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INDIVIDUAL PERSPECTIVES

Personal Coding: the Varieties ofLinguistic Experience - PartOnePatricia L. Duffy, United Nations, USA

'Untilvery recent years, it was supposed byphilosophers that there was a typical humanmind which all individual minds were like...Lately however, a mass of revelations havepoured in which make us see how false a viewthis is.'

- William James, 1890As far back as the nineteenth-century, the psychologistand philosopher, William James concluded that humanminds came in a variety of types. His research intopsychology had shown him that each individualapprehended the world in a unique way, processingand coding it with a unique stamp. In fact, in hiswork, James was perhaps among the first to emphasizeauditory, visual and kinetic components of individuals'inner 'representational systems' as the essence of theworkings of the mind.In our own time, researchers into learning theory andlearning style have reinforced James' conclusions,stressing the importance of the individual's uniqueway of internalizing knowledge - its unique blendof auditory, visual and kinetic elements. Each personhas a way of absorbing, processing and codinginformation from the outside world - with a mix ofvisual, auditory, and kinetic components that is notquite like any other person's.As language teachers, we have tried to apply thisunderstanding to our own teaching, sometimes usinglearning style tests to better know our students'unique ways of processing and coding. However,some researchers,such as CarlosIslam (see'Researchinto the Learning Style Preferences of Spanish EFLStudents and its Implications for Materials Developersand Teachers'), have at times found the results of suchindicators confusing, feeling they may not provide theexpected insight into their students' learning styles.Why is this? Could it be that most (if not all) suchtesting instruments simply cannot account for the fullcomplexity of what they are measuring, Le.,the 'innerlandscape' an individual human mind has constructedto code language?In an attempt to address this question, let's take VladimirNabokov as an example. In his autobiography, Speak

Memory, the great twentieth-century multilingualauthor, describes his inner perception of letters of thealphabet and words:a French a evokes polished ebony. This black group[of letters] also includes hard g (vulcanized rubber) and

y (a sooty rag being ripped). Oatmeal n, noodle-limp1, and the ivory-backed hand mirror of 0 take care ofthe whites. I am puzzled by my French on which I seeas the brimming tension-surface of alcohol in a smallglass. Passing on to the blue group, there is steelyx, thundercloud Z, and huckleberry k...I hasten tocomplete my list before I am interrupted. In the greengroup, there are alder-leaf f, the unripe apple of p, andpistachio t. Dull green, combined somehow with violet,is the best I can do for w. Theyellows comprise variouse's and 1's, creamy d, bright golden y and u, whosealphabetical value I can express only by "brassy withan olive sheen." In palerj, and the drab shoelace of h.Finally, among the reds, b has the tone called burntsienna by painters, m is a fold of pink flannel..:As Nabokov writes in Speak Memory, his description'presents a fine case of colored hearing'; that is,spoken words regularly evoked for him an automatic,consistent inner experience of color and texture.Nabokov's regular experience of blended perceptionsin response to language is what neuroscientists termcolor-lexical synesthesia, a form of perception that,over the last two decades, has been increasinglystudied at universities around the world - fromCambridge University, where major research beganin the 1980's, to the University of Hanover, to theUniversity of Melbourne, to several branches of theUniversity of California, to Yale University - to namejust a few. For synesthetes like Nabokov, the color/tactile attributes perceived in letters and words nevervary but remain constant each time that word is heard,read or thought of.Although the phenomenon of synesthesia has beenknown for centuries, it is only in the last twentyyears or so (since scientists developed brain-imagingtechnology, enabling them to look inside the brainand see what is happening when such experiencesare reported) that synesthesia has been more andmore studied. In 1995, a Cambridge University

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neuroscientist, Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen headed ateam that undertook brain-imaging studies of color-lexical synesthetes. Upon hearing a list of wordsread aloud, the synesthetes showed increased neuralblood flow to a part of the brain that controls aspectsof color perception (while a control group did not).The results of the study indicated that hearing wordsproduced a perception of color for the synesthetes.What's more, color-language synesthetes often reportinwardly perceiving their colored alphabet letters in acertain configuration, almost a kind of landscape. Onesynesthete, for example, describes the alphabet as 'astring of letters gradually sloping uphill:But why is this study important? Does it haveany implications for the 199/200 people who don'texperience color-lexical synesthesia?Among other things, the study ofsynesthesia has openedthe door to the realization that each of us processeslanguage in a unique way. Even among synesthetes,the pattern of processing is not uniform; researchersare discovering a range of possible experiences andneural patterns for processing words and letters. Also,as we will explore later, scientists are finding that allof us have a degree of synesthesia from mild to strong(which is why such synesthetic, i.e., cross-sensorymetaphors as 'loud colors' and 'sharp cheese' makesense to all of us). The study of synesthesia is helpingresearchers to understand the variety of ways that thehuman brain can process and code language.Let's return for a moment to the case of the synesthete,Nabokov. Nabokov died in 1977, emigrated from hisnative Russia first to Europe, then later to the US in1940 -- decades before much scientific research intosynesthesia or even modem theories of learning styleswas underway. But imagine, for a moment, a differentscenario: imagine that Nabokov had been born halfa century or so later, immigrating to the U.S. in the1980's. Imagine that he did not arrive fluent in threelanguages including English. Imagine him, rather, inan ESL class taking a learning style quiz, dutifullygiven by a teacher hoping to better understand howmost effectively to present language to him andto other students, given their different modes ofprocessing. How would Nabokov, with his particularinner perception of language, have scored on such aquiz? Would he have come out as an auditory leamer, avisual learner or a tactile one? What would the resultshave revealed to the teacher about his preference fortaking in language? Would any learning style quiz beadequate to address the complexity of Nabokov's innerexperience of language?It may be tempting to argue that a literary geniuslike Vladimir Nabokov had an extraordinary innerexperience of language, far beyond that of most'ordinary' people - However, recent research has shownthat such 'extraordinary' inner experiences oflanguagemay be far more common than previously thought.

What the study of synesthesia isrevealingWhile in the early 1980's, some researchers putthe incidence of color-lexical synesthesia at 1 in10,000,000, over the last two decades neuroscientistslike V.S.Ramachandran, of the University of Californiaat San Diego's Center for the Study of the Brainand Cognition, have changed the estimate to 1/200.And even among those 1/200, persons, there is nouniformity -- not all synesthetes perceive the samecolors/textures for the same words or alphabet letters-even among synesthetes, the color-sound perception isunique, idiosyncratic.*What's more, Dr. Ramachandran says, all of us (theother 199) have some experience of synesthesia,i.e., cross-sensory associations/experiences whenprocessing language. The difference in processingbetween the 1/200 and the 199 may be a matter ofdegree and conscious awareness. Also, sensory featuresbesides color may be prominent.The study of synesthesia may open a dialogue thatreveals the unique way that each of us inwardlyexperiences language and the unique 'personal code'that we have unconsciously evolved to represent it. Andthis new dialogue may reveal why some researchershave found learning style indicators fall short ofproviding the expected insight into how language isapprehended in given individual cases. While learningstyle theorists have sensed the importance of theunique mix or dominance of auditory, visual andkinetic elements in a given individual's absorption oflanguage the testing instruments so far developed maybe inadequate to match the inner complexity of thisprocess.The individual's own reflecting upon and describing ofthe process may provide some useful insight. Could theresults of any learning style indicator have providedmore insight into Nabokov's mode of processing thanNabokov's own description did?Synesthetic elements are common to all modes oflanguage processing.The study of classic (color-lexical) synesthetic modesof language processing - because its features are sosalient and so accessible to the color lexical synesthete- may reveal something about the idiosyncraticnature of all language processing. For, as mentionedearlier, research indicates that all language processingcontains sensory components or synesthetic elementson a continuum from mild to strong (Marks).Dr. V.S.Ramachandran of the University of Californiaat San Diego's Center for the Study of the Brain andCognition, offers an interesting exercise that shows thesynesthetic element at work in language processing. Itis important to restate here that synesthetic perceptions

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t()to10/tIl!ad 2005do not always involve words (Le., sounds) triggeringperceptions of color; they can also involve, among manyother other combinations*, given sounds triggeringperceptions of given shapes. In his fascinating series of2003 BBCReith Lectures, titled 'The Emerging Mind',Dr. Ramachandran offers an example. Look at the twoshapes below. Which shape is the 'kiki' and whichshape is the 'booba'?

Did you answer that the image on the left is the'booba', the one on the right, the 'kiki'? If so, youhave answered as 98 per cent of the population does.But why do most of us answer like this? It is becausewe are making a cross-sensory, synesthetic connectionbetween sharpness of sound and sharpness of shape.As Dr. Ramachandran explains,if you do this experiment, 98% of people say the

jagged shape... is kiki, and the bulbous amoeboid shapeis a booba. Now why is that? The answer is you're allsynesthetes. And I'll explain. Look at the kiki and lookat the sound kiki. They both share one property, thekiki visual shape has a sharp inflexion and the soundkiki represented in your auditory cortex, in the hearingcentres in the brain also has a sharp sudden inflexionof the sound and the brain performs a cross-modalsynesthetic abstraction saying the only thing theyhave in common is the property of jaggedness. Let meextract that property, that's why they're both kiki:In a similar vein, Yale University researcher Dr.Lawrence Marks writes,'Some of the strongest evidence to support theview that visual auditory correspondence found insynesthetes are similar or identical in nature tocorrespondences found in [others] (non-synesthetes)adduces from studies of sound symbolism in speech- what is often termed phonetic symbolism. The notionthat the sounds of words convey meaning has a historythat ges back to at least Plato (Cratylus) and wasechoed, in one form or another by Rousseau (1753)and later by Balzac (l832) who asked rhetorically,"Are not most words colored with the idea that theyrepresent externally?' (p.74-75)Some years ago, I was doing research for a book onsynesthesia (my own personal inner experience ofcolored words had led me to contact neuroscientistsand other 'colored-word' synesthetes in an effortto understand more about the phenomenon). While

interviewing a given synesthete about his or herregular experience of colored words, I found thatthere would often be someone else in the vicinity(friend, spouse, etc), who, upon hearing the synestheticdescription would be prompted to report features oftheir own regular inner language experience. Often,the person would say something like, 'Well, I don'texperience words or letters as having color, but I doexperience..: and then would then go on to relatea personal inner way of coding language that wasnot quite like anything I'd ever heard before. It alsobecame clear that, as the person described the innerperception, s/he became more and more conscious ofits features, often finding it personally revealing.It is important to point out that, as in the caseof strong color-lexical synesthesia, the perceptionsreported were not anomalous or occasional events,but regular and consistent, Le., the perception alwayshappens in response to a given language trigger. Thisconsistency, considered a hallmark of synestheticexperience, seemed to be a regular feature of the otherdescriptions I received as well.Can 'personal codes' for language be usefulas a language study tool?I began collecting reports of inner perceptionsof language, finding them fascinating in and ofthemselves-but also wondering if they could be usedin a practical way to promote memory or languagelearning. If a person became more conscious of his orher own particular way of coding language, could this'personal code' be used as a learning tool? Could thepersonal code suggest ways the individual might bestabsorb and retain the language to be learned?Below are some 'personal language code' descriptionsI collected. They range from practical to poetic (andthere is a reason for this 'poetic' quality, as this articlewill explore later: the metaphor-making part of thebrain is located next to the part that's active whenprocessing 'characters', Le., alphabet letters, digits- in some individuals, there appears to be more cross-activation between these adjacent parts).Let's start with one of the more practical descriptions:Xiao Fan, a young woman attending my writing class,related this description:'Whenever I am writing in Chinese and looking for aword, I get a picture of a screen in my mind -somethinglike a tv or computer screen. When I think of the word,the character appears on my mental screen:'My mental screen is really useful,' she continues, 'butit only works in Chinese. The screen doesn't work inEnglish. I wish I could make the screen work when Iam writing in English too. Then the English words Ineed could come up on the screen:

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RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES

Personal Coding:the Varieties of Linguistic ExperiencePatricia 1. Duffy, United Nations, USA.

This the second half of a two part article Pat has writtenfor Folio. Thefirst half was published in Spring 2005in Volume 10/1 of Folio. Part 2 of her article focuseson descriptions of 'neuroscientific research indicatingvariety in neural patterning for language processing.

First Hand Descriptionsof Synesthetic Experiencesof LanguageThis first description comes from Carmen Crosa, aSpanish language instructor, now retired from the UNLanguage and Communications Programme:

'When 1 think of things 1have to do, 1see them inmy mind's eye, written on a list in what remindsme of a very formal notebook for bookkeeping - akind of abstractform of a ledger.Everything onthe list is written out very carefully. On the otherhand, when 1 think of lessformal activities, likewriting cards to friends, 1 inwardly see thesethings on casually tom fragments of paper (likebigpieces of confetti) with a bit of informationon each piece:

This next, more poetic description comes from LauraGlenn, an editor, whose inner language experiencecombines kinetic and visual elements:

'Whenever 1 am editing and looking for aword that is right on the tip of my tongue butcannot quite access it,' she says, '1get an innersensation of walking through mist. When themist clears, the elusive word appears, writtenin the clearing:

Laura Glenn's description may strike us as particularlypoetic-almost metaphorical - but as researcher V. S.Ramachandran tells us, there may be a reason for that.The angular gyrus, the part of the brain involved in thesequencing of letters (the process one needs to spell aword) is also involved in metaphor-making. Thus, itmay not be surprising if the very act of searching fora word takes the mental form of a metaphorical image,e.g., 'walking through mist'.In the same way, it may not be surprising that color

figures prominently in the language processing ofcolor-lexical synesthetes because the angular gyrus islocated next to a part of the brain involved in aspectsof color processing (called 'area V-4') -- and in someindividuals, there may be greater cross-activationbetween these two areas asthe experiment ofDr. SimonBaron-Cohen and his team at Cambridge Universityshowed. Such cross-activation can lead to the kinds ofperceptions Nabokov reported or synesthete and writerAlison Motluck, who reports perceiving:

...the glorious cherry red of an 'S the buffedblack of an 'R the ugly, powdery pale blue ofthe letter 'F', the splendid rich purple of 'v'... Tand' O.

At this point, the mind may begin to boggle at the verydifferent inner experiences of language that peoplecan have. After all, aren't we all using the same partsof our brains to process language? The answer is yesand no. While certain neural areas are involved in alllanguage processing, in given individual cases, theremay be anomolous cross-talk between certain regions.Some recent neuroscientific research indicates that anygiven person's neural pattern for processing languagemay be as unique as his or her fingerprints. While it istrue that for all of us, certain given areas of the brainare involved in language processing, it is also truethat the brain is a much more dynamic and plasticenvironment than was once thought; neural patternscan take many forms.

Some research on how the brainprocesses languageAs the research of Ramachandran and Baron-Cohencould indicate, some hyper-activation or unexpectedneural cross-activation can take place between standardlanguage-processing areas and other regions of the brain,producing some truly unique experiences of language.The late world famous scientist, Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the double-helix nature of DNA,also didresearch indicating the uniqueness and complexity oflanguage processing. Through their studies of brainactivity during language use, Dr. Crick and his teamat the Salk Institute in LaJolla, California, found that

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different aspects of language are processed in differentareas of the brain. In contrast to what was previouslybelieved, there isnot just one language centre in the leftbrain that isactivated when words are heard, spoken, orthought of; rather, a variety of different centres spreadthroughout the brain's visual and auditory cortices areactivated simultaneously, and the relevant informationfrom each converges to form the full meaning of theword and its implications. One linguistic centre mightprovide information about the spelling of the word,another about its part of speech, another about theappearance of the word and/or the thing it represents.With this model it is not hard to imagine that with anygiven individual, other areas of brain activation mightget into the mix (and whatever principle organizesall of this information, causing it to converge inthe meaningful way that it does, even to form asimple concept like 'cup', for example, is still amystery; however, Dr. Crick believed that this as yetundiscovered 'binding principle' mediates meaningfullanguage - and perhaps all forms of cognition). Itis not hard to imagine with Crick's model that otherareas of brain activation might get into the mix (suchas those responsible for color processing, which is thecase for those like Nabokov, who experience color-lexical synesthesia).In fact, neurosurgeon Dr. George Ojemann of theUniversity of Washington found that, while certaingeneral tendencies existed in the neural processingof language, different people had language centersidiosyncratically scattered in different parts of theirbrains. Steven Pinker writes of Dr. Ojemann's researchin his book, The Language Instinct:

'Why has it been so hard to draw an atlas of thebrain with areasfor different parts of language?According to one school of thought, it is becausethere aren't any.. .[Except] for sensation andmovement, mental processes are patterns ofneuronal activity that are widely distributed,hologram-style, all over the brain:

Unexpected regions can also get into the language-processing neural mix because of the brain's plasticityand its flexibility in adapting given areas - even tofunctions for which they were not predisposed. Thismay explain why a minority of people have synestheticand other particularly unusual modes of languageexperience. While, as Dr. Ojemann tells us, certainareas of the brain may be particularly pre-disposedtoward language function, many others can take overif needed. To quote again from Steven Pinker's book,The Language Instinct:

'Many neurologists believe that this is whylanguage centres are located in unexpectedplaces in a significant minority of people.Birth is traumatic.. .The birth canal squeezesthe baby's head like a lemon, and newborns

frequently suffer small strokes and brain insults.Adults with anomalous language centres may berecovered victims of these primal injuries, whichbespeak no ill effects:

The idea that all human beings can incorporate vividsensory elements into their language processing isnot new. As far back as the 1920's, two researchpsychologists at the University of Oregon - RaymondWheeler and Thomas Cutsforth also came to thisconclusion while studying colored language synesthesia.Following their study, the two psychologists concludedthat 'there is no such thing as image-less, sensation-less meaning', in other words, we are always inwardlycoding language and other information in a regularsensory ways so that, as they put it, 'synesthesia is anessential mechanism in the construction of meaningthat functions in the same way as certain unattendedmental functions in non-synesthetes'.But what would happen of those 'unattended mentalprocesses'" were attended to? Could it be helpful for astudent oflanguage to becomemore aware ofthe uniqueway in which he or she processes language. Wouldencouraging greater attention to and awareness of thisinner code be helpful as a tool for language learning-perhaps more helpful than getting at such experiencesindirectly through learning style instruments?Was it just such a keen awareness of inner languagecode that aided Nabokov in mastering four languages?At this point, of course, we can only speculate.However, we do have the report of a contemporarysynesthete, Natasha Lvovich,who has written about hercolor-lexical synesthesia in her book, The MultilingualSelf. In one of its chapters called, 'Confessions of aSynesthete', Lvovich describes how the colors andtactile qualities vary in the different languages and howher awareness of this imagery figured in her process oflearning three languages, French, Italian, English, inaddition to her native Russian. Lvovich reports innervisual, tactile and auditory sensations in her personalcoding of language. As in the case of Nabokov, forLvovich, each word, and each alphabet letter evoke acolor-tactile response - and this happens in the variouslanguages she has learned. As Lvovich describes,

'In English, six is whitish, fuzzy, dull glass;in French, creamy in color and substance.[Monday] in Russian, Pondel'nik is grayishand dull, and [English] Monday is orange-red-brown-gamma. English L is tough, very glassy,upfront pink, while the softer Russian L ([ya)sound is a soft, warm pink:

Other speakers of languages with non-Roman alphabetsalso report seeingthe characters ofthe language's writingsystems in color. Shibana Tajwar, an environmentalengineer, who is a speaker of Bengali and Urdu, saysthat the colors of sounds in both languages correspond

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to similar sounds in English, although the shades mayvary. Bengalis' aspirated 'C' sound is pale yellow, 'lesslemon-y', as Tajwar puts it. She describes the fourdifferent 'T' sounds in Bengali and Urdu as having fourdifferent shades of blue. The Bengali 'T' sound thatresembles English 'T' is navy blue.Similarly, Su Kim, a native speaker of Korean, reportsthat she perceives the Korean 'ka' sound as navyblue, just like the English consonant 'K' (although shereports that the Korean sound has a 'rougher texture'.LikeLvovich, Tajwar and Kim are aware of this internalimagery being an integral part of their experience ofknowing/learning language.But does this inner imagery help with second languagelearning? According to Lvovich, it does. As she writesof her success in learning English spelling:

'Of course much of my good spelling skills comefrom my linguistic background, knowledge ofFrench and the well-trained ability to generalizeabout language rules, but a lot of it is dueto the synesthetic memory that helped me toremember the sound-letter combinations withextra sensory support. For example, I recentlylearned the word, resilient, a brownie with acutting silver edge:

Certainly, it is interesting to consider the variety ofpersonal language codes individuals can have. Therich inner 'language landscapes' of those with withcolor-lexical synesthesia and other types of perceptualexperience give one pause. It seems some value mightbe derived from encouraging language students togain greater awareness of their 'personal languagecodes: Teachers might encourage students to reflecton these in language-learning diaries, or even try torepresent them on personal computers. At the veryleast such an exercise could be an interesting topicfor class discussion. But could it also become a studytool? Might students find ways to use their naturallyoccurring inner perceptions as an aid to betterremembering and retaining new language?They might. But certainly the awareness of how wecode is a pre-requisite to any usefulness it may have -and many of us are only vaguely conscious of how weinternally represent information to ourselves. Weoftenfeel that knowledge of things has an invisible presencein our minds. And that could be true for not all of usare visual coders. However, it may also be true thateven the information we do code visually -- or in othersensory modes - only seems to lack salient sensoryqualities because we are not in the habit of attendingto it directly - much in the same way that we may passlandmarks on a given street every day (and use themto know where we are and where we are going) but notnotice much about the details of their features.In the coming months, I plan to carry out more

interviews on personal language codes and also furtherdevelop a set of exercises I am creating to help studentsbecome more aware of the inner language experience- and to see ways in which the personal code mightbe applied as a tool. I plan to report the results of thisresearch in a future piece.Before closing, it may be of interest to remindourselves that language evolved relatively late and in arelatively short time in human history. Ourvaried waysof processing and experiencing language may showthe truth of William James' assertion that there is no'typical mind that all minds are like: They also shownature's preference for diversity as we humans and ourlanguage continue to evolve.Patricia Duffy has been an instructor in the UNLanguage and Communications Programmesince 1985.She has also taught English at New York Universityand the City University of New York. Pat is the authorof two textbooks on English as a second language:Variations: Reading/Oral Communication Skills andFocus on Innovations and Innovators, as well as BlueCats, a book about synesthetic perception.

ReferencesBaron-Cohen, S. and Harrison, J. (1997). Synesthaesia:Classicand Contemporary Essays. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.Cytowic,Richard. (1989).Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses.NewYork: Springer-Verlag.DuffY, Patricia Lynne. (2001). Blue Cats and ChartreuseKittens: How Synesthetes Color their Worlds. New York:Henry Holt EtCompany.Goode, Erica. (1999), "When People Hear a Color and See aSound." New York Times, February, F3.Islam, Carlos, "Research into the Learning Style Preferencesof Spanish EFLStudents and its Implications for MaterialsDevelopers and Teachers", Nagoya Board of Education,Japan.James, William. (1892). (Allport, Gordon, editor, 1985edition). Psychology: The Briefer Course.University of NotreDame PressMartino, Gail and Marks, Lawrence. (2001). "Synesthesia:Strong and Weak" Current Directions in PsychologicalScience 10, no.2 (April), 61-65.Nabokov, Vladimir. (1947). Speak Memory. New York:Random House.Oxford, Rebecca. (1989).LanguageLearning Strategies: WhatEvery Teacher Should Know. New York: Harper Collins.Pinker, Stephen. (2004). The Language Instinct: How theMind Creates Language. New York: William Morrow andCompany.Ramachandran, V.S."The Emerging Mind", London: TheBBCReith Lectures 2003.Ramachandran, V.S. and Hubbard, E. May, 2003. "HearingColors, Tasting Shapes", Scientific American.

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