Differences between Languages
Lexicon
What words and categories are available? (e.g., color categories)
Metaphor
What underlying metaphors does a language use to describe events? (e.g., past-behind, future-front relationship in English)
Marking
What categories must be expressed according to the grammar of a language? (e.g., grammatical gender)
Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis
Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis
The linguistic relativity hypothesis is the idea that the language someone speaks affects how they think and perceive the world.
Strong Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The language you speak determines the thoughts you can think. It does not have experimental support.
Weak Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The language you speak has some influence on the thoughts you think.
Experimental Tasks
The main purpose of the experiments below is to disprove the Strong Hypothesis and show that when language use is blocked (e.g., verbal interference) or external cues are given, human cognitive abilities remain fundamentally similar across languages.
Color Perception (Chip Sorting Task)
Procedure
- Show a color chip to subjects
- Wait five seconds
- Make the subject select the color chip presented before among similar color chips.
Result
Discrimination is faster/easier when two color chips cross linguistic category boundaries.
Verbal interference: when subjects repeat words back during the 5-second delay, this categorical advantage disappears.
Words serve as a cognitive tool that aid thinking but do not fundamentally change thinking.
Numerical Cognition (Nuts in a Can Task)
Procedure
- Experimenter throw some nuts into a can.
- Ask a subject to put in the same number of nuts.
Result
Pirahã speakers (a one-two-many language without exact numbers) perform worse on large quantities than English speakers.
Verbal interference: when English speakers were asked to repeat back a bunch of words, their advantage disappears and performance drops to the Pirahã level.
Number words act as a cognitive tool for exact counting.
Spatial Relations (Spatial Rotation Task)
Spatial Relations
- Relative space languages: languages that use words that indicate directions from the perspective of the speaker or the perspective of the listener. (
left,right,front,back)- Absolute space languages: languages that indicate directions relative to fixed landmarks. (e.g.,
North,South,East,West)Task
- Subject views an arrow pointing ahead on Table 1, then turns 180 degrees to face Table 2.
- Relative language speakers: Pick B (preserves relative direction: right / front).
- Absolute language speakers: Pick A (preserves absolute direction: North).
Landmark Effect
When a prominent stable landmark (e.g., a window or door) is visible, English speakers also switch to fixed/absolute reasoning (Pick A).
Time Relations (Temporal Metaphors)
Languages use different underlying metaphors to describe abstract things.
Link to original
- Underlying metaphor: time=money
spending time,wasting time,investing time on a project,budget your time wisely- Underlying metaphor: time duration=length
The summer was long,The winter will be short- Underlying metaphor: time=space:
The future is ahead of us,The past is behind us
