The topic I plan to write about this quarter is related to multilingualism. Although I am not majoring or minoring linguistics, I am interested to dig into bilingualism, especially in the aspect of linguistic relativity and language-personality relationship.

Speaking both Cantonese and English, I notice that my personality changes between the two languages. When I speak Cantonese, I am more chatty and gregarious, whereas when I speak English, I am more quiet and easy-going. Initially, I thought it is simply a result of familiarity difference. Cantonese is my mother language so I am more confident in speaking it, bringing the extroverted side of me out. Relatively, I am less used to speak in English. Hence, I tend to think more before saying anything, leading to a calm and quiet personality. However, not until I had an introductory linguistic class did I realize familiarity might not be the only cause of my situation. The hypothesis of linguistic relativity indicates that there might be another factor affecting my personality. This hypothesis argues that the way one perceives the world is influenced by the language one speaks. Reading the textbook for my linguistics class, I learn that the grammatical gender of a word influences how people see objects. One evidence from the book was a study having German speakers and Spanish speakers describe the same object. When describing a key, which is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish, German speakers tend to use words like “hard” and “heavy” while Spanish speakers tend to use words like “little” and “pretty.” Indeed, this is not the only way a language influences our thoughts. Linguistic relativity also occurs in areas like color and spatial categorization. Anyhow, seeing the power of language, I feel that personality which builds upon thoughts might also be influenced by the language one speak. To verifying whether personality is influenced by language, I plan to discuss in my blog questions like: “What is the science behind language acquisition?” and “How come a language affects the way we think and act?” Since it is my own observation that sparks the exploring of this topic, I would be motivated by curiosity to answer these questions for myself and my readers.

Not majoring in psychology nor linguistics, all I know about this topic is that there is quite a lot of evidence showing language influencing the way we think. Most of them focus on thoughts, but I know that there is some kind of connection between thoughts and the formation of personality, therefore, by finding the linkage between thoughts and personality, I might be able to explain how language and personality relate to each other. Yet, I am unfamiliar with psychological topics like personality development, so I would learn like to learn about how thoughts might have contributed to the development of a personality.

Bilingualism can be a big topic. Thus, I might use linguistic relativity as my scope and focus on finding an explanation for my observation by analyzing the relationship between language, thoughts, and personality. People who speak more than one language would be interested in reading my blog as they find it relatable and they can find explanations for their personality shift. Although it might seem that people who are not multilingual would not care, yet they might also be interested because they might have friends and families who are multilingual or someday they might want to learn a new language themselves. Moreover, the main takeaway from this topic would be understanding how a language may influence us. This understanding is significant to everyone as it might provide an answer to whether to learn a language other than our mother tongue. Thus, this topic is actually worth reading for everyone.

In terms of the current conversation, there are psychologists, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and linguists discussing the relationship between language and mind. There are credible sources of data and evidence from research and studies related to the chosen. Additionally, there are psychology magazines and people online sharing their stories as a multilingual, I believe I am able to gather enough information to answer my questions. On the other hand, there are currently continuing discussions related to the topic, including whether language influences thoughts or it determines thoughts, whether the language itself or the culture embedded is influencing our thoughts and how mind and personality relates. For the first one, people are debating between the two versions of the hypothesis of linguistic relativity. Some claim that language affects thought while some argue that the speaker of a language can only think of things in the way their language expresses them. As for the second one, some say it is elements like grammatical gender and semantics that are influential, whereas some say it is the cultural environment people are in when they learn a language that influences thoughts. For the last one, people are discussing the relationship between personality and thoughts: whether thoughts or personality comes first. Subsequently, regarding bilingualism, there are some other current debatable issues, one being whether speaking a second language. Some support second language acquisition and believe using two languages will halve intellectual and spiritual growth, whereas some disagree and say mental control will be better with bilingualism.

All in all, bilingualism might not seem to be but is actually an important and interesting topic everyone should read about. Yet, it is a huge topic. Therefore, my blog will first introduce the idea of linguistic relativity, then, focus on explaining my observations with the discussion of some of the unsolved problems and current debatable issues.