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Even as I was listening to this story on Morning Edition, today, I knew I'd be posting a link to it, partly as another excuse to use my new icon ;-)
Shakespeare had roses all wrong -- NPR
The main part of the piece was about how gendered languages (those which assign specific genders of male and female to inanimate objects) effect the way speakers of those languages perceive the objects around them. The primary example cited in the report was the the word "Bridge," which is feminine in German and masculine in Spanish. The experiment was designed to test whether that influenced the way native German and Spanish speakers saw and described photos of a bridge.
It turns out that it does, in fact.
(Does this result surprise any readers of this journal? It certainly does not surprise me in the least).
The second half of the report talked about an experiment where the same professor and her students tested Shakespeare's assertion* that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
With only the actual scents and the visible names to help guide them, most people chose the bag labeled "Rose" as smelling sweeter.
Well....
Here's the comment I left on NPR's webpage for the story:
If I'd been designing the experiment, I would have splurged and bought seven identical roses, one sprig of lavender, and eight identical paper bags.
What do you think? Does this sound like a reasonable experiment?
*Regarding "Shakespeare's assertion"-- Just because he strung those words together in that order doesn't mean that he, as a married man in his 30s (?), believed that. All we can say is that he thought it was something a twelve-year old girl, caught up in the hormonal rush of first love, might say.
The main part of the piece was about how gendered languages (those which assign specific genders of male and female to inanimate objects) effect the way speakers of those languages perceive the objects around them. The primary example cited in the report was the the word "Bridge," which is feminine in German and masculine in Spanish. The experiment was designed to test whether that influenced the way native German and Spanish speakers saw and described photos of a bridge.
It turns out that it does, in fact.
(Does this result surprise any readers of this journal? It certainly does not surprise me in the least).
The second half of the report talked about an experiment where the same professor and her students tested Shakespeare's assertion* that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
- They took two identical roses and put them in two identical paper bags.
- They wrote "Rose" on one of the bags, and "Mowed Grass" on the other.
- Then, they asked people to sniff the bags (without looking inside).
- And, finally, they asked people to decide which bag smelled sweeter.
With only the actual scents and the visible names to help guide them, most people chose the bag labeled "Rose" as smelling sweeter.
Well....
Here's the comment I left on NPR's webpage for the story:
leading someone to believe that a rose is not a rose, is quite different than "calling a rose by any other name."
If, instead, someone had learned, from birth, that "mowed grass" meant the flower with thorny stems, and "rose" meant the green flat yard in front of a house, they might pick "mowed grass" as smelling sweeter. And *that's* the argument I think Shakespeare was trying to present.
I might also have picked "mowed grass" as being sweeter. I prefer that scent to those of roses, anyway.
If I'd been designing the experiment, I would have splurged and bought seven identical roses, one sprig of lavender, and eight identical paper bags.
- I would put one rose each in the first two bags, and leave them completely unmarked, as the control.
- I would do the same with the second and third roses, but I would put "rose" on only one bag, and leave the second one blank.
- For the third pair of bags, I would invent two completly new names, but with contrasting sounds -- maybe I'd label one "Lajooya" and the other "Tokexquot" (soft vs. hard).
- And for the final pair of bags, I would put lavender in one, and a rose in the other, and label them both "Rose"
Then, to avoid asking the same person to sniff eight bags in a row (risking desensitizing the nose), I'd send my students off in four directions around campus, asking each to compare responses to a single pair of bags.
What do you think? Does this sound like a reasonable experiment?
*Regarding "Shakespeare's assertion"-- Just because he strung those words together in that order doesn't mean that he, as a married man in his 30s (?), believed that. All we can say is that he thought it was something a twelve-year old girl, caught up in the hormonal rush of first love, might say.
