What do (my) undergrads want to know?

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?