A great TED talk on how the language you speak affects the likelihood you will save money. A great real life example of linguistic relativism in action!
A video presented by David Crystal, British linguist, and his son Ben, a Shakespearean actor, on how Shakespeare's words should be pronounced and the meanings that are lost due to modern audiences and readers not understanding some of the puns and other language effects Shakespeare intended.
A case study on Genie, a 'feral' child who was not taught language during her critical period and never learnt how to communicate properly through language. The study of Genie lends support to the Critical Period Hypothesis which states that if children don't learn language in infancy, they will never learn to speak / communicate in language fully.
Research on animal communication
Knowledge questions: Is animal communication a language? To what extent can animals use language? In what ways is human intelligence different from animal intelligence?
An illustrated video on the relationship between language and thought, especially the social functions of language such as indirect speech acts and phatic language.
A 50 minute lecture by world famous cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker on what the study of linguistics can tell us about the ways in which our brains work.
Five TED talks, including Keith Chen's on how the Chinese language encourages Chinese people to save more money for the future than speakers of other languages such as English, on how language can affect how we think.
A recent neuroimaging study reveals that the ability to distinguish true from false in our daily lives involves two distinct processes. Previous research relied heavily on the premise that true and false statements are both processed in the left inferior frontal cortex.
Watch this and think about the nature of language change in the web 2.0 world. It is well established fact that the way we talk is reflected in how we communicate online (in mediated synchronous communication). But is how we communicate on the internet changing how we interact face to face?