Through the Language Glass
by Guy Deutscher. Metropolitan Books (Macmillan), 2010
Do we see the world differently depending on which language we speak? In the 19th century researchers assumed that people were unable to grasp concepts if there were no words in their language to describe them. This idea was largely debunked, however, in the late 20th century, when linguists concluded that it is possible to describe any concept in any language, given enough effort and time. But as Guy Deutscher argues in his new book, our mother tongue may still shape our worldviews, not because of what its speakers are able to express but because of what its speakers are forced to express.
Although Deutscher’s book starts slowly—the first half is more history than current science—the pace picks up as he describes intriguing linguistic idiosyncrasies and explains their potential effects on cognition. For one thing, linguistic rules influence how much information a person must convey. In English, you might be able to discreetly tell a friend that you “spent the evening with your neighbor,” and you aren’t forced to reveal whether this neighbor happened to be a man or a woman. The French and Spanish languages, however, as well as others, including German and Russian, have different words for “female neighbor” and “male neighbor,” so linguistic convention would require you to reveal that potentially interesting detail.
Guugu Yimithirr, an Aboriginal Australian language, requires speakers to develop a nearly perfect sense of direction. In its conventions, instead of right, left, front and back, a constant, almost intuitive knowledge of north, south, east and west is used to convey all spatial information. You might be warned about “the ant to the north of your foot” or told that “the fish is sold in the northeast corner of the store.” Deutscher argues that this compasslike sense of direction affects memory and perception. For instance, if two identical photographs are placed side by side, English and Guugu Yimithirr speakers will say they look the same. But if one photograph is rotated 90 degrees to the left and the other is rotated 90 degrees to the right, the Guugu Yimithirr speaker will no longer view them as identical, because the objects they portray are facing entirely different directions. “Two realities that for us can look identical will appear different to them,” Deutscher writes.
Finally, the words that a particular language uses to describe colors can affect visual perception. As Deutscher explains, studies suggest that people can see a difference between colors that have different names more quickly than they can detect a difference between two shades of the same color. Ultimately, Deutscher admits, it’s unclear exactly how strongly these—or other as yet undiscovered—habits of speech might affect us. But language may well be another lens distorting our view of the world.
See what we're tweeting about
4 Comments
Add CommentMy wife tells me I have a different personality when I'm speaking German, an acquired language, than when I speak my native American English. She says I'm more abrupt and intimidating in German.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLanguages also have a personality of their own. At a railroad station on the border between France and Germany, the sign asking or telling people not to cross the tracts reflects different attitudes: in French, please do not cross the tracks (ne pas...si'l vous plait.)/ in German, crossing the tracks is strictly forbidden (streng verboten!).
A recent article in Newscientist suggests that up to 80% of our thoughts are verbal (if silent).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi.e. they comprise of inner speech. I have suggested that consciousness itself (eg our thoughts) are infact a spandrel of the linguistic process (see Philpapers 'The Explanatory Gap'.)
This is counter intitive as we think of our thoughts as primarily visual.
Daniel Dennett however points to the fact that we are conscious of very little in a visual scene rather only being aware of a the small fraction of any scene upon which we focus.
Thus our memories or thoughts have to be reconstructed through what I would argue is basically a linguistic mechanism. And this is the origin of inner speech.
So my arguement is that language is really the stuff of thought and it is not surprising that different separate languages evolved convergently as the brain would need to reconstruct scenes through - on balance - a similar neural architecture - to achieve similar goals through its evolutionary history. However different geographical localities might put different evolutionary pressures upon the neural mechanisms achieving the conscious process.
Consciousness really arising as a 'spandrel' (in the sense of Lewontin and Gould) of the linguistic process.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo I think the book is really a victim of the illusion that minor differences in languages point to language influencing the way we think and missing its target completely that in fact language IS the way we think.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this