language and thought Flashcards
The traditional view
- thought has priority over language
- languages are adapted to express the views we have
traditional view explanation
- we have a language of thought or mentalese
- which has a lot in coom with natural languages
- natural languages are the way we are so we can externally express why we are thinking in mentalese
The linguistic relative hypothesis
Sapir-Whorf hypotheses
- language determines thought
- culture determines language
- the Hopi do not have a linear concept of time
- the Inuit cultures have vastly more words for types of snow than english speakers
- not having the word for a concept makes it hard/impossible to understand e.g. german’s have a word for the last item on a plate of food
the linguistic relative hypothesis: sentence structure
english: is is a dripping spring
apache: water move down be clear
versions of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Strong - the language someone speaks determines how they think
weak - the language someone speaks makes certain types of thought easy for them and other types difficult
very weak - the language someone speaks affects how easily information can be encoded and remembered
> different versions makes it difficult to devise a test of the hypothesis
Whorf’s story
- fire prevention engineer studied linguistic in spare time
- studied Amerindian languages when they were falling into disuse and in danger of disappearing
- after publication his work became influential
- Lenneberg appeared to have results which supported him - later it seemed other results went against his ideas - criticised for being unscholarly and imprecise
- 2000> ideas = revisited
General Criticisms of Whorf
- assumed simplistic, word by word approach to translation
- assumed every aspect of language and language structure = reflected by thought
- ignores fact that languages can express concepts that we do not have words for - e.g. german word for last item of food on plate
- ignores that language difference almost always go together with cultural differences
> cultural differences may be more important than language differences in bringing about different ways of thinking
psychology against Whorf
- classic finding: speakers of languages with very different colour vocabularies (some languages only have 2 words that are pure-colour terms) see colours in very similar ways
- Rosch
led to: basic colour terms by Berlin and Key = cements anti-Whorfian position
perceiving colours = very small level of thinking if thinking at all
Basic colour terms
- terms whose primary meaning is just a colour
- different languages have different no. of these
- order in which terms appear in languages is fixed
Black White
Red
Yellow Green Blue
Brown
Pink Purple Orange Grey
biological based not language based
Roberson - recent work on colour
- studies Berinmo tribe vs english speakers
- Berinmo have 5 basic colour terms
- unlike Rosch found that across tasks categorical perception was aligned with colour terms
- suggest that perception/thought is guided by language categories
Russian studies - recent work on colour
- Russian has 2 basic colour terms for the area of colour space that is called blue in English
- Goluboy - L BLUE
- Siniy - D BLUE
- Russian speakers find it easier to discriminate between l and b blues
- this effect goes if performing a verbal interference task at the same time - prevent verbal labels for colours
2 types of actions
intentional
accidental
intentional vs accidental actions - Spain vs England - theory
English: she broke the vase vs the vase broke
Spanish: she broke the vase vs vase broke itself
is there a difference in how often speakers use agentive vs non-agentive terms AND does this influence recollection of event
intentional vs accidental actions - Spain vs England - study
Task: watch video of accidental and intentional events
study 1: what happened?
study 2: who did it?
1:
intentional events: no difference
Accidentally: English speakers used agentic (she broke..) more than Spanish speakers
- non-agentive construction is more common in Spanish than in English who still to she broke even in cases of no agency
2:
intentional: no difference
accidental: English speakers much more likely to remember actor than Spanish - English encoded that SOMEONE did it
control showed no baseline language differences in memory ability
intentional vs accidental actions - spain vs England - conclusion
- language influenced the encoding/memory of the event
Boroditsky: time metaphors in Mandarin and English:
- English talk as if time is on a horizontal line and Mandarin vertical
- each primed respective time judgements
Chen - Mandarin speakers also use horizontal metaphors tho…
f(ailed to replicate)
