As an in-class exercise today, I had the students write down one or more questions on index cards and hand them in. Actually I asked them to each write one question, but most of them were energized and wrote a couple. As you will see there is a wide range, depending on prior background (most of them have no linguistics background at all). Other than fixing a couple typos and shortening some long extraneous material, I kept them exactly as written (including silly ones, or ones that aren’t really questions). I suppose one could read this list and reach various conclusions, but my interpretation is that these folks, most of whom have no knowledge of this discipline, are demonstrating a lot of intellectual curiosity. The kids, as they say, are all right.
- Are there any sounds that are pretty universal across languages?
- Are there dialects within gestures?
- At what point in a dialect’s development does it become or is considered a different language?
- Can regional dialect affect someone’s perception on sarcasm? (like proper vs. improper British English)
- Do commonly used filler words such as “like” actually devalue language / is it actually bad to use these words often?
- Do men and women understand language/words differently due to their positions in our socio-cultural hierarchy?
- Do people across cultures ask questions the same way, where they raise their tone at the end?
- Do romantic partners often create their own words or phrases?
- Does language/dialect influence people’s perceptions of intelligence?
- Does texting in different languages change on the languages?
- Does texting with or without punctuation change the meaning of a message?
- Does whether or not someone types in lowercase in texts say something about their personality?
- Has punctuation fallen depending on the type of punctuation?
- Has radio / TV / media halted accent development and/or caused aspects of reversion?
- How can some words mean what they mean, and also, the opposite (e.g., “literally”)?
- How do accents shape slang and language?
- How do certain words like “literally” become misappropriated and develop new meaning?
- How do code switchers differ in understanding from people who do not code switch?
- How do gestures / body language affect understanding?
- How do languages become assimilated from immigrants into native culture?
- How do our morals change our definitions of words?
- How do slang terms come, go, or even change so quickly?
- How do we decide what gets a unique name vs. a descriptor name? (ghost, bread, grass vs. roundabout, lightpost, café)
- How do you view animal communication?
- How does a language get “lost”?
- How does modern English differ from today English? (such as slang language)
- How does music taste shape language choices, development of an inner circle / community, or choice of tone? Do similar music tastes help create dialect?
- How does new slang emerge? Is slang spread more easily through social media vs. before social media existed?
- How does policing language used by social groups affect American culture?
- How does the way we talk about things affect the way we think about them? (ex. censorship on words like rape, murder, and suicide turn to words like grape, un-alived, and sewerslide. Is it desensitizing?
- How important is body language to communication and tone?
- How is learning a language implicitly and explicitly different?
- How long does it take for language habits to rub off?
- How many ways can you abbreviate words through culture?
- How much of language is verbal versus non-verbal?
- How often do we delete words from the dictionary collectively?
- How organically did American English develop? How much of it was a deliberate distancing from British conventions?
- How was it decided to change language (like Linear B)?
- If old people could adapt better, could they understand the modern slang?
- In Mexico “para” means stop for … use inference here – stop to stop
- In the future, will language become more complex or more simplified?
- In what languages are gestures most important?
- Industrialized language
- Is code-switching “fake” language?
- Is contemporary language losing direct and/or literal specificity?
- Is judging other people’s words rooted in classism? (ex. southern / country accents seen as unintelligent to some people)
- Is sarcasm a utilitarian function of language?
- Is the shift in “formality” in speech expectations an indication of a shift in social capital?
- Nature of nonverbal language
- Should the plural of moose be meese? And who should be able to change that?
- There are so many dialects and variants of how English is spoken, is there really a “right” way to speak it?
- Translation of names and spellings
- What are the least common sounds across all the world’s languages?
- What could the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis tell us across dialects of the same languages (accents, words, pronunciation, cultural linguistic differences)? Could this partially explain the British/American debate?
- What do you consider language to be?
- What is the hardest language to learn?
- What is the past tense of hang?
- What kind of bird would you be?
- What makes a dialect/accent ‘invalid’?
- What makes a language comparatively complex? As in, what aspect sis most often pointed out as what makes it so?
- What makes a language romantic?
- What makes a word “incorrect” in a language?
- What makes a word incorrect? If language is ever evolving, who’s to say it won’t become correct in the future?
- What’s the real difference between ‘ask’ and ‘axe’?
- When two languages share the same root, at what point in their divergence can they be / are they considered distinct and separate?
- Where are the lines/context boundaries with code switching?
- Why are Americans so fearful/avoidant of direct and literal communication?
- Why are certain letters in words shared across languages to have the same meaning?
- Why are cuss words and slurs more common in rap music than other genres?
- Why are Romance languages so similar and yet so different?
- Why are the on-ramps in Detroit so short?
- Why are there spelling differences between US and UK English?
- Why did some languages develop to be tonal?
- Why did some people evolve out of using glyphs?
- Why do all Romance languages share specific root words?
- Why do American English and British English spell the same words differently?
- Why do we feel the need to abbreviate words and phrases so much? Does it make it simpler or more complex?
- Why do we spell specific words differently than the British do?
- Why do words spread and then disappear so quickly?
- Why don’t the trees grow to touch the sky? (to get juices flowing)
- Why is English becoming more of a dominant language?
- Why is it that newer phrases and words develop in niche communities, and then spread rapidly from them?
- Why/how do some subcultures develop a dialect?
- Without the cultural significance of current languages and past language, would the benefit of the world speaking one language support the cost of its creation?
- Would texting be arguably considered its own dialect of language, given the idea that each seemingly normal message could have a different meaning?
- Would the British understand U.S. sarcasm?
Index card questions are such a revealing instrument — what students ask when nothing is graded tells you where the course actually landed versus where the syllabus aimed. The gap between the two is the most useful feedback any instructor gets. I run a version of this and the questions keep surprising me after years of teaching. Hope you share some of what they wrote.