Language, Culture, and Mind

It is generally assumed that language, culture, and our way of thinking are related. The relation, which is often called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis or linguistic relativity, has been the subject of serious philosophical, anthropological and scientific inquiry. Taking advantage of the extensive bilingualism in Singapore, this module selects a few salient grammatical features and critically examines them within the broader cultural and/or cognitive contexts. Topics to be discussed include pluralisation, classifier, tense and aspect, kinship, polysemy, metaphor and bilingual acquisition. Issues related to translation will also be discussed.