7 ms·

How Language Seems to Shape One's View of the World

38 points by tannerc 13y ago

fuckpig 13y ago
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Sapir%E2%80%93Whorf_hypothesis.html http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Sapir%E... This was the left's justification for Political Correctness. It's entirely dubious science with a clear agenda behind it: make thoughtcrime illegal.
- bgilroy26 13y ago
  It may be dubious science, but it's important from an 'Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten' perspective. Many of my friends have the "fuck em if they can't take a joke" outlook on political correctness, so I get it. On the other hand, it is more difficult to mix with strangers and new social groups when you aren't used to being polite a lot of the time.
  - midas007 13y ago
    Most British corporate shops, and startups also, transplanted to the US would have everyone headed to HR for sexual harassment training and hurt feelings lawsuits.
    - sitkack 13y ago
      Would it be the brits or the americans heading to the HR department for the violations?
      - midas007 13y ago
        Brits. There is constant teasing and innuendo, and everything's fair game.
  - fuckpig 13y ago
    I don't agree that political correctness "equals" being polite. It's possible to be polite and not be PC. It's in fact possible to not be PC and not be offensive at all (note: politeness was originally a way of dealing with disagreements, including offense, not hiding them). However, our modern masters want us to see the two as conflatable...
ethanpoole 13y ago
Considering that there is so much evidence against linguistic relativity, I do not understand why these types of stories keep appearing on HN.
- DanBC 13y ago
  Do you know enough to be able to write a great rebuttal article? Or to link to a great rebuttal article written by an expert? I'd like to read that.
- quomopete 13y ago
  care to share some of that evidence with the rest of us?
- jgg 13y ago
  What? What about the studies that show that reading Arabic literally uses different parts of your brain than when reading other languages, or even the evidence presented in the article? Even intuitively, it would make sense that different languages/cultures might distinguish or understand different concepts differently...since this is HN, imagine asking a trial of 100 people who have programmed in nothing but COBOL their whole life to explain monads or continuations intuitively, and how they'd use them in practice, compared to a trial of 100 who understood Scheme and Haskell. I think the results would be pretty obvious. Why would structures and concepts in human language be any different? I really don't understand the political posturing behind denying linguistic relativism (not that you're necessarily doing that, of course). src: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11181457 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11181457
  - buss 13y ago
    > Even intuitively, it would make sense that different languages/cultures might distinguish or understand different concepts differently...since this is HN, imagine asking a trial of 100 people who have programmed in nothing but COBOL their whole life to explain monads or continuations intuitively, and how they'd use them in practice, compared to a trial of 100 who understood Scheme and Haskell. I think the results would be pretty obvious. Why would structures and concepts in human language be any different? I'm not a linguist, but have recently started to become familiar with parts of it. I don't think you can reasonably make the comparison between engineered computer languages and our innate language abilities. There's ample evidence for a universal grammar, and that languages are not engineered so much as match patterns we're wired to recognize and be able to manipulate. I can stretch your analogy only as far as recognizing the different grammatical constructs that different languages employ (eg English is subject-verb-object and native English speakers first have trouble understanding and reproducing object-subject-verb constructions but eventually get it). Human languages have nothing truly comparable to the situation you describe. Just because computer languages are called "languages" doesn't mean that it can actually map to a human language.
midas007 13y ago
The apropos book is Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought. [0] (language <~~> culture) ~~> world-view ~~> intention ~~> behavior ~~> result. [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=The+Stuff+of+Thought https://duckduckgo.com/?q=The+Stuff+of+Thought
petercooper 13y ago
The RadioLab episode on this topic was fascinating: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words/
- pstuart 13y ago
  As is this episode as well (the second segment): http://www.radiolab.org/story/91728-words-that-change-the-world/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/91728-words-that-change-the-wo...
Jongseong 13y ago
Proponents of linguistic relativity (or "Whorfianism") have come up with some fantastically absurd claims over the years about how thoughts are constrained by language. And in the popular imagination, these claims would inevitably entangle with stereotypes about speakers of different languages. So I don't blame people for dismissing any discussion about the relationship between language and cognition as fringe theory. But once you move away from the deterministic end of the spectrum, it is clear that there is some relationship after all between language and thought. The key point to understand is, as the linguist Roman Jakobson put it, that “languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey.” An oft-repeated trope is that if a language does not have a word for some concept, then its speaker cannot understand this concept. This is plainly rubbish. Language does not constrain thought in that way. People can understand concepts without having the words to express them, and if need be, can always find new ways to express them in words, coining new terms if necessary. Reality is much more subtle. Language only determines what we have to pay attention to. Take a look at the example of the distinction between cups and glasses in English as opposed to that between "chashka" and "stakan" in Russian. Suppose a Russian-English bilingual was presented with four objects—a cup-"chashka", a glass-"chashka", a cup-"stakan", and a glass-"stakan"—and instructed to group them into pairs of similar objects. What would the response be? Would it depend on the language that the instruction was given in? These are the sorts of interesting questions that we can ask about language and cognition. Speakers of different languages are capable of performing all the same cognitive tasks, but different languages may privilege different pathways to the solution.
- sitkack 13y ago
  But if I am using Forth I am going to be much more cognizant of what is on the stack than if I was using say, Python. What is possible and what is easy or normal are often far apart. What about compile time macros or run time macros? Users of languages that do not have those features often have a hard time grasping them. Yet they are totally possible in most languages we use today (eval,Janino,etc). EDIT: Apparently linguistic relativity says, if there isn't a word for it then I can't understand it (to horribly paraphrase). Is that a somewhat correct interpretation? Yes, you said that. I guess my conjecture is that while I don't agree with LR if that is the definition, the semantics of the language definitely change what is easily expressed (no shit), the aborigine girls are constantly aware of their position vector, most people are not. The way they use language has shaped their thinking.
naturalethic 13y ago
The biggest problem, from my point of view, with language is the construction of objective statements to convey subjective values.
drdeadringer 13y ago
I thought that the author Ursula Le Guin dug into this in her literary work, for example in her book 'The Dispossessed'. There was a specific example of the difference between "This is the brush that I use" and "This is my brush". Ownership of the brush between the two statements is one of communal ownership and personal ownership.

38 points by tannerc 13y ago

http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Sapir%E2%80%93Whorf_hypothesis.html http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Sapir%E... This was the left's justification for Political Correctness. It's entirely dubious science with a clear agenda behind it: make thoughtcrime illegal.

bgilroy26 13y ago
It may be dubious science, but it's important from an 'Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten' perspective. Many of my friends have the "fuck em if they can't take a joke" outlook on political correctness, so I get it. On the other hand, it is more difficult to mix with strangers and new social groups when you aren't used to being polite a lot of the time.
- midas007 13y ago
  Most British corporate shops, and startups also, transplanted to the US would have everyone headed to HR for sexual harassment training and hurt feelings lawsuits.
  - sitkack 13y ago
    Would it be the brits or the americans heading to the HR department for the violations?
    - midas007 13y ago
      Brits. There is constant teasing and innuendo, and everything's fair game.
- fuckpig 13y ago
  I don't agree that political correctness "equals" being polite. It's possible to be polite and not be PC. It's in fact possible to not be PC and not be offensive at all (note: politeness was originally a way of dealing with disagreements, including offense, not hiding them). However, our modern masters want us to see the two as conflatable...

ethanpoole 13y ago

Considering that there is so much evidence against linguistic relativity, I do not understand why these types of stories keep appearing on HN.

DanBC 13y ago
Do you know enough to be able to write a great rebuttal article? Or to link to a great rebuttal article written by an expert? I'd like to read that.
quomopete 13y ago
care to share some of that evidence with the rest of us?
jgg 13y ago
What? What about the studies that show that reading Arabic literally uses different parts of your brain than when reading other languages, or even the evidence presented in the article? Even intuitively, it would make sense that different languages/cultures might distinguish or understand different concepts differently...since this is HN, imagine asking a trial of 100 people who have programmed in nothing but COBOL their whole life to explain monads or continuations intuitively, and how they'd use them in practice, compared to a trial of 100 who understood Scheme and Haskell. I think the results would be pretty obvious. Why would structures and concepts in human language be any different? I really don't understand the political posturing behind denying linguistic relativism (not that you're necessarily doing that, of course). src: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11181457 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11181457
- buss 13y ago
  > Even intuitively, it would make sense that different languages/cultures might distinguish or understand different concepts differently...since this is HN, imagine asking a trial of 100 people who have programmed in nothing but COBOL their whole life to explain monads or continuations intuitively, and how they'd use them in practice, compared to a trial of 100 who understood Scheme and Haskell. I think the results would be pretty obvious. Why would structures and concepts in human language be any different? I'm not a linguist, but have recently started to become familiar with parts of it. I don't think you can reasonably make the comparison between engineered computer languages and our innate language abilities. There's ample evidence for a universal grammar, and that languages are not engineered so much as match patterns we're wired to recognize and be able to manipulate. I can stretch your analogy only as far as recognizing the different grammatical constructs that different languages employ (eg English is subject-verb-object and native English speakers first have trouble understanding and reproducing object-subject-verb constructions but eventually get it). Human languages have nothing truly comparable to the situation you describe. Just because computer languages are called "languages" doesn't mean that it can actually map to a human language.

midas007 13y ago

The apropos book is Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought. [0] (language <~~> culture) ~~> world-view ~~> intention ~~> behavior ~~> result. [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=The+Stuff+of+Thought https://duckduckgo.com/?q=The+Stuff+of+Thought

petercooper 13y ago

The RadioLab episode on this topic was fascinating: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words/

pstuart 13y ago
As is this episode as well (the second segment): http://www.radiolab.org/story/91728-words-that-change-the-world/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/91728-words-that-change-the-wo...

Jongseong 13y ago

Proponents of linguistic relativity (or "Whorfianism") have come up with some fantastically absurd claims over the years about how thoughts are constrained by language. And in the popular imagination, these claims would inevitably entangle with stereotypes about speakers of different languages. So I don't blame people for dismissing any discussion about the relationship between language and cognition as fringe theory. But once you move away from the deterministic end of the spectrum, it is clear that there is some relationship after all between language and thought. The key point to understand is, as the linguist Roman Jakobson put it, that “languages differ essentially in what they _must_ convey and not in what they _may_ convey.” An oft-repeated trope is that if a language does not have a word for some concept, then its speaker cannot understand this concept. This is plainly rubbish. Language does not constrain thought in that way. People can understand concepts without having the words to express them, and if need be, can always find new ways to express them in words, coining new terms if necessary. Reality is much more subtle. Language only determines what we have to pay attention to. Take a look at the example of the distinction between cups and glasses in English as opposed to that between "chashka" and "stakan" in Russian. Suppose a Russian-English bilingual was presented with four objects—a cup-"chashka", a glass-"chashka", a cup-"stakan", and a glass-"stakan"—and instructed to group them into pairs of similar objects. What would the response be? Would it depend on the language that the instruction was given in? These are the sorts of interesting questions that we can ask about language and cognition. Speakers of different languages are capable of performing all the same cognitive tasks, but different languages may privilege different pathways to the solution.

sitkack 13y ago
But if I am using Forth I am going to be much more cognizant of what is on the stack than if I was using say, Python. What is possible and what is easy or normal are often far apart. What about compile time macros or run time macros? Users of languages that do not have those features often have a hard time grasping them. Yet they are totally possible in most languages we use today (eval,Janino,etc). EDIT: Apparently linguistic relativity says, if there isn't a word for it then I can't understand it (to horribly paraphrase). Is that a somewhat correct interpretation? Yes, you said that. I guess my conjecture is that while I don't agree with LR if that is the definition, the semantics of the language definitely change what is easily expressed (no shit), the aborigine girls are constantly aware of their position vector, most people are not. The way they use language has shaped their thinking.

naturalethic 13y ago

The biggest problem, from my point of view, with language is the construction of objective statements to convey subjective values.

drdeadringer 13y ago

I thought that the author Ursula Le Guin dug into this in her literary work, for example in her book 'The Dispossessed'. There was a specific example of the difference between "This is the brush that I use" and "This is my brush". Ownership of the brush between the two statements is one of communal ownership and personal ownership.