No One Could See the Color blue Until Modern Times: A summary of the article is the way that humans could see the world, and that the color blue wasn’t a color. Back in history in books they would describe the color of the water as being “wine-dark sea” or ‘wine-dark”. Guy Deutscher did an experiment with his daughter, he never told her what the of the sky was and her answer was that it was “colorless”. Another experiment took place that was Jules Davidoff he did his experiment with a tribe. Who had a language with no word blue in it or distinction between blue and green. They could pick out which one was different from the others.
Response: In this article it was a very good article to read because it was interesting to see and understand the break down of the color blue. Such as how back in history they would describe the color of the water as a wine type of color and never mentioned not once a color or any sort of blue. An how Jules did an experiment with a tribe that didn’t had a word for blue or anything. The experiment guy did with his daughter was really cool because he never told his told or described the color of the sky to her in an way. Her response to when she looked up at the sky and said it was colorless was really cool, because do we only see the color blue because people say that something is blue, when really it may not be blue but that’s just what we see because that’s all that we’ve ever been taught to see?
Discourse Community: In this article a summary of it would be that it gives insight of the full definition of what a “Discourse Community” is. It gives examples of discourse communities, such as in a college setting. It also goes into detail about discourse community and how botanists have their own discourse community. It gives insight on the many different discourse communities and about the significance in a discourse community.
Response: This was a good reading too for me personally because I had never heard of a discourse community or anything. I heard the word before, but I had never really fully thought about it. With reading this article it gave me insight that there is such thing as a Discourse Community and that it is a bunch of people who share the same common interest with each other. It also made me think about this app called Discord, because it now make since why someone would come up with an app that allows people who share common goals or interest to all be able to come together and talk about it with one another. It honest was a great read for me, it helped open my eyes to a different perspective of things. It also helped me understand the significance in a discourse community.
How Language Shapes Our Perception of Reality: They say that the ideas of grammar, metaphors that we use can result in a use looking at different things from different perceptions. Also, that those who we hang around have a huge impact on our perception of language. An example would be the language spoken in a Australia they don’t use the term right or left they use the terms north, south, east etc. English speakers get straight to the point whereas Chinese speakers give background information about the subject.
Response: This reading really did open my eyes to a new perspective in life. I never knew that the people that we hangout around can have an impact in the way that shapes our reality. It was really cool to read that the wording, grammar, and metaphors that we as people and also that we as a culture use shapes the way that we perceive things. That the people we are around shape the way that we talk which is interesting to me. But it is also understandable why if you spent so much time with someone that they way that they speak would rub off on you and you would start to talk like that person. Also, that the way language can impact our experiences such as relating back to the color blue article. They say in this article that no one really sees a color until there is a word for it which is mind blowing to me, because if you told someone that there was never a word for a color they would just see everything as being like a blank canvas or colorless.
The Concept of Discourse Community: John examines the first three terms to be examined about Discourse Community. He goes in detail to say that there may be a definitional problem: “The idea of “discourse community’ is not well defined as yet, but like many imperfectly defined terms it is suggestive, the center of a set of ideas. He talks about speech communities and discourse communities. He says that a speech community is defined tautologically but radically and as a community sharing knowledge if the rules of interpretation or speech.
Response: This article was good to read as well because he broke up the term discourse community into three parts. Also that the first part had to deal with the clarification of discourse community and how it in the present context it has been appropriated by the “social perspectivists” for their variously applied purpose in writing research. An how discourse community is a imperfectly defined term, but also how it can be the proponents of the “social view” for believing that discourse community is a powerful and useful concept an that it raises many questions. Also, how it is used in speech communities and how it helps form a tight definition of shared linguistic forms. This apportion of the article reminds me a lot about American Sign Language and how they are their own discourse community because they have their own type of language that they use an grammar. It also helped me to understand the difference between American Sign Language (ASL) and Pidgin Sign Language (PSE).
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