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Are There "Happy Languages?"
In this interesting blog post, Olivia Judson asks whether certain languages predispose their speakers toward happiness more than other languages do. That's an odd twist on the old linguistic relativism of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. The question being asked here relates to sounds in a language, what articulatory mechanisms are needed to produce them, how those mechanisms affect the face, and then what sort of facial expressions they lead to. Judson gives the example of the vowel in see or be. To produce it, the lips are drawn back slightly, into a bit of a smile. Pushing that observation to a point that's probably extreme, the question is, if a language has a lot of "happy vowels" like this, and fewer vowels that produce frown-like expressions, are its speakers more likely to be happy? Well, it's definitely a research question. And it's probably something that some number of grad students in linguistics would love to do research on. I'm sure many linguists would not take the proposal very seriously, but hey, who knows. You can't have an answer without asking the question. And a serious piece of research in this area is certainly one way to make a name for oneself in the field. Although it's not clear that there would be a smiley face next the name... [CHRIS]
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