[lg policy] A Stanford linguist's research suggests that language shapes thought, rather than the other way around.

[Harold Schiffman]

Which came first, the idea or the words for it?

A Stanford linguist's research suggests that language shapes thought,
rather than the other way around.
By Ruth Walker
from the August 12, 2009 edition of the CSM


Our thoughts form our language. Or maybe our language determines the
way we think. Which is it? Stanford University scientist Lera
Boroditsky thinks the latter is the better answer to this age-old
question in linguistics. In a field that, as Newsweek science editor
Sharon Begley wrote recently, "has been notable for a distressing lack
of ... testable hypotheses and actual data," Ms. Boroditsky has been
amassing evidence that language does shape thought. The assignment of
gender to nouns, irrespective of any direct connection with biology,
for instance, can affect people's view of the world. The arcana of
verb tenses and voices (active or passive) can affect perceptions of
causality and intent and agency.

For instance, the Viaduct de Millau, in the south of France, is the
tallest bridge in the world. Designed by Sir Norman Foster, it opened
to wide acclaim in 2004. But, Boroditsky says, the response varied
according to the language of the acclaimers. German newspapers praised
the "elegance and lightness" of the bridge, and the way it "floated
above the clouds" with "breathtaking beauty." French newspapers saw it
as "immense" and a "concrete giant." Why such a difference? Boroditsky
thinks the explanation is that the German language assigns its word
for "bridge" – die Brücke – to the feminine gender. The French word –
le pont – is masculine.

I'm not sure I buy it. But I do remember how my seventh-grade French
teacher encouraged us to remember that the French word for umbrella –
le parapluie – is masculine gender by thinking of it as a manly
protector of otherwise damp damsels. That's not a direct quote but it
says something that this tip is still stuck in my mind many years
later. Begley's column on Boroditsky mentioned linguist Benjamin Lee
Whorf, who, with his mentor at Yale, Edward Sapir, developed the
Sapir-Whorf Thesis. Sapir and Whorf posited language "as a finite
array of formal (lexical and grammatical) categories that group an
infinite variety of experiences into usable classes, vary across
cultures, and, as a guide to the interpretation of experiences,
influence thought." (Thank you, Columbia Encyclopedia!)

Whorf was somewhat unusual in the realm of academe, in that he had a
day job with the Hartford Insurance Company. He investigated the
causes of industrial fires. And his fire inspection work contributed
to his work as a linguist. As an inspector, he looked for evidence of
such things as defective wiring. "But in due course it became evident
that not only a physical situation qua physics, but the meaning of
that situation to people, was sometimes a factor, through the behavior
of people, in the start of a fire."  For example, he noted that people
tend to act with "great care" around items labeled "gasoline drums."
Around "empty gasoline drums," on the other hand, behavior "will tend
to be different – careless, with little repression of smoking or of
tossing cigarette stubs about."

He continued, "Yet the 'empty' drums are perhaps the more dangerous,
since they contain explosive vapor. Physically, the situation is
hazardous, but the linguistic analysis according to regular analogy
must employ the word 'empty,' which inevitably suggests a lack of
hazard."  Are there ideas that fail to take form in our minds because
we lack words for them?



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