#679 Nick Enfield - Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists
Dr. Nick Enfield is Professor and Chair of Linguistics at the University of Sydney and director of the Sydney Centre for Language Research. His research on language, culture, cognition and social life is based on long-term fieldwork in mainland Southeast Asia, especially Laos. His latest book is Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists.
In this episode, we focus on Language vs. Reality. We talk about the premise of the book of language as both destroyer and creator. We discuss how language and reasoning are more about convincing people, rather than getting at the truth. We talk about perception and language as two steps of reduction of reality, and the idea of language as an interface for coordination. We discuss how different languages capture different aspects of reality. We get into psychological phenomena like priming and framing. We talk about framing in politics and the media. We discuss the idea of public discourse as a market for justifications, rather than a market for ideas. We go through the functions of stories. We discuss the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Finally, we ask if we can know what are the best ways of talking about things.
Time Links:
Intro
The premise of the book: language as both destroyer and creator
Convincing people, rather than getting at the truth
Two steps of reduction: perception, and language
Language as an interface for coordination
Loss of information when translating from one language to another
Coordinating without language
Different languages capture different aspects of reality
Priming
Political activism, and how people use language
Manipulating people with priming and framing
Framing in politics and the media
Public discourse as a market for justifications, rather than a market for ideas
The functions of stories
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and linguistic relativity
How can we know what are the best ways of talking about things, the best words to use?
Follow Dr. Enfield’s work!
Follow Dr. Enfield’s work:
Faculty page: https://bit.ly/3M6H2TU
Website: https://bit.ly/3Mc0FKc
ResearchGate profile: https://bit.ly/3uyYGt1
Language vs. Reality: https://amzn.to/3Eugs4g
Twitter handle: @njenfield