At 7 p.m.,November 25th, 2014, a lecture entitled “The Beauty of Language” was held in Room 116 of the art building by School of Foreign Languages(SFL). In the lecture, Professor Yang Linxiu from SFL shared with the audience her experience in England. Taking this opportunity, Ms. Yang guided all the students present to a world of language, leading them to feel the beauty of language with their heart. This lecture was interesting and greatly intensified students’ passion for learning language.
At the very beginning of the lecture, Ms. Yang proposed that one should feel the beauty of language and understand its charm and implications. She told all the students present that the beauty of language lay in the fact that it could help us perceive truth, kindness and beauty. And then, Ms. Yang divided the lecture into three parts, namely “The Sensitivity of Language”, “The Sensitivity of Linguistics” and “The Linguistic Expression of Inner Feelings”, touching upon such topics as language context and language sense, language and daily life, and language and emotion. All these perfectly interpreted that language was a body of knowledge and also a kind of art.
The lecture, with many bright spots, helped the students to have a deep understanding of the relationship between language and culture. All the students were deeply impressed by the diversity of world customs and habits. When relating the sensitivity of language, Ms. Yang used the slogan of a coat - “Korean to the bone” - as an example to explain how differently she herself and her friend understood this slogan. In Ms. Yang’s opinion, “Korean to the bone” not only represented the fashion of Korean culture, but also perfectly corresponded to the style of this coat. The designer of this slogan was sensitive, and the person who found the beauty of this slogan was even more so by combining herself with the language closely. What impressed the students most was that Ms. Yang shared with them the experience during her stay in England. At a bookshop, she saw BUY ONE GET ONE HALF PRICE on a book cover and punctuated the sentence as BUY ONE GET ONE, HALF PRICE (buy one and get the second free). However, in fact, when paying at the cashier, she found that the money she was asked to pay was not the same as what she had prepared. Only at that very moment did she realize that the sentence should be punctuated as BYE ONE, GET ONE HALF PRICE (buy one and get the second half price). When listening to this vivid case, all students present, whose strong thirst for knowledge were evoked by the lively atmosphere, were curious to guess the original meaning along with Ms. Yang’s explanation. From the real story, they all understood the sensitivity of linguistics in business context.
In the conclusion part, Ms. Yang roughly talked about language as a way of expressing inner feelings. She said that only in writing will one be aware that loneliness is a person’s carnival. From students’ admiration, it was not hard to find that the beauty of language had burgeoned in every listener’s heart. At the very end of the lecture, Ms. Yang stressed again and again, “It is not enough to only recite words or sentences in learning a language. The true language can help us keep the time and look for the traces of past when we sigh where time has gone.” That may be the motto coming down through years. It may guide language-lovers to come out of the boring drill of vocabulary, sentence patterns and grammar and go towards the true love for language.
Professor Yang once lived in Birmingham for one year or so, during which her son studied in England as well. After displaying power point slides, she shared with the audience some articles of her diary about her son’s growth in UK. One of them was about the story when her son Yangyang was about to leave England. As his classmates were unwilling to say goodbye to him, a little girl embraced him and said, “Don’t go anywhere”. Without magnificent words or complex sentences, these three simple words from a little girl with limited vocabulary moved them all. That was exactly the power of language. The beauty of language lies neither only in its literal meaning nor in the deliberate combination of words. Rather, the greatness of language lies in the feelings it expresses and the great power we get from it. As a medium, language also demonstrates the cultural differences between different countries. Chinese people are more conservative and reserved in expressing their feelings while English people are more open-minded and straightforward to express themselves. This kind of cultural diversity can be reflected through language. Language is more than several passages in textbooks. It is not something complicated or mysterious, but something that exists in our daily life in a flexible and lively way at every moment and that brings us various life experiences. Professor Yang keeps in mind those seemingly insignificant pieces in life so that she finds the beauty of language which is hardly noticed by others.
To bring the lecture to an end, Ms. Yang expressed her best wishes to every student present. By taking full advantage of the method of “heuristic learning” and “mission-guided teaching”, Ms. Yang helped students to know how the beauty of life could be transferred through language. It is believed that this lecture would be of great guidance for students’ future language learning.
School of Foreign Languages
Nov. 25th, 2014
(2014MTI)