Shadowing Practice: Linguistic Relativity - Learn English Speaking with Video

Hello everybody, welcome back.

So it's been a long time, but today we'll be talking a little bit about language, cognition, and culture.

And one of these topics within that vein is linguistic relativity, or the idea that the language,

or languages you speak, shapes the way you think and view the world around you.

So, by way of an overview, we'll first talk a little bit about the history of this research program, how it has evolved over the last century or two,

and then we'll talk about some areas within the study of language

that hopefully can illustrate for you viewers at home that this is a real phenomenon, as nebulous and as difficult to test as it may be.

Alright so first, I want to propose a three-way relationship between these three ideas, language, cognition, and culture, and that's probably unsurprising by itself,

I'm not going to go into examples to illustrate this, but today what we're going to be focusing on is the relationship between language and cognition.

More specifically, we're looking at this directional relationship, how language shapes cognition.

So I understand that cognition and language mediate each other more correctly,

but again, linguistic relativity is really looking at how language shapes cognition.

Alright so where does this come from?

This is actually a really old idea.

It's been around for centuries, maybe even millennia, people have been talking for a long time about this idea that language shapes thinking.

But it's really been only within the last century or two centuries that this idea has received any scholarly treatment.

And this idea can perhaps be traced back to the work of one man in the 19th century, Wilhelm von Humboldt.

So Wilhelm von Humboldt was a German romanticist

and he was writing a lot of views about language at a time

when the European nation states were consolidating and it was very fashionable to talk about this idea of one nation, one language.

So it was out of that spirit that a lot of his influential ideas about language arose.

And one of those ideas was to humble each language has its own world view.

It was a pretty radical idea at the time, it received a lot of attention, but as innovative as it was,

it was seriously flawed because he was actually proposing

that some of these languages and their attendant worldviews are better or more civilized than others.

So if we fast forward a few decades it was really the work of one man,

Franz Boas, who was a pioneering figure within the field of anthropology

that did more than anyone else at the time to refute the then prevalent idea

that some languages and cultures are more advanced or primitive than others.

It was really through his field work with the Inuit

that he demonstrated that the language you speak can reflect differences in thinking.

So the key word there is reflect.

So Boaz had a few students that became very famous later on, one of whom is named Edward Sapir.

Edward Sapir is known as the father of American linguistics.

He's very famous.

He came up with a lot of influential theories about language.

And one of his students was named Benjamin Lee Worf.

No relation to the guy on Star Trek.

Benjamin Lee Worf was not actually formally trained as a linguist.

He actually worked for the Hartford Fire Insurance Company and came up with a lot of influential ideas about language.

And his most famous ideas concern this idea of linguistic relativity.

So linguistic relativity is also variously known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, even though the two didn't actually work much,

if at all, together on this idea.

Now the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has two versions, a strong version and a weak version.

Now the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis says that language determines thought,

whereas the weak version says that language merely influences thought.

Now what I would invite you to consider, and what I would argue, is that the weak version is obviously true, but the strong version is obviously false.

And it is in that vast middle ground that researchers must seek to test linguistic relativity.

It's a nebulous idea, it's notoriously difficult to prove because,

well, when researchers have tried to demonstrate a link between structural aspects of a language and connecting them to cognitive categories,

they've actually failed to do so.

And all they've succeeded at doing is actually showing what languages will allow you to say, or showing what speakers of those languages habitually do.

Those are interesting, but it is not as interesting as what linguistic relativity is getting at.

So, in what follows, I'm just kind of saying this realizing that it's very difficult to prove,

but hopefully with the examples from each of these areas of linguistic study, we can see that it is a real thing and that it's deserving of more attention.

So, now I think we're ready to start talking about areas in linguistic investigation

that can demonstrate how the language you speak shapes the way that you think, whether you feel it influences or determines it, or somewhere in the middle there.

Let's start with prepositions, which is actually part of a bigger class called adpositions.

So let's take two languages here.

Let's take English and Spanish to illustrate how prepositions are used differently in these languages.

Now, English is what is called a satellite-framed language.

And that means that it is the job of prepositions like into, through, across, by.

Those things are responsible for asserting the direction or the trajectory that something follows when it is headed somewhere.

And we can compare this to a verb-framed language like Spanish.

In these languages, it is actually the job of the verb to assert the direction or the trajectory that something travels in.

So to illustrate what's meant by that idea, consider these two utterances.

So first in English we have the bottle floated into the cave.

So here it is the preposition into that is really responsible for saying the direction that the bottle traveled.

But probably the most faithful translation of that sentence in Spanish is this, la botella entró la cueva flotando,

which literally means the bottle entered the cave floating.

So notice there's actually no preposition present in this sentence.

Now Spanish does have prepositions, but this example just serves to show that it's the verb,

enter, that says where something is going.

After all, just think about enter as compared to exit.

There's a little bit of a difference in the direction that something is traveling.

So again, this is something that is kind of connecting to linguistic relativity, that the language you speak is kind of,

well, forcing you to attend to certain aspects of your reality by relying on things like prepositions to assert a trajectory, or if you speak Spanish,

then you'll be using verbs to do that same thing.

Now, let's compare English with another language, German.

So in English, we have just one preposition to talk about that something is on, whether it's on a vertical surface, like a wall, or it's on a horizontal surface, like a table.

whether we're saying the book is on the table, the calendar is on the wall, we still use the same preposition, on.

That's a little bit different in a language like German, however.

German actually has two prepositions where English just uses one.

So, in German you have this form here, on, which means on a vertical surface, and then you have auf, which means on a horizontal surface.

So again, this is an example that shows that if you speak a language like German, These are aspects of your reality that you have to pay attention to.

It's not enough to just say like an English on.

You have to decide is that a vertical surface or is

that a horizontal surface because that will determine which of these prepositions you need to use.

Okay, so let's talk about another area within linguistic investigation that will illustrate linguistic relativity.

So, let's talk a little bit about classifiers.

Classifiers are basically morphemes in a language that indicate the type or class that something belongs to.

And a lot of languages use these, but English, unfortunately, is not one of them.

So let's consider a language like Navajo.

So in Navajo, there is a very elaborate system of classifiers that basically say,

Hi, I'm a member of this category versus I'm a member of this other category.

So for example, the word for pencil in Navajo will also take a classifier

that says it belongs to a class of objects that are generally stiff and slender, like the shape of a pencil or a marker, like this one that I'm holding.

Whereas if you're talking about a piece of paper in Navajo, the word for that concept will take a classifier that's belonging to a different set of objects,

most notably things that are thin and flat, like the shape of a paper or a leaf or something like that.

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So it's kind of asking you as a speaker of these languages to remember what category do these things belong to,

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a pencil, paper, very much related of course, but they look different, feel different, they belong to two different classifier sets.

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This actually is taken to a greater extreme in a language called gerbil.

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It's not a rodent, but it is an indigenous language that is spoken in Australia.

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And there's another very elaborate set of classifiers used in this language.

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I'm just picking out a couple here to illustrate what these do because it is so exotic compared to even Navajo.

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So in gerbil there is one classifier that is used to indicate that something belongs to a group of including men,

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kangaroos, and boomerangs.

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Whereas there is another classifier that indicates that something else belongs to a set of women, fire, and dangerous things.

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Now I'm not going to talk about the exotic classification of those things.

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After all, why should these things be related?

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Why should these things be related?

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This is actually the title of a book that George Lakoff wrote in the 1980s.

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It was very influential in cognitive grammar.

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I invite you to read it.

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But just think about what that means.

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As a speaker of this language, you might have to keep track of, well, does this actually go with this classifier or this other classifier?

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So examples of other languages that use classifiers include Japanese, Swahili, and signed languages.

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Alright, so next let's talk about lexicalization.

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Lexicalization is basically a fancy word for the process of forming a word.

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So languages differ to a huge extent here.

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So, to what extent can a concept be formed in just one word?

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If we consider two languages, English versus Inuit, we see very different strategies here.

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So let's take one category, the notion of snow.

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So in English, if we're talking about the quality of snow, we have to add more words onto it we have to say things like wet snow,

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dry snow, powdery snow, spring snow, good snowball-throwing snow.

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We have to pile words on to specify the quality of the snow that we're talking about.

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Now this is a little bit different in a language like Inuit.

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Now you may have heard about this and think you know where I'm going because you have heard, oh there must be dozens or even hundreds of words for snow that Eskimos have.

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There's two things I want to say about that.

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First, that is a complete myth that unfortunately has been passed down in generations.

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Not sure where it started, but it's not actually the case that this language has dozens or hundreds of words for snow.

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It's maybe just four to six.

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It is still a more richly lexicalized category than in English, however.

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The second thing I want to say is just as a total aside, If you're talking about the speakers in that community, it's better to refer to them as Inuit,

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at least those group of speakers if they're in Canada or in Greenland.

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Eskimo is often seen as a very derogatory term, so I would invite you to talk about that community of speakers as Inuit.

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Now anyway, the Inuit language has two terms, whereas English has one.

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So these two basic terms, you have Kani, which means snow in the air, and Apun, which means snow on the ground.

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So from these two basic forms, they're two completely different words as you can see,

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Inuit can add on affixes to do what English requires extra words for.

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So, it's not again the case that Inuit has dozens of words for snow, maybe more accurately something on the order of four to six words for snow,

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but again, it's a richer lexical category than it is in English.

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We just have one word for the white stuff that falls from the sky, snow.

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Whereas there is at least two basic forms

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that can be extrapolated upon with affixes to specify the quality of that snow further.

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Like wet snow that is still in the air, for example.

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So another area, and perhaps one of the more interesting areas within linguistic relativity, relativity has to do with the study of basic color terms across the world's languages.

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So in 1968 there was a landmark study that was conducted by Berlin

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and Kaye and they sought to see just how speakers of different languages categorize the color spectrum

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and their findings were quite remarkable.

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So there was one aspect of that study that was not so interesting.

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I'm not going to talk about that.

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I'm going to talk about the really interesting interesting stuff that they found.

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So one of the results of the first study, the less interesting study here,

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was that speakers tend to break up the color spectrum in different ways depending on the language they speak.

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So that's one thing by itself not too interesting, not very surprising.

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But what is surprising is that there is an implicational hierarchy that organizes basic color terms.

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So for example, there are some languages in the world like D-A-N-I is an Austronesian language

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that is spoken in Papua New Guinea, I think.

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That's an example of a language that actually just has two basic color terms.

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It's a type 1 language according to the classificatory system devised by Berlin and K.

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So there's just two basic color terms, one that's roughly dark, cool, and one that's basically light, warm.

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So two Two things I want to say here.

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First, it's not the case

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that these speakers of these languages can't perceive differences between say red and green or black and white.

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Disabilities notwithstanding, all human beings can perceive gradations in the color spectrum equally.

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But what does matter here is that languages do chop up the color spectrum in different ways.

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And so it just so happens that Doni is one of these languages where there's two basic color terms.

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And that's the second thing I wanted to mention is this whole study has to do with basic color terms, things like red, blue, green,

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brown, rather than other terms that are parts of other or subcategories of other colors like navy, we consider that a part of blue,

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turquoise is also a part of blue, brick red, that's a kind of red.

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So we're just looking at basic color terms here for this study.

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So here's where the implicational hierarchy begins.

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There are many languages that are considered type 2.

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If you're a type 2 language, you will then have a word that basically corresponds to dark

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or cool and light and warm and the third color will be red.

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This is a really unexpected finding that came out of that study.

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Type three languages build on that by containing all of the languages above them plus either green or yellow.

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And then type four goes further by adding green and yellow.

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Type five is one that includes all of these green, yellow, red, dark, cool, light,

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and warm, but also blue and so forth all the way down.

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So English is actually an example of a type seven language

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because it has the equivalent of all of the color terms above them and it has purple, pink, orange, and gray, not just one or a couple of those.

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But there are other languages that break up the color spectrum a little bit more finely than English does.

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So one of them is Russian.

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Russian actually makes a lexical distinction between what English speakers call light blue and dark blue.

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Those are actually two very different basic color terms for speakers of Russian.

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Hungarian actually does the same thing with red, light red and dark red.

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So what's a big takeaway point here?

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This implicational hierarchy is the big unexpected finding that came out of that study.

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Now just something that you might be thinking about is, are these languages, say on the type 7 or type 6 end of the scale,

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more advanced than other languages because they have more color terms?

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Absolutely not.

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It's just the way that that language happens to divide the color spectrum.

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So again, it's not the case that speakers of a language like Dani that is type 1, they're somehow more primitive.

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It's just that the language categorizes the color spectrum in that way.

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cool.

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Alright, so the one last area that we'll talk about today for investigating language

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and how it has to do with linguistic relativity is directional systems.

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And again, this is a case where many languages differ to a great extent here.

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So, there's two general systems that I want to talk about here.

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Geocentric or, excuse me, egocentric or relative systems versus geographic and absolute systems.

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So in English we tend to use both of these.

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And the litmus test for this is whenever you're giving your friend directions on how to reach a place, how do you do that?

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My guess is, depending on where it is, in the city or out in the country, you probably rely on both of these means.

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So you maybe say something like Main Street, you'll take a left, and then once you get to this place, you turn right, it's 500 meters in front of you, then you face north towards the mountains, and there it is.

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But some languages are very different here.

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They maybe just rely on these types of systems, or maybe they just rely on this type of system.

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So if you can imagine using say English, if you are forced to tell directions only using terms like north,

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south, or more exotic ones like downriver, upriver, leeward, seaward, to give directions, you might find that it is incredibly difficult.

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But by contrast, for speakers of languages that are, say, spoken in Australia, where these types of systems are prevalent,

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it would be very difficult for those speakers to rely on relative things like left, right, and behind.

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So you maybe have heard of the Hokey Pokey song that we all learn when we're children, we stick our left leg in, we take our left leg out, we stick our right leg in and shake it all about or whatever.

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Can you imagine saying that in a geographic or an absolute sense?

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You really have to have this internal compass that's kind of keeping track of what you are doing

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and where you are in relation to the cardinal directions at all times.

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It sounds like a difficult task, but this is something that speakers of languages that use these systems very reliably do all the time.

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So then, if you are a speaker of a language that is spoken in, say, Australia, where these systems are prevalent, you might be saying the equivalent of, you stick your northeast leg in,

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you take your northeast leg out, you put your southwest leg in, and then you shake it all about.

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That's really strange, but that is the reality that speakers of languages that use these systems have to do.

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So again, the next time you're giving directions to your friend, think about, hey, wait a minute,

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the language that I'm using is actually kind of constraining me to give directions in this certain way.

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So, a lot of what I'm saying here might sound closer to the deterministic end, closer to the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

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But I would caution against going that far, because you might be thinking, well, it sounds like the language you speak is a prison,

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that it is absolutely forcing you to say certain things as opposed to others.

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That's not the case though.

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Any language will allow you to say whatever you want, it's just that the structural aspects of each language is differ to the extent

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that they kind of constrain you to view certain aspects of the world around you in a certain way.

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And this is what languages do very well, so that by the time you're even five or six years old, as a child, you've pretty much mastered this system,

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and so it's very difficult to unlearn.

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So, that, in a nutshell, is a kind of brief overview of linguistic relativity, a history of this as a research program,

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and possible areas for testing the linguistic relativity hypothesis.

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I hope you got something out of this video.

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Let me know if you have any comments or questions.

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Thanks so much for watching.

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