Project Questions

1. Why does Dr. Itard want Victor to speak? (you should consider the questions asked on Genie, p. 72) to get the the heart of this question.

Section two of the song explains that Dr. Itard wants Victor to speak because he wants to know if he is a clean slate that can be taught language which he believes will open doors of knowledge to him or if he is already programmed to have a different way of thinking that is not stimulated by language.

2. How does Dr. Itard hope to teach Victor:

a) Perception

Section four of the song explains that Dr. Itard planned to teach Victor perception by brining him into organized society to see if he would survive and gain a new outlook on life.

b) Language

The first section of the song explains that Dr. Itard planned to teach Victor language by introducing him to organized sounds that create words that have connotations and meanings behind them.

c) Reason

Section five of the song explains that Dr. Itard planned to teach Victor
Reason by exposing him to puzzles and using a system of punishment and reward to stimulate his brain and force him to use logic and reasoning.

d) Emotion

Section three of the song explains that Dr. Itard planned to teach Victor emotion by putting him in difficult and agitating situations in order to stimulate feelings of anger or fear in him.

Wild Thang

Dr. Itard's Version:

Wild thang… I’ll show you sounds wild thang...
To teach you everything
About language
I’ll give you words…

Wild thang, I think I can teach you to speak
‘Cause I wanna know for sure
Are you a clean slate or do you think
I’ll teach you

Wild thang… I’ll make you freak wild thang…
To teach you everything
About emotion
I’ll make you angry…

Wild thang I think I’ll teach you perception
‘Cause I wanna know for sure
If you survive here will have a new, improved conception
I’ll teach you

Wild thang… I’ll give you puzzles wild thang…
To teach you everything
About reason
I’ll punish and reward you…

Wild thang

I said say “lait” wild thang

Come on come on wild thang

Say it say it wild thang

Wild thang

Original Version:

Wild thang...you make my heart sing...
You make everything
Groovy
I said wild thang...

Wild thang, I think I love you
But I wanna know for sure
So come on and hold me tight
I love you

Wild thang...you make my heart sing...
You make everything
Groovy
I said wild thang...

Wild thang, I think you move me
But I wanna know for sure
So come on and hold me tight
You move me

Wild thang...you make my heart sing...
You make everything
Groovy
I said wild thang...

Wild thang

I said wild thang

Come on come on wild thang

Shake it shake it wild thang

Wild thang

Genie 2

1. What was so significant about Chomsky's argument?

It made linguists realize that there was more to the development of language than just vocabulary, making language an even more interesting concept.

2. What do you make of Chomsky's bird argument on p. 36?

I believe Chomsky is using this argument to suggest that language is something we are designed to know how to do and it is not necessarily learned, just as a person is designed to know how to walk as their means of transportation and cannot learn how to fly because that is a bird’s means of transportation not a human’s.

3. Do you agree with Chomsky's claim about the island at the end of Chapter 7? Please explain your answer.

I do agree with Chomsky’s claim about the island because it seems to be true that when people are taken out of a modern environment and left to their own they resort back to a primal state, like when people are not told about time and they always end up resorting back to a 15 hour day, which was normal for humans hundreds of years ago when they did not have clocks, so if humans are put on an island away from the modern world they would be forced to resort back to this state and because people who were in this state hundreds of years ago were able to develop language after a period of time it seems logical that the people on the island would do the same.

4. In Chapter 10, why were Genie's observers pleased to see her hitting other children?

They were pleased because she was learning to outwardly express her anger at it catalyst instead of holding it inside and inflicting pain on herself, showing that Genie was developing a sense of self.

5. Describe how Genie's language was developing.

It developed because Genie became interested in her surroundings and always wanted to know the names of things within it.

6. After reading Chapter 11, what are the primary differences between the reading and the film?

The reading presented more information about the cruel methods Jean Marc Gaspard Itard used to test Victor’s abilities.

7. How did the film, Wild Child impact the symposium members? What is meant by: "all of us saw in the movie what we were prepared to see to confirm to our own biases."?

The members were very moved by the film. This means that the movie showed what they had hoped it would show, what Genie could best reveal to science and what, in the course of that revealing, science could ethically ask of Genie.

8. What do you think of Dr. Elkind's quote on p. 59? How do you feel about Dr. Freedman's suggestion on p. 59-61

I think Dr. Elkind was trying to say that Genie needs the right amount of love and acceptance no matter how far her speech progresses because her recovery of the traumatic events of her life are the real priority, not how much she can learn. Dr. Freeman’s suggestions about helping Genie to become more self-aware and more aware of other humans seems to be a good idea because Genie will always have a hard time being accepted by others if she cannot first accept them and herself and care for them and herself.

9. Why was it important for Itard to teach Victor to "imagine the needs of others (p. 73)"? Does CAS do this? Why or why not?

This was important because it taught Victor to become more involved in his surrounding by caring for the people in them. CAS does this as well because it causes us to become more involved our community and we begin to care more for its well being.

10. After reading Chapter 14, do you agree that Truffaut's film ending was too optimistic?

I do not think the film ended too optimistically, though I would have wanted it to include an illustrated narrative of what had happened to the characters, because I believe the ending was meant to give people, particularly scientists, hope for what may accomplished with children who have similar stories to Victor, like Genie, in the future, so that we may continue trying to improve their conditions and build a better understanding of their world for them.

Thruogh Deaf Eyes/ Abel Chapter 7 Essay

The use of Oralism and Sign Language in the Deaf community greatly impacts the Deaf view of reality. The difference in these two methods of communication creates a different view of the world for Deaf people practicing them. These methods direct and can even limit the way Deaf people think. They greatly affect their view of reality.
When it comes to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, the idea that a language affects the way a person behaves and interacts with the world, it can be easily applied to Oralism and Sign Language in the Deaf community. Signing impacts a person’s view of the world because it relies on visual interpretation of rather than the interpretation of sounds like in most languages. As said in the documentary “Through Deaf Eyes” this visual form of communication causes Deaf people using it to see it like a movie being played out in front of them as they communicate with others and vise versa. Oralism also has an impact on the Deaf view of reality because it relies more on the ability to produce sound and understand the movement of lips, so it is much less visual. This causes a person to think more in sound and ignore the idea of communication through pictures.
Oralism and Signing also impact the Deaf view of the world by affecting the way in which they comprehend the world and their experiences in it, and both have their values and limitations in doing this. Signing causes a person to become more physically connected with the world around them because their method of communication with that world involves making very physical gestures to convey ideas. This is a strength in one sense because it can create a strong connection and understanding between Deaf people and their world, but it can also be a limitation because it creates a lack of understanding between Deaf people and people who don’t sign in the way each of them view the world. As said in “Through Deaf Eyes” hearing people or Deaf people who practice Oralism have a hard time understanding the way signing works, to them it is very strange. Oralism is the opposite of signing in this case, it does not have as much expression as signing and this can be a limitation because for Deaf people who practice Oralism it can be hard to truly convey emotion through their words without being able to hear different tones of the voice which could clue them on to certain emotions that a the face does not always show. Oralism does not have the gift of emotion that signing does where feelings can be physically expressed. On the other hand, Oralism has great value for Deaf people because it can allow them to communicate with the large majority of their world that is hearing and through this they can connect to their world though it is not the same connection signers make.
In Able’s “Man is the Measure”, Able discusses the idea of a person’s sense of something, which he defines as their understanding of that something. This idea can be applied to the affect of Oralism and Signing on the Deaf view of life by the way in which they understand words or what their “sense” of a word is. Able says that “though meanings require words, they are not identical to words”. What he menas by this is that meanings and words are different because words in language (including Oral and Signing) are just symbols which organize ideas and the way in which they are communicated, but meanings are what is being communicated through this system, they are the purpose behind the ideas being conveyed, hence why Able says that we use “linguistic symbols (words) to organize experience”.

Abel on The Functions of Language

1. What are the functions of language? Just provide the main ones Abel describes.

The main functions of language are cognitive, expressive, and performatory.

2. What is the significance about the story of the tribal boys and the table?

The purpose of this story was to show the difficulty that goes along with having everyone make the same connection between words and objects or movements, which posses the question of how language was able to be created and understood.

3. What is the “inscrutability of reference”?

The inscrutability of reference is the issues involved in learning what a word means by being shown the objects they denote.

4. What does Abel when he says that “Words are mere breaths of air, or scribbled pencil marks, but as used in a ‘language game’ by a speech community they are not arbitrary”?

What Able means is that even though words may only physically be sounds or groups of symbols, mentally they mean much more to us and that affects the way in which we use them and makes it difficult for us to look at them as just words.

5. What is the difference between Animal and Human Language?

The difference is that Animal Language is fixed signals that are controlled by external stimuli and internal states, while Human language is always learned and is not restricted to the communication of information but can be innovative and creative.

6. What is Chomsky’s argument on how humans learn language? Be specific about linguistic competence.

Chomsky argues that language and linguistic competence come from a special ability humans possess when they are born to understand language.

7. What does Abel thin about Chomsky’s argument?

Abel thinks that Chomsky’s argument is possible but that there is no way of really knowing.

8. How would you answer Abel’s question: “Would an infant learn to speak, though isolated from adults, if he were constantly within earshot of a radio?”

I would say that the infant would be able to produce the sounds he heard from the radio which may even add up to full sentences, but without the experience of someone showing the infant what the purpose of the sounds were, the infant would not be able to comprehend the meaning of the words and therefore would not be able to logically communicate them back to other humans. He would just be making meaningless sounds.

9. Why does Abel believe that “language is not in fact unique in the spectrum of human capacities?”

He believes this because language is a part of an enormous range of social intercourse that embraces many aspects of human life.

10. What does Abel mean when he says: “We all learn these codes of stance, mannerism, gesture, tactility, interpersonal behavior… yet we are equally unable to state them fully”?

Abel means that all humans learn certain social behaviors that are accepted in their culture but they cannot explain why these behaviors are preferred from other behaviors or why this preference exists.

Genie

1. What was Psamtik's experiment? What did he hope to learn? Did he?

Psamtik’s experiment was to place two infants in s hut right after they were born and deprive them of any human contact through language to see what language they would speak on their own. He hoped that this language would be the “world language” or the first language of man. Psamtik thought he discovered this “world language” when the infants uttered the Phrygian word for bread, but it is not very likely that this is the case since this is now a dead language and his test has not stood the test of time.

2. Rymer claims on pg. 5 that "while his experiment was flawed in fulfilling its declared intention...it embodied both the theological questions and the practical quandaries that still bedevil the discipline." Where did Abel hint at this same concept?

Abel hints at this concept many times when he references experiments and other things that were done for a certain purpose that caused people to really think about what was trying to be accomplished.

3. Why do Linguistics and Astronomy "constitute an unlikely sisterhood"?

Because they are both often constrained to be more observational that experimental.

4. Why was the Social Worker concerned about the young girl that came to her Welfare Office with her mother?

Because she was small and withered with a halting gait and curious posture, she was unnaturally stooped with hands held up as though resting on an invisible rail. 5. Consider the history of Linguistics outlined in Chapter

5. Please explain how the study of language grew from the religious to the biological and finally to the psychological.

The study of language started as religious when people believed that the mysterious thing was a gift from God, then it became biological when people believed that language was a creation of humans, and finally it became psychological when people believed that language could be something that was coded into our genes.