How Much Do Language and Culture Shape Perspective?

Have you ever “borrowed” a word from another language? Schadenfreude is a popular German word for English speakers to borrow. Referring to the “pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another” it is common enough (if not particularly endearing) human trait.

Some other words English speakers might want to pick up? Cafuné is a Portuguese word for the act of romantically running one’s fingers through someone’s hair and oo-Kah-huh-sdee is a great Cherokee word for the feeling of delight you get when seeing some indescribably cute (think pudgy baby or puppy).

Does the existence of these words in some languages but not others tell us anything about the cultures? The words listed above, for the most part, fall within the realm of familiarity even if one isn’t of that particular culture. And certainly, their existence (or lack thereof) offers some insight into the said culture. It seems worth noting that the Mosuo people, one of the worlds last living matriarchal societies, have no word for rape in their language. This in no way says rape doesn’t exist but it certainly implies it’s rare enough not to give it a name.

That language is an important part of the culture is undeniable. The extent to which it is and the extent to which it shapes our thought process is a matter of interest to Psychologists, Linguists, Anthropologists, and Cognitive Scientists.

Language Determinism and Language Relativism

In George Orwell’s novel, “1984″, a dystopian totalitarian government creates a new language that consists of fewer words. The government’s goal in diminishing the vocabulary is to influence the way people think and to eliminate even the thought of freedom and democracy. “Newspeak was designed not to extend but diminish the range of thought.”

It seems a terrifyingly effective method of control. How does one describe one’s oppression when lacking the vocabulary to do so? How does one articulate an alternative to the dominant narrative without the words to form it?

The question of just how much our thought processes are shaped by language has been the subject of many experiments and has many similar, related, hypotheses.      

Language Relativity is fairly easy to demonstrate. Simply, it is meanings grammatically marked in a language and the way words, such as Schadenfreude, do not necessarily have a direct translation in others.  

Language Determinism takes this a step further in arguing that such difference influences the way in which people think.

The book, Language Thought and Reality (1956) by Benjamin Lee Whorf studied Hopi, an indigenous language in northern Arizona, and chronicles the differences in the ways the Hopi people interact and understand the concepts of time and space. Ultimately, Benjamin Whorf and Edward Sapir’s later research would form the basis of the Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis, and its assertion that the way people think is affected by language would form the basis of Language Relativity and Determinism.

A great introduction into the type of research done regarding the influence of our language on our thought processes comes from cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky’s 2017 Ted Talk, Does Language Shape the Way We Think? Focused mainly on the Aboriginal community Kuuk Thaayorre, Boroditsky points out the key ways the language both reflects and enforces a society’s whose survival would have depended on remaining orientated. So, our “Hello” is their “Which way are you going?” and any introduction to a mood (or day) would come after the directional answer.

She also points out that if asked to line up pictures of her grandfather from childhood to old age in chronological order she would, as her native language is English, line them up from left to right whereas someone who spoke Arabic would most likely line them up from right to left. For someone who was Kuuk Thaayorre though, the way they would line up would depend on the direction they were facing.

This is a culture forever orienting. And one whose sense of time would be more tied to the landscape than themselves.

Universalist Theory of Language

Now, important to note, not all students of languages give it the same weight in terms of shaping thoughts, even while acknowledging its binding of cultural practice.

Universalist Theory of Language followers, like Steven Pinker, believe that thought is independent of language:

“There’s a level of fine-grained conceptual structure, which we automatically and unconsciously compute, that governs our use of language. You can think of this as the language of thought or mentalese.” And he explains: “Knowing a language, then, is knowing how to translate mentalese into strings of words, and vice versa.”

Bilinguals

Having immersed myself in two different languages I learned later in my life, I always had this question in mind about when I am absorbed in the new language, speaking, reading and writing in that language, I will find myself thinking in that language too.

Knowing the difference between linguistic relativity and universalists’ belief that thinking at first occurs in mentalese, the answer to that question would be best described as the moments bilinguals are having a self-talk: “mental activity that takes place in an identifiable linguistic code and which is directed primarily at the self.” says Dr. Aneta Pavlenko a linguist at Temple University.

Dr. Francois Grosjean describes why this self-talk affects us: “This is because language intervenes a later stage while planning to speak, just as it does in our inner speech.”

So it’s the self-talk and since we normally use different languages for different areas of life, we catch ourselves thinking in that language. Dr. Grosjean calls this phenomenon: complementarity principle.

Linguists Professor Panos Athanasopoulos and Professor Emanuel Bylund have focused their research on bilinguals and say that bilinguals often go back and forth between their languages consciously and unconsciously.

In recent studies, they asked native Swedish speakers who also spoke Spanish to estimate how much time had passed while watching either a line growing across a screen or a container being filled. Participants were prompted to use the word ‘duracion’ (Spanish for duration) or ‘tid’ (the Swedish equivalent).

When prompted by Spanish words, bilinguals based their estimates on volume relating to a container being filled. When prompted by Swedish words they switched their behaviour and suddenly gave time estimates in distance, referring to the lines travelled, rather than volume.

Such results reveal how subconscious “switching” can be, and how much our language can affect perception.

So Do Thoughts Shape Language or Does Language Shape Thoughts?

In fact, it’s more complicated than just thought and language. There’s a relation between thought, culture –traditions, lifestyles and habits- and language. According to Betty Birner, linguist, “our language doesn’t force us to see only what it gives us words for, but it can affect how we put things into groups… In other words, the influence of language isn’t so much on what we can think about, or even what we do think about, but rather on how we break up reality into categories and label them. And in this, our language and our thoughts are probably both greatly influenced by our culture.”

This is not to downgrade how important language is but to address how intertwined it is with culture. Languages reflect a culture’s way of interpreting the world and they act as repositories of information about a culture. For example, the Cherokee language was born from thousands of years inhabiting the Southern Appalachia Mountains. Words exist for every last berry, stem, frond and toadstool in the regions, and those names also convey what kind of properties that object might have (edible, poisonous, or medicinal).

Endangered Languages: Losing Ancient Knowledge

Studying the historical background and different aspects of languages, especially the ancient ones, is really interesting. It shows how rich these languages are and how they were developed to describe their people’s understanding of the world. Unfortunately, we are currently facing mass extinctions of languages and as David Harrison, chair of linguistics at Swarthmore and founder of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Language states, “We lose ancient knowledge if we lose language”.

As it’s explained on Endangered Alphabets website, “by the end of the century, half of the 6000 languages will be extinct and a third of the world’s alphabets are endangered.” This non-profit organization creates artwork and educational materials to preserve endangered cultures.

What We Want You to Take From This

Hopefully a desire to learn. As the above research indicates, just the act of learning a language can teach you are a remarkable amount of, at least, the fundamentals of the culture.

Also, hopefully, a desire to protect and respect. As so many languages are going extinct, the importance of language preservation cannot be overstated.

“Language is a collective human creation, reflecting human nature, how we conceptualize reality [and] how we relate to one another.” ~Steven Pinker

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Sources and Further Readings:

1. Thinking without language
2. Whorf-hypothesis
3. Lera Boroditsky
4. Bilinguals
5. Languages and thoughts
6. Thinking in two or more languages
7. Saving dying languages
8. The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge by Harrison, K. David
9. A loss for words
10. Living Tongues
11. All That’s Interesting

Photos from Pixabay  1 – 2 – 3 – 4