Language: How the language shapes the mind (comparison with other languages)

How the language shapes our mind?(comparison with other languages)

Does the language you speak shape the way you understand the world? Linguists, philosophers, anthropologists, and psychologists have long been interested in this question. Does the fact that languages differ mean that people who speak different languages think about the world differently?

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (aka the Whorfian hypothesis) is named after the two American linguists who first formulated it. They start from the view that we all have a basic need to make sense of the world. To make sense of it, we impose an order on it. They believed that the main tool we have for organising the world is language. Their view is that the language we use determines how we experience the world and how we express that experience. Sapir argued that the real world is to a large extent built up on the language habits of the group. We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached. His student Whorf extended that: We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significance as we do largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way, an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is generally understood as having two different versions:

One is Linguistic Determinism, it states that language determines how people think and feel.

Linguistic Relativity states that language affects the way we perceive and experience the world.

Illustrative Examples

Research in Lera Boroditsky's lab and in many others has been uncovering how language shapes even the most fundamental dimensions of human experience: space, time, causality and relationships to others.

In Pormpuraaw, unlike English, the Kuuk Thaayorre language spoken in Pormpuraaw does not use relative spatial terms such as left and right. Rather Kuuk Thaayorre speakers talk in terms of absolute cardinal directions (north, south, east, west, and so forth). Of course, in English we also use cardinal direction terms but only for large spatial scales. We would not say, for example, “They set the salad forks southeast of the dinner forks—the philistines!” But in Kuuk Thaayorre cardinal directions are used at all scales. This means one ends up saying things like “the cup is southeast of the plate” or “the boy standing to the south of Mary is my brother.” In Pormpuraaw, one must always stay oriented, just to be able to speak properly.

Moreover, groundbreaking work conducted by Stephen C. Levinson of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and John B. Haviland of the University of California, San Diego, over the past two decades has demonstrated that people who speak languages that rely on absolute directions are remarkably good at keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes or inside unfamiliar buildings. They do this better than folks who live in the same environments but do not speak such languages and in fact better than scientists thought humans ever could. The requirements of their languages enforce and train this cognitive prowess. In therms of time, in order to capture the sequential order of events, time is generally considered as a one-dimensional, directional entity. But to be specific, does it move forward or back, left or right, up or down? Does time move horizontally or vertically? Does it move past us, or do we move through it? All of these aspects are left unspecified in our experience with the world. They are, however, specified in our language—most often through spatial metaphors. Across languages people use spatial metaphors to talk about time. In English, we predominantly use front/back terms to talk about time. We can talk about the good times ahead of us or the hardships behind us. We can move meetings forward, push deadlines back, and eat dessert before we are done with our vegetables. On the whole, the terms used to order events are the same as those used to describe asymmetric horizontal spatial relations (e.g., ‘‘he took three steps forward’’ or‘‘the dumpster is behind the store’’).

In Mandarin, front/back spatial metaphors for time are also common. Mandarin speakers use the spatial morphemes qián (‘‘front’’) and hòu (‘‘back’’) to talk about time. Mandarin speakers also systematically use vertical metaphors to talk about time. The spatial morphemes shàng (“up”) and xià (“down”) are frequently used to talk about the order of events, weeks, months, semesters, and more. Earlier events are said to be shàng or “up”, and later events are said to be xià or “down”. Although in English vertical spatial terms can also be used to talk about time (e.g., “hand down knowledge from generation to generation” or “the meeting was coming up” ), these uses are not nearly as common or systematic as is the use of shàng and xià in Mandarin. In summary, both Mandarin and English speakers use horizontal terms to talk about time. In addition, Mandarin speakers commonly use the vertical terms shàng and xià.

And also, lots of languages have grammatical gender. Every noun gets assigned a gender, often masculine or feminine. And these genders differ across languages. For example, the sun is feminine in German but masculine in Spanish and the moon are reverse. Could this actually have any consequences for how people think? Do German speakers think of the sun as more female-like, and the moon more male-like? Actually, it turns out that’s the case. So if you ask German and Spanish speakers to, describe a bridge. “Bridge” happens to be grammatically feminine in German, grammatically masculine in Spanish. German speakers are more likely to describe bridges are “beautiful”, “elegant”, and other feminine words. However, Spanish speakers will be more likely to say “strong” or “long”, those masculine words. These grammatical gender applies to all nouns. That means language can shape how you’re thinking about anything that can be named by a noun.

Language can have big effects like what we saw with the case of space, time and grammatical genders. The beauty of linguistic diversity is that it reveals to us just how ingenious and how flexible the human mind is. And Language can be a powerful tool for shaping abstract thought. When sensory information is scarce or inconclusive, languages may play the most important role in shaping how their speakers think.

Terms

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis 萨丕尔·沃尔夫假说

Linguistic Determinism 语言决定论

Linguistic Relativity 语言相对论

Pormpuraaw 波姆浦洛

Kuuk Thaayorre 库克萨优里语

Questions

1.Can you give us some examples of how languages affects the way we think or behave?

2. Which one do you prefer? Language shapes our mind or mind determines our languages?

References

1. Lera, Boroditsky. (2011) How Language Shapes Thought Scientific American, Vol.304, No.2, pp.62-65.

2. Lera, Boroditsky.(2001) Does Language Shape Thought?: Mandarin and English Speakers’ Conceptions of Time, Cognitive Psychology Volume 43, Issue 1. pp1-22.

3. CHANDLER, Daniel. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.[30.06. 2004], 1994