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Proponents of linguistic relativity (or "Whorfianism") have come up with some fantastically absurd claims over the years about how thoughts are constrained by l

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.
oakwhiz 13y ago
>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. You can find some very interesting examples of this from Chinese internet terminology. In an environment where "thoughtcrime" exists in some form, Chinese internet users have developed a lexicon of strange-sounding euphemisms for things that are forbidden to be discussed. http://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/The_Grass-Mud_Horse_Lexicon http://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/The_Grass-Mud_Horse_Lexic... http://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Grass-Mud_Horse_Lexicon http://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Grass-Mud_Horse_Lexicon
DanielStraight 13y ago
I'm not disagreeing, but even from my modest knowledge of German as a second language, I find myself inserting German words (or at least wanting to) into English because of gaps in English. It's not that I can't say "create" or "make" and tack on some extra words to imply a craft/handicraft/tinkering meaning. I just find that without the word "basteln", a lot of times even though I could, I don't. "Basteln" is a great word for everyday speech that there simply isn't a good equivalent of in English. (Ok, for gamers, you can probably use "craft" as a verb and get the basic meaning, but most people don't use the word that way.) I don't find it hard to believe that I would use that meaning more often if I had a simple word for it.
Theodores 13y ago
What you say about how language does not constrain our thoughts is borne out by American English. This was the product of Noah Webster and his educational materials including the dictionary - 'Mirriam Webster'. The rationale was to move the language away from 'aristocratic' English and to make things secular. Obviously the spellings survived - 'color' - but god somehow thrived in America (we are secular in the UK). Webster was well aware that language could constrain thought or at least shape it, this was the rationale behind his work. However, do Americans think differently in subtle ways compared to Brits due to the changes to the language made aeons ago by Webster?
- Jongseong 13y ago
  Other than in matters of spelling (which belongs to the realm of written language and is thus outside the scope of usual discussions about language and cognition), Noah Webster did not introduce any significant differences in American English in terms of grammatical categories, syntax, etc. Any influence he might have had was in matters of diction in the sense of vocabulary and stylistic choices. If Webster's educational materials were intended to be secular, they achieved this by choosing expressions that avoid religious references, for example, not by changing the building blocks of the language to make secular thoughts easier to express. The relationship between diction and cognition may be an interesting topic in itself, but it's not what we mean when we usually discuss language and cognition, where we are concerned with the structural aspects of the language itself, e.g. its tense or pronoun system, not the stylistic choice of what we express with it.
Buttons840 13y ago
> Reality is much more subtle. Language only determines what we have to pay attention to. Yes. I've read a entertaining book on the subject ( http://www.amazon.com/Through-Language-Glass-Different-Languages/dp/0312610491 http://www.amazon.com/Through-Language-Glass-Different-Langu... ). Especially fascinating was the Guugu Yimithirr language, which has no words for relative directions, no "left" or "right". Speakers of this language gained an amazing ability to know compass directions. If you lead them through a winding museum and then ask them to describe the Mona Lisa they would: "It's a lady, facing east." The Guugu Yimithirr forces everyone to be aware of compass directions at all times, and they get good at it. The book draws the same conclusion: language forces us to learn, and reveal in conversation, certain concepts; but it does not limit our ability to understand foreign concepts. The fun question then: what concepts does English force us to be aware of?
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  Well, again, the example you give is a point about the culture, not the language. Even if your language lacks words for "left" and "right", there's nothing stopping you from saying "there is an ant crawling up what would be your west leg if you were facing north". As to the conclusion you report, the first part ("language forces us to learn certain concepts") is obviously correct; the second ("language forces us to reveal certain concepts in conversation") is not so -- people are routinely blasted for speaking "evasively". If you really care about not revealing a certain piece of information, there's always a way to do it (although you may reveal that you're hiding something, or at least talking in a very shifty manner). > The fun question then: what concepts does English force us to be aware of? Rather than a direct answer to this, I want to talk about some related observations I've made. - In English, third-person singular pronouns ("he", "she", "it", and their inflections) are obligatorily gendered; they are marked for a sense of personhood, intimacy, or animacy ("it" vs "he"/"she") and for sex ("he" vs "she"). So, in the sense you reference, English "forces" speakers to be aware of whether the people they're talking about are male or female. The example is not a trivial one; in Mandarin Chinese there is only one third person pronoun ("ta"). Chinese-speaking English learners routinely use the wrong pronoun in their English speech. And it's also frequent for a sentence, or longer stretch of speech, in spoken Chinese to make no real indication of what the sex of the person under discussion is. However... Chinese people maintain the basically 100% awareness of what sex people are that you'd expect, regardless of the latitude their language allows them to ignore it.
tetha 13y ago
> Reality is much more subtle. Language only determines what we have to pay attention to. If you put it that way, it's as obvious as a brick wall and I'm wondering why there is no way further onwards here. Thinking about it: Language didn't develop without reason, I'm pretty sure. Language developed to communicate more precisely, since it provided an advantage to communicate more efficiently. Thus, language only expresses what it needs to express and develops from there. In a sense, which I find rather funny, you don't have to venture into different lands to find linguistic problems. Just look around in your company. We developers have words for things and our marketing guys don't even know that these things exist, and I'm darned sure it's the other way around, too. Similarly, the inuit have tons of words for snow, and I have like... 6. I don't even know how many forms and characteristics of snow they even distinguish there.

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.

oakwhiz 13y ago

>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. You can find some very interesting examples of this from Chinese internet terminology. In an environment where "thoughtcrime" exists in some form, Chinese internet users have developed a lexicon of strange-sounding euphemisms for things that are forbidden to be discussed. http://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/The_Grass-Mud_Horse_Lexicon http://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/The_Grass-Mud_Horse_Lexic... http://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Grass-Mud_Horse_Lexicon http://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Grass-Mud_Horse_Lexicon

DanielStraight 13y ago

I'm not disagreeing, but even from my modest knowledge of German as a second language, I find myself inserting German words (or at least wanting to) into English because of gaps in English. It's not that I can't say "create" or "make" and tack on some extra words to imply a craft/handicraft/tinkering meaning. I just find that without the word "basteln", a lot of times even though I could, I don't. "Basteln" is a great word for everyday speech that there simply isn't a good equivalent of in English. (Ok, for gamers, you can probably use "craft" as a verb and get the basic meaning, but most people don't use the word that way.) I don't find it hard to believe that I would use that meaning more often if I had a simple word for it.

Theodores 13y ago

What you say about how language does not constrain our thoughts is borne out by American English. This was the product of Noah Webster and his educational materials including the dictionary - 'Mirriam Webster'. The rationale was to move the language away from 'aristocratic' English and to make things secular. Obviously the spellings survived - 'color' - but god somehow thrived in America (we are secular in the UK). Webster was well aware that language could constrain thought or at least shape it, this was the rationale behind his work. However, do Americans think differently in subtle ways compared to Brits due to the changes to the language made aeons ago by Webster?

Jongseong 13y ago
Other than in matters of spelling (which belongs to the realm of written language and is thus outside the scope of usual discussions about language and cognition), Noah Webster did not introduce any significant differences in American English in terms of grammatical categories, syntax, etc. Any influence he might have had was in matters of diction in the sense of vocabulary and stylistic choices. If Webster's educational materials were intended to be secular, they achieved this by choosing expressions that avoid religious references, for example, not by changing the building blocks of the language to make secular thoughts easier to express. The relationship between diction and cognition may be an interesting topic in itself, but it's not what we mean when we usually discuss language and cognition, where we are concerned with the structural aspects of the language itself, e.g. its tense or pronoun system, not the stylistic choice of what we express with it.

Buttons840 13y ago

> Reality is much more subtle. Language only determines what we have to pay attention to. Yes. I've read a entertaining book on the subject ( http://www.amazon.com/Through-Language-Glass-Different-Languages/dp/0312610491 http://www.amazon.com/Through-Language-Glass-Different-Langu... ). Especially fascinating was the Guugu Yimithirr language, which has no words for relative directions, no "left" or "right". Speakers of this language gained an amazing ability to know compass directions. If you lead them through a winding museum and then ask them to describe the Mona Lisa they would: "It's a lady, facing east." The Guugu Yimithirr forces everyone to be aware of compass directions at all times, and they get good at it. The book draws the same conclusion: language forces us to learn, and reveal in conversation, certain concepts; but it does not limit our ability to understand foreign concepts. The fun question then: what concepts does English force us to be aware of?

thaumasiotes 13y ago
Well, again, the example you give is a point about the culture, not the language. Even if your language lacks words for "left" and "right", there's nothing stopping you from saying "there is an ant crawling up what would be your west leg if you were facing north". As to the conclusion you report, the first part ("language forces us to learn certain concepts") is obviously correct; the second ("language forces us to reveal certain concepts in conversation") is not so -- people are routinely blasted for speaking "evasively". If you really care about not revealing a certain piece of information, there's always a way to do it (although you may reveal that you're hiding something, or at least talking in a very shifty manner). > The fun question then: what concepts does English force us to be aware of? Rather than a direct answer to this, I want to talk about some related observations I've made. - In English, third-person singular pronouns ("he", "she", "it", and their inflections) are obligatorily gendered; they are marked for a sense of personhood, intimacy, or animacy ("it" vs "he"/"she") and for sex ("he" vs "she"). So, in the sense you reference, English "forces" speakers to be aware of whether the people they're talking about are male or female. The example is not a trivial one; in Mandarin Chinese there is only one third person pronoun ("ta"). Chinese-speaking English learners routinely use the wrong pronoun in their English speech. And it's also frequent for a sentence, or longer stretch of speech, in spoken Chinese to make no real indication of what the sex of the person under discussion is. However... Chinese people maintain the basically 100% awareness of what sex people are that you'd expect, regardless of the latitude their language allows them to ignore it.

tetha 13y ago

> Reality is much more subtle. Language only determines what we have to pay attention to. If you put it that way, it's as obvious as a brick wall and I'm wondering why there is no way further onwards here. Thinking about it: Language didn't develop without reason, I'm pretty sure. Language developed to communicate more precisely, since it provided an advantage to communicate more efficiently. Thus, language only expresses what it needs to express and develops from there. In a sense, which I find rather funny, you don't have to venture into different lands to find linguistic problems. Just look around in your company. We developers have words for things and our marketing guys don't even know that these things exist, and I'm darned sure it's the other way around, too. Similarly, the inuit have tons of words for snow, and I have like... 6. I don't even know how many forms and characteristics of snow they even distinguish there.