By Michaela Vivian
How do Different Languages Influence Thought?
Language influences how we conceptualize the world. Many theories like linguistic relativity and linguistic determinism, propose the relationship between language and human thought. Linguistic relativity is the hypothesis that people who speak different languages think differently while linguistic determinism is the hypothesis that language determines how you think. (Linguistic relativity is the weaker version while language determinism is the stronger version of the relationship between language and thought).
With thousands of languages across the world, there are many concepts which differ among languages like the concept of time, numerical cognition, word order, special cognition and navigation, as well as color terms, gendered language, and even the formation of memories.
Time is a fascinating but sometimes a complicated concept to discuss when looking at how cultures and thus language, impact the concept of time. Lera Boroditsky conducted many studies and found many differences of time-concepts between different languages. For example, she found that those who read from left to right tend to see time moving left to right (ie, English and Spanish) while those who read right to left see time as moving from right to left (ie, Arabic and Hebrew) (Boroditsky, 2011). In this case, the orientation of language, rather than terms, influenced cultural perceptions about a concept.
Even a languages vocabulary and spatial orientation affects one’s sense of time. In a remote Australian aboriginal community of Pormpuraaw, languages do not use the words “left” or “right” but rather use the four cardinal directions when referring to objects in space. Speakers of Kuuk Thaayorre (one of the languages studied) from Pormpuraaw commonly respond to “where are you going” with such responses as “a long way to the northwest”. Thus, if you do not know where you are going, you literally cannot get past hello in the Kuuk Thaayorre language (Boroditsky, 2011). This in turn affects how they chronologically arrange pictures over time (ie, arranging four pictures of an aging man from youngest to oldest). While English speakers will arrange the pictures from left to right since we think of the past as to our left and the future to our right, speakers of Kuuk Thaaayorre arrange the pictures East to West, adjusting for the direction they are facing, even when not told the direction they are facing; they have the ability to know their orientation in a room and thus know which cardinal direction is which from their personal location. So, if they are facing south, they will arrange the pictures from left to right but when facing north, they will arrange the pictures from right to left and when facing east, the cards come towards the body and so on. English speakers cannot attempt to arrange the photos in this way because they lack the spatial knowledge to do so (Boroditsky, 2011). This further emphasizes the influence language has over shaping the brain and its connections which in turn influences how we conceptualize the world. English does not use cardinal directions to identify the location of everyday objects so English speakers do not develop the ability to orient themselves in relation to the four cardinal directions as the speakers of Kuuk Thaayorree can. Here concepts of both time and spatial cognition/navigation were influenced by language: for time, the direction of reading a language influenced how cultures organized time and directional vocabulary (ie left and right versus north, south, east and west) influenced how cultures arranged pictures over a timeline.
Numerical cognition is another concept that differs across languages. Some languages do not have terms for zero, one or two and as a result do not have algebra or keep exact numbers for anything like say how many cans of soup are in the pantry. Having basic counting numbers affects not only how one thinks but also affects what a society can do. For example, if a language does not have terms for zero, one, and two, that culture cannot build a room. A study by Peter Gordon investigated if it was possible for members of the Piraha culture to perceive quantities beyond the limited sets their counting system has picked as well as whether or not they can distinguish between seemingly trivial counting differences between numbers such as four and five. Their counting system has terms for few and many but there are no terms for specific quantities like one or two and they have no word for “zero”. The word for few is “hoi”, with an accent on the “o” and the word for many is “hoi”, with an accent on the “i”. Also, these terms were not used solely for “few” and “any”, but the term for “many” was always used to denote a larger quantity than the word for “few” when both terms were used in the same context. The word for “few” was sometimes used to describe small quantities like two or three, sometimes more. This concept is similar to when English use “a couple” to denote a small amount but differs since if we asked for “a couple of X” and were only given one, we would be upset because the term “one” has privileged status in our society whereas it does not in the Piraha culture. The results of the study showed that participants, when asked to arrange the same number of objects as the researcher, were relatively accurate with up to 2 or 3 items but performance decreased drastically with 8 or 10 items. In the other task, researchers hid candy in a box with a picture of a certain number of fish on the lid and then hid the box behind their back and reproduced two boxes, one being the original box and the other with one more or less fish on the lid than the original. Participants did poorly when distinguishing between seemingly trivial differences of numbers like three and four; their performance rarely went over 50% chance responding. The results show that the counting system of the Piraha limit their ability to identify exact quantities when set size is greater than two or three thus limiting their abilities in other areas like mathematics and physics, even currency (Gordon, 2004). The Piraha’s numerical cognition is determined by their limited numerical terms that their language possesses. Without numbers beyond one and two, the Piraha culture can only progress so far before reaching a wall that cannot be knocked down due to their limited numerical vocabulary and numerical cognition.
In another instance, Goldin-Meadow et al. looked at how word order affected language and thought. They performed two different tasks where in one participants were asked to describe a series of vignettes first verbally and then, using only their hands (physical gestures) without any verbal descriptions. In the second tasks, participants were asked to reconstruct the series of events using transparent pictures and stack them one top of one another to form a single representation of the scene. The second task was meant to assess whether participants extended their word order used in their language to non-verbal or non-communicative tasks. The results showed that while each of the four languages studied did use different word orders in verbal speech (based off of the first task), all four languages used the same ordering when doing the non-communicative task that did not match any language but rather was uniform across the four languages. Also, all four languages matched the order of gestures done in the gesture task (the order in which participants chose transparencies was the same across all four language groups) (Goldin-Meadow et al., 2008). These findings suggest that although verbal language affects how we think, the way we represent events in a nonverbal format do not appear highly influenced by language but rather, there seems to be a natural order that all humans use when describing events nonverbally, no matter their language or culture. In this study, we can see how language influences thoughts when utilized but when language is not required to describe a task, as described above, it seems all humans use a universal communication style, untouched by the influence of culture and language.
Sometimes a change in the environment sparks a change in language and thus thought. It has been found that industrialized languages like English and Spanish have man color terms while other languages have as little as two terms to describe color, dark and lite. It is thought that color language varies so widely across cultures due to the fact that some cultures are industrialized while others are not (Michaels, 1977). As noted, English and Spanish have a wide variety of color terms and both are industrialized cultures. One theory is that the production of synthesized colors in industrial products has changed populations sensory input which in turn changes our language which has to adapt to accommodate the new sensory input and generate new terms to explain the new colors. On the other hand, unindustrialized cultures are not exposed to the mass array of synthesized colors and thus, do not need a plethora of color terms so their language is not altered since their environment remains stable and thus their thoughts remain the same. In addition, some languages set up the concept of color differently (Trafton, 2017). For example, the English language has an umbrella term for all blues, based on color hue, and then we break it down from there. However, the Ancient Greeks based their colors on lightness so they had one general term for dark blue and one general term for lite blue (Youtube: Scott, 2013).
Another way language influences thought is that written language, mainly adjectives, provide clues as to what word is coming next. In a study by Altmann and Kamide, they studied how languages place words in a certain order to be able to achieve comprehension. For example, without adjectives, it would be hard to make distinctions between things that are only different through one feature like color. Humans process language incrementally, in that, language is processed in sections and comprehended in smaller pieces that are then brought together to form the full picture. Adjectives allow the subject’s focus to be narrowed down into identifying the correct objects and nouns. Subjects were shown a picture with a boy and different objects in it like a cake, a train, and a ball. They then listened to a sentence, one that said, “The boy will eat…” and one that said, “The boy will move…”. In the “eat” condition, it was found that people’s eyes move quickly to look at the cake since that is the only object presented in the room that logically makes sense for the boy to eat. In the “move” condition however, the subject’s eye’s do not fixate on any object in the picture until the target object is said in the sentence because any of the objects in the room can be moved by the boy. So, the researchers found that information extracted from verbs like adjectives, can guide our attention to a specific object both visually and auditory (Altmann and Kamide, 1999). Through verbs and adjectives, processors can predict what the target object will be based on contextual information presented before the target object is presented or heard. However, these reaction times, based on eye movements, differ from language to language. For example, in English, the verb “play” can indicate playing sports or instruments or even board games and without further context, processors cannot narrow down what the target object could be. But, in other languages like Mandarin and Spanish, they have two verbs for play where one “play” indicates playing an instrument and the other indicates playing a sport. Thus, Chinese and Spanish speaking individuals could narrow down the target object quicker than English speakers, in the instance of “play”, since they would know from the verb whether it was an instrument or a sport being referred to while English speakers would not know until an adjective was presented or the target object was presented. Depending on what language an individual spoke, it would determine one’s ability to predict what will come next in a sentence, thus influencing one’s thoughts.
Language has a major impact on the way individuals conceptualize the world. In some aspects, language determines our thoughts like how a language’s directional vocabulary determines your spatial cognition and navigation, while other times our thoughts determine our language. Language has influenced such concepts as time, numerical cognition, color terms, and even one’s ability to predict what will come next in a sentence. No matter the language however, all languages greatly influence how you see the world and is a major factor in determining perceptual differences across the globe.
References
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