spoke good English but she was a native of Austria and her mother tongue was German. Interesting!!!

I now understood how carefully our language has evolved and developed over the years. We think we are very good at English because we have inherited the language from our so-called English rulers. And we tend to think we have specialized in our mother tongue because we speak our native language all the time. But this was an example of how carelessly we use a language. I am not a lover of the English language but I have started respecting not just English but any language after this incident in my life, especially the usage of words.

So where do these words come from…

It has been reported that babies learn melodies of their mother tongue even before they are born and just about in a few years after birth they start talking and become good at verbal communication, click the link “The Brain and the Language 2014” to read more on this research. The research finds that the intensity of the cry of a baby is similar to the melodic pattern of the mother tongue which the babies start to speak later on. This happens because babies when still in their mother’s womb hear the language their mothers speak. The development of the hearing system and the simultaneous development of the brain facilitates language learning and this process begins even before we are born!

Engaging right, and I need time to digest this. Anyways, that is all for now. Will meet you in the next spellbinding issue. Take good care till then.