Does the language we speak shape how we think?
Russian has two words for blue, some languages have no words for left and right. Does that change the mind?
The question
Languages divide the world differently. Russian has separate basic words for light blue and dark blue, goluboy and siniy. Some Australian languages have no words for "left" and "right" and describe everything by compass directions: "there's an ant on your north-east leg". The Pirahã of the Amazon have no words for exact numbers. Some languages require every verb to say how the speaker knows what they're saying: seen it, heard it, guessed it.
Does this only change how people talk, or also how they perceive, remember and think? The idea that language shapes thought is linked to the linguist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf, who wrote in 1940 that we dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages.
This question is marked as partly answered. The strong version, that language determines what we can think, has been abandoned. A weaker version, that language influences some kinds of thinking, has real evidence. How far that influence reaches is still open.
What we know
- Whorf's own famous example failed. He claimed the Hopi language has no words for time and its speakers see time differently. A detailed 1983 study of Hopi found plenty of time words and tenses. The popular claim that Eskimo languages have hundreds of words for snow is also a myth.
- People can think about things their language lacks words for. Babies and animals think without language, and people readily learn new distinctions when they need them. Strong linguistic determinism isn't true.
- But there are measurable effects. In 2007 Russian speakers were faster than English speakers at telling apart two blues when one was goluboy and the other siniy. The advantage disappeared when they had to repeat numbers silently at the same time, which suggests that language was actively involved in the moment.
- Speakers of languages that use compass directions keep track of where north is at all times, even indoors, and when arranging objects or remembering scenes they often use absolute directions where English speakers use left and right.
- Without number words, exact counting is hard. Pirahã speakers could match quantities exactly when the objects were in front of them, but made errors with larger numbers once they had to remember them.
Main hypotheses
Language as a tool
Words are tools that make some ways of thinking easier and faster: exact numbers to count, colour words to remember colours. Without the tool you can still do the task, but less well. This view explains the counting and memory results.
Language in the moment
Language influences thinking mainly when it is active during a task: we silently name things, and the names guide attention. The colour effect disappearing under verbal interference supports this.
Habits of attention
Each language demands that its speakers constantly notice certain things, such as direction, gender or source of knowledge, to speak correctly at all. Over a lifetime this creates habits of attention that persist even when not speaking.
Culture, not language
Critics argue that many effects come from culture, environment or education, which differ between groups along with language. It's hard to compare speakers of two languages without also comparing two ways of life.
Where understanding ends
We know that language can influence some thinking, at least in laboratory tasks. We don't know how deep this goes. Do these effects shape how people reason, decide and see the world in everyday life, or are they small shifts in reaction times that disappear outside the laboratory?
Results are also fragile. A well-known 2001 finding that Mandarin speakers think about time vertically failed to replicate in later studies, and some other effects have proved smaller than first reported. Researchers have become more cautious about each new claim.
And the deepest problem is separating cause and correlation. Language, culture and environment usually come together, and they can't be assigned to people at random. The cleanest test would be to change a person's language while keeping everything else the same, which is impossible.
Finally, there is an unresolved question about bilingual people: whether they partly think differently depending on which language they are using. Initial studies suggest yes, but the evidence is still limited.
What would settle it
- Large, pre-registered studies comparing many languages, which would show which effects are robust and which aren't.
- Studies of bilingual people switching languages, or of people learning a new distinction, to separate language from culture.
- Evidence that language effects appear in everyday decisions and memory, not only in laboratory reaction times.
Sources
- Whorf, B. L. (1940). Science and linguistics. Technology Review, 42(6), 229–231, 247–248. (Scan of the original issue: Internet Archive.)
- Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English speakers' conceptions of time. Cognitive Psychology, 43(1), 1–22.
- Majid, A., et al. (2004). Can language restructure cognition? The case for space. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(3), 108–114.
- Gordon, P. (2004). Numerical cognition without words: evidence from Amazonia. Science, 306(5695), 496–499.
- Winawer, J., et al. (2007). Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(19), 7780–7785.
- Chen, J.-Y. (2007). Do Chinese and English speakers think about time differently? Failure of replicating Boroditsky (2001). Cognition, 104(2), 427–436.
- Frank, M. C., Everett, D. L., Fedorenko, E., & Gibson, E. (2008). Number as a cognitive technology: evidence from Pirahã language and cognition. Cognition, 108(3), 819–824.