Music Fix: Why Words Matter

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The study of language has witnessed the birth of insightful theories relating to the link between language and perception, identity and social relations. Some of these theories have been praised and followed, as well as contested and refuted by different scholars coming from various fields of knowledge over the years. In today’s Music Fix we invite you to listen to a podcast from The Why Factor (by Lane Greene for BBC World Service), which features some interesting reflections on the theories around words, language and the way they affect the shaping of our reality.

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The Music Fix we are proposing for today is a very interesting 20-min piece of audio work from The Why Factor series (BBC World Service). Through the guidance of Lane Greene, this audio provides us with an entertaining overview of existing theories around language and the heavy influence that the words we speak seem to have (or not) on the way we perceive reality. Thanks to the examples provided by different scholars, the listener is invited to think -among others- about issues such as whether the way we experience the world influences the way we express it and viceversa, whether language learning can be achieved only through word learning, whether if having multiple words for a particular phenomenon makes us necessarily more interested in it (and the other way round), what are the effects of globalisation and the digital age on languages across the world or the link between language and identity among refugees.

CaptureKindly click on the image above to access the audio

We invite you to lay back, listen, enjoy and learn with this interesting audio!

Feel free to share with the TermCoord community what are your thoughts after listening to the podcast!


Written by Doris Fernandes del Pozo – Journalist, Translator-Interpreter and Communication Trainee at the Terminology Coordination Unit of the European Parliament. She is pursuing a PhD as part of the Communication and Contemporary Information Programme of the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain)

Sources:

  • Greene, Lane (2017) “Why Words Matter”, The Why Factor. Available at: http://bbc.in/2rC5OlY (Accessed 21 June 2017)