Before taking this class, I had assumed most of the study done in the linguist field was about grammar, vocabulary, and origins. While taking the course, I find these are only a part of the field, and culture, history, living habits, and social situations also play an important role. It’s a fresh idea to think that language can affect how people think. As an international student, I realized that people from different countries have different thinking logic. I attributed this phenomenon to different cultural backgrounds, and people received different primary education. Now I know it’s language itself impacts us. So do that mean linguists change the thinking pattern of people? If so, I will be surprised by the power of linguistic.

As a native Chinese speaker, I have to say that some of the readings related to Chinese language or culture cannot reflect the contemporary situation in China. For example, we don’t have as many “tiger mothers” as the reading said. I believed it happened in the last generation. Now parents become pay more attention to children’s mental health and do not want to stress children too much anymore.

I think the most intriguing topics that we have covered are about the current trends in East Asia, such as the uprising of metrosexual men and the usage of the word Oppa. Some of these things are pretty surprising to me because it feels like there are Western equivalents to these trends in East Asia, like the idea of an e-boy. It feels like the world is unifying together because of the changes people go through, even if there is still much political divide. Even just changing how a word is used feels like there is a lot of impact on culture and perception, which to me, makes linguistics much more important than what I thought before. Language is so important, not only because it is how humans communicate with each other, but each language is tied to a culture that has their own interpretations and thoughts and etc. This course definitely made linguistics much more appealing to me, and I may consider taking another course similar.

My approach to learning the course material for this class is the same as any class. Do the reading and then follow along in class. If I have questions, they are usually answered by going through the reading again.

-Jackson

During this class, a reoccurring theme I continue to find interesting are the cultural and mental differences brought about by difference in language. Before this class began, I was intrigued by how learning different languages, art forms, or music theories allowed people to engage their brain in different ways and literally influence the ways people think. When we read Nisbett’s writing about how language affected grouping in different cultures, I was extremely interested in linguistics. I found this chapter of their book so interesting, because it not only analyzed the difference in thinking, but also showed how language can influence the brain to think. Another topic I found interesting was the reading about Chinese mother techniques. I’ve always heard about my friends strict parents, but learning about some specifics was really intriguing. I still enjoy thinking about how Chinese parents correlate their child’s success in school with their parenting abilities. As someone who did not have this childhood experience, I think this topic is not only informative, but that this class bridges a cultural gap by learning about it.

My appreciation for linguistics has risen dramatically since beginning this class. I think this is because I did not know to what extent the study of language reached. Reading about the specific research and studies has created links to questions I have already had. By learning about linguistics it has provided deeper answers to questions I did not know how to ask before taking this class. My approach to learning this course is first of all to attend every session I can. I think the readings are great, but in class the material is made much more tangible by the slides and lectures. Also, I think getting ahead in the homework is responsible, but detrimental to learning for it makes it difficult to recall readings you read like weeks prior to the class. I’ve really enjoyed the course overall, and have gained an appreciation for linguistics.

Through the course of this class, many things have intrigued me. The topic that intrigued me the most was the topic of politeness. My reactions to the readings have been pretty minimal but I did find the readings on “Tiger Moms” to be fairly interesting seeing as it’s from someone else’s perspective. The class has changed my view of linguistics but specifically sociolinguistics and how the different countries we focused on structured their version of sociolinguistics.

Being able to study subjects that I am passionate about such as: culture, language and societies, I was able to deeply engage with all of the material in this class. I loved that I was eager to read all the assignments with extreme curiosity and absorbed as much information I could, as well as being able to participate with classmates and have active discussions in class that helped me understand points of views from students of other nationalities. In particular, the subject of linguistic features of east Asian languages intrigued me very much. I learned new things about lexical properties and the foundation of languages, (I.e. what language family they derive from etc.) which I found out, is something I am very interested in, enough to study more about linguistics throughout my degree. I wouldn’t say this class was challenging for me, but because it was focusing on subjects I love to learn about, I learned so many new things that even contributed in many of my other classes. I look forward to taking a class similar to this one again!

-Ester Angulo

So far in this class, the question that has intrigued me the most is how does language affect our perception of certain concepts? It is fascinating from today’s class to consider how people think of the same concept differently, or even from the reading, what they notice first about something or what they are taught by the parents to notice first as they are growing up.

Learning about the different cultural phenomenon such as Herbivore boys and Girl graphs was also particularly interesting, as they were aspects of Japanese society I wasn’t aware of or knowledgeable of. I approached the learning in this course as learning new cultural and linguistical differences and how linguistical differences are used by the speakers of the language to express their different cultural differences. It has taught me to examine the language used and how the language is expected to be used in the languages I am learning (Korean and Japanese) and beginning to notice more of these interesting cultural and linguistical differences while I am learning the language. I have begun to notice odd aspects that I failed to notice before.

I think the issue of gender issues still prevalent in Asian societies and our own is what intrigued me the most. I mean, finding out that the gender gap is increasing in the ranking is shocking, as I would’ve thought it would get  better through the years. It provides evidence that language can be powerful, and I think that was the whole, main point I’ve learned throughout from this class. The whole linguistic approach to it where the use of words can’t always be translated from one language to another with the same power. For example, the tiger mom article where the word trash does not translate as harshly from her language to English or the article north korea translated to English from the much more manipulative original. Or the body language associated to each sentence can leave greater impacts to future generations, like with kids and the term, kawaii. And the gender biases it provides like Moser mentions in his paper on sexism in Mandarin; that motivate others to fight back or create their own language like the girl graphs in japan. It’s these  different cases and research topics from linguistic professors that left an impression and a newly found interest to look more into languages and the roles they play into societies.

Throughout this course, I definitely gained new insight in not just the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese language, but linguistics in general. As I go about with conversations with my friends, co-workers, and family, I notice little distinct expressions or words that they use that I never really picked up at first. These little differences make up for a huge variety of how we decide what we are going to say, and how we say it, word wise and physically(gestures and facial expressions). A lot of the differences that I notice from my family are deeply connected to the native language that they speak, and being someone that grew up listening to that all the time, I, myself didn’t realize how much of a major difference they have in value and meaning compared english and the American culture in general. I loved reading the readings and articles we had, but the ones I found most interesting is “oppa”, girl graphs, teas, and the most recent one we have which did a lot of comparing of east Asian and western kids. In regards to tea, it is very common to see in my culture, so I was intrigued to see how the value of tea in west Asian culture was either similar or different. I thought it was interesting the amount of passion and devotion that goes into the making of tea, drinking it and overall meaning of it. I don’t think that any of that really exists in my culture, its more of a typical welcoming gesture to make guests feel at home. And as for the most recent reading (Nisbett), as I went a lot with the tests that they presented it to us and briefly let myself categorize the options given. I was surprised to see that most of my decisions were falling towards the west Asian picks. Honestly I was getting confused as to why the other options seemed more fit for the western kids. The readings overall gave a better sense of myself as a person and where I come from. Going into this course, I really just wanted to learn more about other cultures and languages and be open to the idea that foreign cultures are more similar than what most people think. And I think with that thought, it is true to a certain extent. There seems to be a core value for all these cultures that just stem out differently. That core value is something I’m still trying to figure out. After taking this course, I want to say that there is quite a heavy prevalence in the idea of family, unity and identity for a lot of these cultures.

Through this class I have been intrigued by many various elements of East Asian culture and language, though the element I have been most interested in is the ways in which different languages are treated, such as many of the sinitic languages being considered dialects, even though they are mutually unintelligible. I am very interested in politics, and this helped showcase an intersection of cultural identity and political action.

In general the readings were a helpful introduction to what was being specifically mentioned, and then the lecture reinforced the important parts and added emphasis. This was further helped by the class discussions, which allowed me to explain what I thought about the content, as well as recieve other’s interpretations.

Prior to the class I only viewed linguistics as the study of the language, which included things like lexical variation and structure, but this class has shown me how language affects culture, as well as non-verbal features of language that linguistics that can be focused on. This is making me consider various fields of study that I am not primarily associated with and the different areas that are encompassed within them.

Throughout the all the lectures in the term, there are serval issues that have intrigued me the most. They are basic characteristics of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, new masculine gender identities in East Asia, different parenting styles between East Asian parents and Western parents. After the lectures for the basic characteristics of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, I have better understanding of the fundamental differences and similarities among these three languages. Although ancient Japanese and Korean people learned, wrote and used in old Chinese characters, they are really different in terms of word order typology and morphological typology. For example, Chinese has a word order subject-verb-object while Japanese and Korean have a word order subject-object-verb. For the topic of new masculine gender identities in East Asia, I feel like it is very interesting and new topic that I never notice before. Since today is male-dominated society, how females behavior in today’s society is often more controversial than how males act. As a Chinese, I do not even know there exists a new masculine gender in China called “City Jade Men” and why this new masculine identity arises. Therefore, it is very cool to see there are some changes in masculine gender identities right now. For the topic of the parenting style between East Asian parents and Western parents, one of the important reasons that cause the differences in parenting style is the way to understand the word “successful”. Parents in East Asia trend to make the connection between being successful and having high grades and outstanding jobs. On the other hand, Western parents believe that to be happy is the most important things to educate their children. It seems like that many people in the class have hard time to understand and accept the parenting style in East Asia. However, I want to argue that East Asian parents try to express their love to their children and they care their children although it is really strict and harsh to some people. Additionally, in modern days, East Asian parents have changed this traditional way of educating their children and no longer as harsh and strict as described from the article we read for the lecture.

The way that I have studied for this class is to read the assigned articles and finish the quizzes before class. Then, I will pay attention on the class and discuss the context of the lecture with my classmates after class. I think it is very helpful by doing that. Since I read the articles and did the quizzed before class, I have a brief idea for what we are going to learn in the lecture. Then I let where I can really focus on the lecture to get my questions solved in the next day’s lecture. Additionally, since I am making more and more friends in the class, we will discuss some of the topics from the lecture with each other after class. By doing so, I feel like that I get deeper understanding on what we have learned in the class. In addition, I will take notes with the lecture slides in order to list and summary the major points for each topic. Later on, I will use these notes to study for midterm and final exams.

This class is really changing your sense of “linguistics” as a field. Before this class, I basically know nothing about linguistics. I think linguistics is only about how to speak the languages. Therefore, all that you will do for linguistics is to memorize the words and grammars to speak the languages. However, linguistics is much more interesting than that. For example, we learn how languages are gendered in many different ways. We learn that how languages use to “scare” in North Korea, how languages reflect some social, cultural, and commercial phenomena in the use of oppa in South Korea and high pitch girls in Japan. Furthermore, it is nice that we get some guest lecture on both tea and traditional Chinese medicine. It provides a really cool introduction for more people to know more about China and Chinese culture.

I really like this class and thank you for making such enjoyable class. I am very glad that I take this class as one of my last classes in the University of Oregon.