I’ve been lucky enough to be put in touch with someone embarking on an M.A in Applied Linguistics at the University of Birmingham. She has told me about some of the recent books on her reading list and I look forward to getting up to date with what is happening in some of the research areas of the subject.

I was particularly interested in the work of Michael Tomasello, Co-Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. I hope to get one of his books but meanwhile I have enjoyed a lecture on:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8933367116959974563Here Tomasello describes ongoing research into the similarities and differences between thinking in primates and humans. One fascinating point is the age-old dichotomy between nature and nurture is no longer straightforward. As an ant is born to live in an anthill, so man is born into a shared culture. Neither ant nor man could survive alone as an individual. If they don’t collaborate they don’t eat. They are products of both biology and culture.

A point important for education is that human culture is dependent on empathy. We learn as infants to communicate with others and to focus on shared intentions. Where, Tomasello hypothesizes, apes also co-operate in, for instance, hunting down monkeys, human beings also make multi-layered inferences about what other people are thinking and also about their place in relation to others. The complications of civilization depend on this infinitely subtle ability.