How Language Shapes Attitudes

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Из курса от партнера The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Reasoning Across the Disciplines

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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Reasoning Across the Disciplines

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Critical reasoning skills are a key success factor for students entering their first year of college. They must be able to think logically and form arguments. This course, designed with incoming college freshmen in mind but open to anyone, provides an essential grounding in critical reasoning skills. Faculty from multiple disciplines at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill offer guidance on applying critical thinking skills in the context of specific disciplines. By developing these skills, students will learn more, enjoy their courses more, and experience greater academic success. This course will help you understand what critical thinking skills are and why they're so important. You will also learn how critical thinking skills vary across disciplines, as well as see them applied across several fields, including, chemistry, history, psychology, law, English, and American Studies. You will develop your own critical thinking skills by working through scenarios or problems posed by scholars across these fields, and you will better understand how your college courses will differ from your earlier education.

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Think Like an American Studies Scholar

In this module, you'll learn about critical thinking and American Studies from Sharon P. Holland. Warning: The video "Dogs & Fighting, Horses & Racing, and Race" contains graphic descriptions of dog fighting and may not be suitable for all audiences.

How Language Shapes Attitudes3:47

Dogs & Fighting, Horses & Racing, and Race7:32

Understanding Relationships through Interdisciplinarity7:42

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Dr. Ram Neta
Professor
Philosophy

In the last couple of lectures from my colleague Heidi Kim, you saw

the importance of language and how different kinds of language can affect our

attitudes towards various events, towards the things that that language describes.

You see examples of this all the time in our daily lives.

Think about the difference between calling some person needy

versus calling some person a taker.

Now think about how language affects not just our politics,

but even our ordinary interaction with other people and with other things.

Think about how it affects what we eat.

You might think, well how does language affect what we eat?

Well, how often have you been served some food that you'd never seen before and

asked, what is it before you tried it?

And if the answer was something familiar or comforting,

then you were willing to go ahead and try it.

But if the answer was something unfamiliar,

let's say the name of a certain kind of organ that you had never heard of before,

then you were reluctant to try it.

See, whether you're willing to eat something or

not might have to do with what it's called.

Let me give you an example of that.

Most of you watching this video, and most of us making it, eat beef and pork.

But what are beef and pork?

They're cow and pig.

Well, then why don't we just call them cow and pig?

You could say, we eat chicken.

We eat fish.

We eat turkey.

And we eat cow and pig.

But we don't call them cow and pig.

See with mammals that we deal with regularly, like cows and

pigs, we don't call them by their species name when we eat them.

We call them something else, beef and pork.

But why?

Think about this other fact.

Many of you have pets like dogs or cats.

But you would never think of eating your dog or cat.

But why not? You eat cows and pigs.

Why not dogs and cats?

Well you might think, well dogs and cats are cute.

Cows and pigs aren't cute?

Or do you think, well dogs and cats don't taste good.

Well, I don't know if dogs or cats taste good.

I've never tasted them.

I couldn't tell you.

So why is it that we shudder at the thought, most of us at least,

shudder at the thought of eating dogs or cats.

But we don't shudder at the thought of eating cow or pig,

at least when it's called beef or pork.

Well once again, I think language plays a large role here.

With dogs and cats, typically, they have names.

Sparky, or Rover, or Oliver, or whatever.

And while you might eat some anonymous animal, you're not going to eat Oliver.

That doesn't seem right.

And so once again, the way we use language affects our attitudes.

Not just towards other people, but towards the very food that we eat.

In the next two videos, my colleague Sharon Holland

will be talking to us about more examples of this same phenomenon.

I hope you enjoy them.

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