Debate on language and thought

[Ronald Kephart]

  On 12/16/10 9:27 AM, Scott F. Kiesling wrote:
> MHO, without any hard data to prove it, I do think people talk about
> language more in terms of words rather than more abstract things. It
> may be ideology, or it may be that words are just less abstract and
> easier to talk about. [...]
>
> So I'm not surprised. Although one would think linguists would know
> better, and perhaps educate.

Well, we try, don't we?  But how many people do we reach, and in what 
venues?  In my own classes, when I talk about linguistic relativity I 
down-play to some extent the importance of words. I remind them that you 
don't have to have a word for something to perceive it, even interact 
with it. Think of the little plastic or metal things on the ends of your 
shoelaces; they annoy us when they break, even when we don't know what 
they're called.  I also point out that a Yupik speaker who flies 
directly to Hawai'i isn't going to get off the plane and start bumping 
into palm trees.  We all evolved on the same planet, and natural 
selection has adjusted our perceptions to make it possible for us to get 
through the world.

What I really like is to get into categories like tense. I show them how 
English and Aymara basic tense work (English = Past/Non-past;  Aymara = 
Future/Non-future).  I try to entertain them a little by integrating 
this with Stephen Hawking's notion of time as the change in the Universe 
between the Big bang and whatever is coming. So  for English speakers 
there's a strong grammatical barrier between them and the Big Bang, 
while for Aymara speakers the strong barrier is between them and the 
Final Collapse or whatever the physicists are claiming now.  How does 
this affect (if it does) spatial metaphors for time?  In English, the 
future, which is included in the bubble we're in, separate from the 
past, is before our eyes, while the past is behind and not easily seen. 
In Aymara, the past is what is before the eyes, visible, while the 
future is behind and not yet seen.

Of course, some student always asks "does this mean the Aymara can't 
plan for the future?"  I remind them that the Aymara are farmers, and if 
there's one thing farmers have to be aware of, it's the future. They 
just look for it in a different direction...

(Oh, the part I like best in all this is suggesting to the English 
speaking students that they don't have a true future tense.)

I feel like I may have wandered away from the point of this thread, but 
I also wanted to try out my new way of getting email. My university has 
been losing my messages, so I am moving all my lists like Linganth to 
another address, which anyone can use to reach me as well:
ronkephart at comcast.net

Ron