Wednesday 28 August 2013

The Star Trek Opening Monologue

Captain Kirk (1966-69)
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Captain Picard (1987-1994)
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.



According to the linguistic relativity hypothesis, the language we speak shapes our cognition. It claims that certain properties of our language have consequences for our patterns of thought about reality, i.e. perception and attention. Language influences thought about our reality (Lucy, 1997). In other words, linguistic differences yield differences in speakers' thought (Pae, 2012). Hypothetically, what differences did the opening monologues yield in Kirk's and Picard's thought?...



Lucy, J. A. (1997) Linguistic Relativity. Annual Review of Anthropology, 26, 291-312
Pae, H. K. (2012) Linguistic Relativity Revisited: The Interaction between L1 and L2 in Thinking, Learning, and Production. Psychology, 3(1), 49-56
(monologue literally from Wikipedia, photos via and via)

15 comments:

  1. Abbie Winterburn28 August 2013 at 08:10

    Beuatiful photographs! Amazing find, Laura.

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  2. Jaw-dropping pics, indeed! And I like the comparison of the two Star Trek opening lines, "no man"/"no one"!

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    1. They are from a 1963-Harper's-Bazaar edition. Thank you for your feedback, Derek.

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  3. @ opening lines: this is the small yet impressive difference.

    Truly smashing photos!

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    1. ... "small yet impressive", yes, absolutely. Thanks for your comment, Tim.

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  4. Space goddesses invade!!

    Sorry, I was so enthusiastic about the photos ;) Lovely posting, thanks.

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  5. Thank space goddess for this very blog! Keep going with the flow!

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  6. How true, words create reality.

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    Replies
    1. That is exactly the sentence I had in mind writing this post. Thank you, Kenneth!

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  7. Lovely thoughts :-)

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  8. Picard does not say a "five year mission". He says a "continuing missing".

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