An introduction to experimental methods for language researchers

Imagine yourself as a field researcher sent to Africa to study lion colonies. The savannah can be treacherous in its monotony. Inching forward through the tall grasses you suddenly discover yourself face to face with the snarling leader of a lion tribe. Would you say, “Pardon me, but I would like to know a little more about how you communicate with the other members of your family. For starters, how is it that when you, say, roar, that comes to mean ‘an elephant is coming’?” Maybe you would have a flashback to your philosophical coursework, and begin to wonder about Wittgenstein’s famous aphorism, “If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.” Clearly, asking a lion how he communicates would be fruitless. What you would need to do is arrange controlled circumstances under which you could record his vocalizations in response to situations you construct and whose meaning you do understand. For somewhat similar reasons, there are serious epistemic weaknesses to simply asking a human being how she communicates. Although she may be able to reply in a language that you understand, the introspections that she shares with you will have undergone a great deal of perceptual, cognitive, and social alterations and filtrations. Her subjective report of how she uses language will only be a shadow of how her mind really uses it. To make matters worst, we know that people are not good at understanding why it is they behave in certain ways (Wilson & Nisbett). For cognitive linguists, this issue has particular implications, specifically those of embodiment theory. The following sections will flesh out how to go about asking similar questions, albeit about people, within the confines of the scientific method. They will also address practical concerns that should serve as a preliminary guide to doing experimental work.