This is how your language affects your thoughts
This week we're covering the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. The strong form of the argument says that language determines thoughts. The weak form says that language influences thoughts.
Benjamin Lee Whorf was a student of Edward Sapir. Before studying linguistics, though, he worked for a fire insurance company as a chemical engineer. It was his job to go through hundreds of case files and note why the fires started.
He started realizing some strange patterns. He realized that people took fewer precautions when there was a language-cue that they were safe.
For example, if there were canisters labeled “gasoline drums,” no worker would ever smoke near them because they were explicitly dangerous.
However, when the canisters were labeled “empty gasoline drums,” workers would be less vigilant and would smoke near them.
The word empty, in their minds, meant “free of risk.” This perplexed Whorf as he knew that empty canisters were, in fact, more dangerous because they had explosive vapor in them.
The language they were surrounded by influenced their actions.
Whorf went on to study linguistics and created an entire theory around this idea1.
And that’s our topic for this week: Does language affect thought? The strong form of the theory is called linguistic determinism and says that language determines thoughts. The weak form is called linguistic relativity and says that language influences thought.
How different are different languages?
Languages are often seen as translations, or different ways of saying the same thing.
For example, I speak three languages—English, Spanish, Swiss German. Three languages from the same language family, that are typologically similar. They have different vocabulary and grammar rules, but the thoughts that I express in these three languages are rather similar.
When I started learning about how differently languages conceive of things, like colors, numbers, time, and space, I realized why this theory exists in the first place.
Colors
I think the easiest one to start with is color: not all languages have the same color terms. If you give speakers of different languages a color spectrum and ask them to label when one color becomes another, they will give different answers.
Some languages have fewer color words than English.
Pirahã only has two color words: light and dark. What an English speaker might call dark red, speakers of Pirahã would just call dark2.
Some languages have more distinctions than English.
Russian has two concrete categories for what English speakers consider blue. Russian speakers would differentiate lighter blues, goluboy, from darker blues, siniy, while English speakers would label both of them as just blue3.
I have questions!
The fact that speakers of different languages talk about colors differently opens a host of questions. To center these questions we can use an examples from Greece. In Ancient Greece, Homer, in the Odyssey and the Illiad, called the sea “wine dark.” Today, Modern Greek, like Russian, has two concrete words for blue.
Did the color of the sea change throughout history? No. Were the Ancient Greeks unable to perceive blue-green? No.
They simply didn’t have a word for blue-green. So they went for words they did have, like “wine dark.”
Is our language changing what we see?
Cognitively speaking, sighted people can perceive all colors, regardless of language. It’s just that some languages make an association between a perception and a word.
For example, in a matching exercise, English speakers can tell the difference between light and dark blue. But, they’re going to be slower than Russian speakers, who constantly reinforce that distinction in their minds through language4.
Numbers
Same as color, not all languages use the same number words.
The Pirahã5 in Brazil have three number words: hói, which means “a small size or amount;” hoí, which means “somewhat larger size or amount;” and baagi which means “many.” They also use the word hói to mean “small” and ogii to mean “many,” (Everett, 2005).
To study whether language determined the Pirahã’s ability to understand numbers, researchers had Pirahã participants work on a matching task. They were presented with a line of objects and were tasked to make their own line with the same number of objects. They were very accurate and consistent when there were 1-3 objects, but less accurate and consistent for numbers higher than 3 (Everett & Madora, 2012).
Researchers have cited this as a case of linguistic determinism. Since the Pirahã don’t have exact number words, they don’t conceive of exact numbers. Language determines thought.
Do they need numbers?
It’s important to note that young Pirahã speakers can learn numbers through Portuguese, but older Pirahã speakers often seem uninterested (Tetel-Andresen, 2013).
In other words:
“Not all human groups have found it useful, desirable or necessary to develop more elaborated forms of arithmetic and mathematics (p. 208).”
This quote is reminiscent of Lippi-Green’s linguistic fact that says that all languages are equal in terms of linguistic potential. These speakers don’t have numbers because they haven’t needed them.
Time
Tetel-Andresen writes in her book that she gives students an assignment: Draw how you visualize the sequence of months.
Pause your reading and think about what you would draw.
I drew a timeline, which started with the current month and extended into the future. I thought it was the obvious answer. But it’s not.
Tetel-Andresen notes that in her classes, speakers of European language tend to draw horizontal lines with the past on the left and the future on the right.
Mandarin speakers tend to draw vertical representations of time.
What you draw might be relative to your language6.
There are experiments which support this idea. Boroditsky performed a task with participants. She showed them a picture of her grandfather at different points in his life: a baby, a teenager, an adult, and elderly person. She asked participants to organize the pictures in a timeline.
English speakers placed the images in the exact order I just listed (baby to elderly person from left to right). Speakers of Hebrew and Arabic ordered them in the reverse order.
Participants are likely influenced by the direction of their writing and reading (either left to right or right to left) to organize and think of time in the same way.7
Space
We’ve arrived at our last category. Descriptively, there’s three ways that people orient objects in space. Some languages use one method, others use two methods.
We can use this picture. Imagine there is a speaker in the scene, looking at the ball and the cat (their vantage point is from that eye in the right corner).
Across all languages, there’s three frames of reference, three ways of locating the ball relative to the cat in space:
1.) Intrinsic: This frame of reference depends on the objects themselves. English has this system and an English speaker would say “the ball is in front of the cat.” It doesn’t matter which angle they’re looking at the ball and the cat from, the ball will always be in front of the cat (as opposed to behind).
2.) Relative: This frame of reference depends on the viewer. English has this system, as well. If an English speaker is looking at the picture, they could say “the ball is to the left of the cat.” But if they move to the other side, then that changes. The ball is now to the right of the cat. It depends on the viewer.
3.) Absolute: This frame of reference is the most difficult to conceptualize if your language doesn’t have it—and very few languages have it. It’s based on an arial view of the land. The frames roughly translate to the cardinal directions: north, south, east, west. An English speaker would see the picture and—more likely than not—wouldn’t be able to tell you whether the ball is to the north of the cat. However, a speaker of a language with absolute reference could—with incredible accuracy.
Simply put, the way speakers organize space depends on the language they speak. English speakers, from a young age, learn tricks for learning left from right. Later on, they learn ways to determine intrinsic frames.
Speakers of Guugu Yimithirr8, an Aboriginal Australian language, from a young age learn to organize space in terms of specific landmarks in their local geography9. By the time they have learned their language, they have mastered the skill of absolute reference.
According to Andresen and Carter (2014), these speakers can:
Point to the direction of their home, even if they are 50 miles away
Say which faucet is north-facing in a house they’ve never visited in pitch-black darkness
It’s completely different from “being good at directions.” Imagine being in the dark and someone asks you what direction is left. You’ll be able to do it. Because your language has been training you to organize space in that way. In the same way, Guugu Yimithirr speakers are able to organize themselves in space through an absolute frame and tell you which direction is north, east, south, or west10.
Conclusion
We’ve covered a lot today. So, does language determine thought? Does language, at least, influence how we organize ourselves?
It’s debatable.
I, personally, don’t think there’s any concrete evidence of linguistic determinism.
A huge criticism of the theory, which I also think is true, is that it places too much importance on language. It’s really difficult to disentangle culture, for example, from language.
I think linguistic relativity might have some merit to it. I think the Russian and English color task is compelling, but it’s important to keep in mind that we’re talking about Russian speakers being faster in terms of milliseconds.
This ties into the biggest criticism of the theory: it’s simply too broad. Sure, parts of languages are different. But the impact of those differences is up for debate.
Whether the theory is true or not, I think the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a great topic to discuss because it shows that languages are really different. This is especially important because most languages in the world are endangered. If nothing else, this topic shows us that languages are tied to culture and ways of thinking and are much more than mere translations.
Discussion
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter. If you want to learn more, here are some videos on the subject.
You can reply to this email or comment below:
What do you think? Do you think language influences thoughts, or that thoughts influence language?
Do you have a favorite piece of evidence?
Works Cited
Andresen, J. T. (2013). Linguistics and evolution: A developmental approach. Cambridge University Press.
Andresen, J. T., & Carter, P. M. (2016). Languages in the world: How history, culture, and politics shape language. John Wiley & Sons.
Everett, C., & Madora, K. (2012). Quantity recognition among speakers of an anumeric language. Cognitive Science, 36(1), 130-141.
Lippi-Green, R. (2012). English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. Routledge.
Majid, A., Bowerman, M., Kita, S., Haun, D. B., & Levinson, S. C. (2004). Can language restructure cognition? The case for space. Trends in cognitive sciences, 8(3), 108-114.
Whorf, B. L. (1956). Language, thought, and reality: selected writings of….(Edited by John B. Carroll.).
Philosophers and scientists have been pondering this question long before Whorf.
According to this article, Pirahã might call dark red “like blood.” Instead of concrete categories, they describe colors through comparisons.
Different languages even use different information to separate colors. Western science, and by extension, languages, differentiate colors based on hue. Other languages differentiate based on brightness and saturation (Tegel-Andresen, p. 210).
Researchers often cite the fact that Russian speakers are faster at distinguishing the two types of blue as evidence for linguistic relativity.
The Pirahã are located in the Amazon. It’s hard to know the exact number of speakers, but it seems to be around 250-300.
This is an informal exercise she does with students, not a study.
The Guugu Yimithirr are located in Northern Australia. As of 2016, there are 780 speakers.
The information on Guugu Yimithirr I learned from Andresen & Carter, 2014.
It roughly translates to the cardinal directions.