Tuesday, October 9, 2007

The Case for Linguistic Determinism

We go off on a lot of different tangents in this class, but the main question we keep coming back to is: Does language shape the way we think? (That's the title of the seminar, after all!) I definitely don't propose to answer that question in one blog post. But here's an interesting article (not recent--it's from 2004) I found that can help make the case that how we speak does, in fact, affect the way we think.

There is a hunter-gatherer tribe in Brazil called the Piraha, whose language contains only words for the numbers one and two; for all other numbers, a word that simply signifies "many" is used. Psychologists then conducted a study in which they gave tribe members a variety of counting tasks. For example, a random number of familiar objects were laid out in a row in front of them, and the Piraha were asked to lay out the same number of objects from their own pile of objects. The result? "For one, two and three objects, members of the tribe consistently matched Gordon’s pile correctly. But for four and five and up to ten, they could only match it approximately, deviating more from the correct number as the row got longer." The fact that they did not match the number of objects is not definitive in determining whether or not they can count. Or instead, maybe the experiment can show that they cannot count according to our definition of counting--but does that mean that there is something inherently different in their brains? Or is counting something less basic, less indicative of the way we think?

The experiment seems to provide strong support for the idea that our thoughts are shaped by our language; because the Piraha did not have words for larger numbers, they could not differentiate between rows of four and rows of five. However, there are also a lot of other explanations for this phenomenon, which have a lot to do with the fact that the Piraha have such a different culture. For one thing, coming up with the equivalent number of objects may not have seemed very important to them. Also, they may not be used to doing such tasks. The fact that they did not match the number of objects is not definitive in determining whether or not they can count. Or instead, maybe the experiment can show that they cannot count according to our definition of counting--but does that mean that there is something inherently different in their brains? Or is counting something less basic, less indicative of the way we think?

[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6303.html]

I'd love to find out about more experiments that attempt to find out more about the influence of languags, but it seems as though although the question is widely debated, only a small number of experiments on the topic have been done. (Actually, one of the links that came up while I was searching for this was Lera's, which referenced experiments showing that "the extent to which Mandarin–English bilinguals think about time vertically is related to how old they were when they first began to learn English" and "Mandarin speakers tended to think about time vertically even when they were thinking for English.")

[http://http-server.carleton.ca/~jlogan/PSYC4704/BORODITSKY2001.pdf]

5 comments:

Khanh said...

Awesome find, and awesome post! I love reading about psych experiments; you notice through their results some things you would never notice about yourself otherwise. The experiment with counting definitely suggests that language shapes our thought focus: what it emphasizes is what we most pay attention to.

Varun Sivaram said...

oh sweet, i was looking for that article by prof boroditsky cuz i read the other more general one on time and space. basically, this is pretty cool, but im writing this like a minute before clas starts so im leaving now. tell you more abt it later :)

Autumn Albers said...

Fascinating. It seems that language can influence what type of information we find pertinent. In the English language, we distinguish so much between the numbers four and five, but perhaps in other cultures four and five are not so different. I am wondering whether the lack of larger numbers in the language stems from a lack of necessity in the culture (they simply do not need numbers that are larger in daily life), or whether the fact that they only have small numbers has made it seem unimportant to distinguish between larger numbers in the culture. Did culture influence their language or did language influence their culture/counting abilities? Or is it a combination of both?

Steve said...

Great post and great discussion! If you're interested in reading about more experiments on the language influencing thought front, let me know and i can send them out!

Maya said...

steve: YES! please do