TOK develops higher-order thinking skills, such as analysis and evaluation, and also helps students to make connections and comparisons across their subject areas and the DP core. In this way, language acquisition both supports and is supported by TOK. As well as using the skills developed in TOK in acquiring an additional language, students will also benefit from guiding questions that can connect TOK to the five themes of the language B curriculum. The following discussion questions are examples and are not meant to be either prescriptive or exhaustive.
• Is it possible to think without language?
• What would be lost if the whole world shared one common language?
• If people speak more than one language, is what they know different in each language?
• Do you think maths, logic or music should be classified as languages?
• In what ways can language be used to influence, persuade or manipulate people?
• Does language describe our experience of the world, or does it actively shape our experience of the world?
• How are metaphors used in the construction of knowledge?
• To what extent is our perspective determined by our membership of a particular culture?
• To what extent are we aware of the impact of culture on what we believe or know?
• Is there anything that is true for all cultures?
(IBO)
PERSPECTIVE: “If you want to talk about something new, you have to make up a new kind of language.” Haruki Murakami
CULTURE: A BBC article looking at culturally-specific terms that exist in different societies. For suggestions on exploring this source, click here.
TRUTH: “Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Dunn)
Key thinkers
TOK allows us to explore and consider the ideas of a fantastic range of thinkers. For example...
John McWhorter’s brilliant talk discusses how texting is a new ‘miraculous’ form of communicating ideas.
In this talk by Erin McKean, we are encouraged to approach language in a very egalitarian way, in which we are all experts, and we all have the right to decide how language is used and understood.
Mark Pagel’s TED talk illustrates how languages are vibrant, entities that are subject to change and development over time, and both mirror and influence the dynamics of social groups.
James Geary - discusses in this talk about how we all use metaphors, but we don’t perhaps think about them as one of the key ways in which language expresses knowledge and meaning.
(Dunn)
A Guardian article, written entirely by AI, and asking: “Are you scared yet, human?” (for the counterclaim to this, see this follow-up article).
A Slate article, exploring the importance of preserving indigenous languages, and how the Covid shutdown is prompting groups to use online methods to ensure their survival.
A Guardian article looking at how the way we define ‘life’ may impede us in our exploration of space.
A USA Today article, exploring how we use language to explain and make sense of the protests against the killing of George Floyd, and the racism that exists in society.
(Dunn)
Kory Stamper looks in this Vox video at the way language is subject to evolution, and what the role of dictionaries is.
‘Descriptivism’ vs. ‘prescriptivism’; she refers to language as being like ‘a river’.
Can also be linked to the word of the year (see this Collins Dictionary video, looking at the word of the year for 2019).
(Dunn)
Bibliography:
Dunn, Michael. “Theoryofknowledge.net.” Theoryofknowledge.net, theoryofknowledge.net/. Accessed 9 Feb. 2021.
International Baccalaureate Organisation. Language B Guide First Assessment 2020. The Hague, International Baccalaureate Organization, May 2019.