Linguistic relativitism beyond vMMNs and response times?

[psygnisfive]

Does anyone here belief that language influences thought on a macroscale, i.e. not merely in EEG readouts, or millisecond-differences in button pressing response times, etc?

If your answer is yes, what is an example of this macroscale influence (what language feature and what macroscale thought/behavior) and why do you believe its the language that's influencing the thought/behavior not the other way around?

[Salmoneus]

Some terminological difficulties:

1. Define "scale" when it comes to a thought. I don't know how to tell a 'big' thought from a 'small' thought. Your question appear to be "does anyone believe that language influences thought except for in any way in which we know language influences thought?"

2. This is obviously a stupid question as posed, so you must mean something else by it. I mean, if I didn't speak English, I wouldn't have thought "this is stupid" when I read this thread, so obviously language does influence thought!

EDIT: it's repeatedly been demonstrated that the language in which an account is narrated can influence the assumptions made by the listener - languages rich in describing 'dimension X' (say, sounds, or atmospheric conditions, or geography) provoke assumptions in those dimensions even when data in that dimension is not stated explicitly. It is, of course, impossible to distinguish here between implicit and explicit data, as that would require an untenable distinction between thought and language. But then, there can be no real evidence either way on the matter, as all such 'evidence' is tautologous.

[psygnisfive]

Some terminological difficulties:

1. Define "scale" when it comes to a thought. I don't know how to tell a 'big' thought from a 'small' thought. Your question appear to be "does anyone believe that language influences thought except for in any way in which we know language influences thought?"

Well, what I mean by macroscale is like, something you don't need an EEG or a millisecond-accurate timing device to measure. Influence that actually matters. Whether or not you can press buttons slightly faster is an irrelevant thing. Who cares. What I'm curious about are influences that make a difference to human behavior or society etc.

The point you raise below, regarding assumptions people make by default, is more what I mean. Are there any more examples of this? Especially examples that don't involve how people interpret texts?

[nebula wind phone]

Well, here's an effect that I do believe in. If you're watching a scene with the intention of describing it in Language X, you'll attend to those features of the scene that Language X prefers to encode. Since attention in turn affects memory, this has long-lasting effects on what aspects of the scene you'll be likely to remember.

To me, this seems like a clear example of language influencing thought. ("If I were a Spanish-speaker, I'd have paid more attention to path shape just then. It's only because I speak English instead that I was focusing on manner of motion.") But maybe it's not the sort of thing you have in mind?

[psygnisfive]

Well, here's an effect that I do believe in. If you're watching a scene with the intention of describing it in Language X, you'll attend to those features of the scene that Language X prefers to encode. Since attention in turn affects memory, this has long-lasting effects on what aspects of the scene you'll be likely to remember.

True enough. So let me extend what I said by saying examples that don't involving interpretation or production of texts (whereby texts I mean something of linguistic form).

Tho I would love to see how much of an effect there really is, i.e. how inaccurate, or how divergent, or whatever, form some average of judgments or whatever.

[Salmoneus]

Soo... now we're looking for ways in which language can influence thought... in ways that do not in any way involve language. Where 'involves languages' apparently covers the whole of memory.

Isn't that like asking 'how does the ball of the foot affect motion? But I'm only talking about upper-body motion, of course, and not rotation because that involves changing balance which might involve the ball of the foot, so only really motions that don't in any way involve moving the ball of the foot.'

What sort of affect are you expecting? Do you think Spanish speakers can't see the colour green, or Mongolian speakers hate voles?

[nebula wind phone]

Can you give an example of a (hypothetical) experimental result that would count as evidence for what you're looking for?

[Radagast]

My personal view is this:

Language is an inseparable part of culture. Culture being understood as a semiotic system internalized through lived experience. Culture as a whole has an immense influence on thought. Therefore language also has such an influence.

Since I believe that language is essentially inseparable from culture I don't think it is possible to determine whether differences in thought are caused by cultural or linguistic differences.

Now, like Nebula I am convinced that it has been sufficiently shown by experiment that when thinking for speaking language influences which world phenomena we focus our attention on. There are of course non-linguistic thought processes and probably specifically linguistic influence on those are minimal (although probably the general cultural influence which is at least partly linguistic does still influence those processes).

[Trailsend]

Speakers of Kuuk Thaayorre (and presumably other geocentric languages, but I haven't read up on those) can tell you in any given moment the precise compass heading they're facing. I certainly can't do that.

This is because they have no relative terms for location (right, left, etc.), so they say things like "there's some food on the north-north-west side of your face." Even their standard greeting translates to, "Where are you going?" "South-west, at a middle distance." (With the direction and distance swapped out for whatever is true at the time.) So if they didn't know, at all times, precisely what direction they were facing, they couldn't even get past "hello."

Thus, because of their language, they exhibit a "macro-scale" cognitive phenomenon that speakers of other languages do not share.

[Radius Solis]

Thus, because of their language, they exhibit a "macro-scale" cognitive phenomenon that speakers of other languages do not share.

Maybe you don't. But I can normally tell you on the spot what direction I'm facing - even in a labyrinthine underground parking garage, or driving around an unfamiliar city in the middle of the night. This is not totally immune to error of course, but it's very disorienting when I discover I've made one.

[Trailsend]

Really? Wow! To what degree of accuracy? Apparently the Thaayorre have 16 cardinal directions they distinguish between, and can always hit it on the head even in a closed space without landmarks; is it the same for you?

As for me, I grew up next to a mountain range. I could always tell what direction I was facing...so long as I was outside

[Radius Solis]

This is where we need to distinguish precision (resolution) from accuracy (correctness). I doubt my precision is typically better than the nearest eighth (N NE E SE S SW W NW) in the absence of landmarks, so definitely less precise than the division into sixteenths you describe for the Thaayorre. But I am generally accurate; if I know I'm facing NW, I am. And if I'm wrong, it's just as likely to be wrong by a lot as by a little.

[Colzie]

This is where we need to distinguish precision (resolution) from accuracy (correctness). I doubt my precision is typically better than the nearest eighth (N NE E SE S SW W NW) in the absence of landmarks, so definitely less precise than the division into sixteenths you describe for the Thaayorre. But I am generally accurate; if I know I'm facing NW, I am. And if I'm wrong, it's just as likely to be wrong by a lot as by a little.

Yeah, but this is a huge cognitive process for them. Maybe you know which direction you're facing, but if you're asked how to get from A to B, could you tell someone without think that B is south-east of A?



At the original bit - there's a great paper on maze solving (which I think I still have in PDF if anyone wants it), where they took speakers of such a language, and speakers of more common left/right languages, and showed them a solution to a maze. They then turned them around and asked them to find their way out of the maze using the solution they had just viewed. Cardinal-direction language speakers kept the orientation the same - i.e. if a turn went west, they went west - while left/right language speakers flipped it - i.e. if it went left, they went left, which would be the opposite cardinal direction of the original solution.

There's also indications that people make moral decisions differently based on how well they speak the language that's active at the time of the decision, but that might be a question of confidence rather than language.

People also make assumptions differently based on how their language groups personality types - given two or three traits, we'll expand to an entire personality profile of someone, but these profiles differ across language / culture, leading people to make different assumptions about identical people. This may be more cultural than you're looking for, but you can't really separate the two in a reasonable fashion.

I might have some other papers on this lying around, if I have some time I'll try to dredge up more examples.

[Radius Solis]

This is where we need to distinguish precision (resolution) from accuracy (correctness). I doubt my precision is typically better than the nearest eighth (N NE E SE S SW W NW) in the absence of landmarks, so definitely less precise than the division into sixteenths you describe for the Thaayorre. But I am generally accurate; if I know I'm facing NW, I am. And if I'm wrong, it's just as likely to be wrong by a lot as by a little.

Yeah, but this is a huge cognitive process for them. Maybe you know which direction you're facing, but if you're asked how to get from A to B, could you tell someone without think that B is south-east of A?

Uh. No? I mean cognitively speaking that's how I would think of the relationship between A and B, certainly, unless we're talking about something that's within sight or just around a corner or other very simple situations. But for more distant or more complex instructions I both give them and understand them based on an internal map of the relevant area.

The 'map' is typically the local street grid if I'm giving someone instructions on how to find <wherever>, but can change depending on context - i.e. if I'm in a grocery store and someone asks where to find the canned tomatoes, I certainly don't tell them northeast! Nor left/right, though. I'm more likely to say "aisle six, and on that--> side" (arrow = motioning/pointing). People sometimes fail to understand this sort of thing and I've been told my direction-giving sucks ass. Maybe it does, or maybe I just think of things from a different perspective, I don't know. A couple weeks ago a lady stopped me in the Safeway parking lot and asked how to get to some office building. I replied something like "go east--> on Bothell Way and turn north--> when you get to 80th, it'll be right there." with appropriate gestures indicating where east and north were. She then had to ask whether that would be a left turn or a right. I mean I just smiled and said left, but I was taken aback at her apparent retardedness, it's not like the left turn shouldn't have been clear from my motioning even for someone who doesn't know what north means.

When I get left/right directions, normally I mentally construct a cardinal-directions map with them, in my head, based on a known starting position, and navigate from that. I know this because when streets unexpectedly turn out to be curved or oddly-angled, I easily get myself confused trying to remember the original instructions and re-translate them to accomodate the new information about road alignment. Which sometimes changes repeatedly, leaving me with no idea where I'm supposed to go. (This has been a recurring issue in my life so I've subjected it to some analysis before.)

Whereas the maze issue wouldn't be an issue. I'd rotate/flip the map in my head as necessary to match the observed alignment and that would be that.

[hwhatting]

Thus, because of their language, they exhibit a "macro-scale" cognitive phenomenon that speakers of other languages do not share.

Maybe you don't. But I can normally tell you on the spot what direction I'm facing - even in a labyrinthine underground parking garage, or driving around an unfamiliar city in the middle of the night. This is not totally immune to error of course, but it's very disorienting when I discover I've made one.

Well, I can't. I think Trailsend did just use too strong wording here - I don't think he seriously wanted to state that noone who doesn't speak such a language can "instinctively" tell absolute directions, just that in speakers of such languages that trait is by far more common than in people who don't speak such languages. That's a testable hypothesis.

[Radius Solis]

That's true, and it wasn't really my intention to challenge it. More like... there seemed to be an implication under the surface of Trailsend's post that such a directional alignment was all excitingly exotic, and I was mainly reacting to that. It felt weird to see what seems normal to me turned into Fascinating Feature of Weirdo Languages #992.

(No doubt Haida speakers would take it amiss how I recently went bug-eyed at some of its features, so I'm guilty too.)

[hwhatting]

More like... there seemed to be an implication under the surface of Trailsend's post that such a directional alignment was all excitingly exotic, and I was mainly reacting to that. It felt weird to see what seems normal to me turned into Fascinating Feature of Weirdo Languages #992.

Maybe you are excitingly exotic (at least in that aspect) and just don't notice it because to you, it seems boringly normal?

[Salmoneus]

If my language has only one word for cheese and yoghurt, I am more likely to pass the wrong dairy product in situations where the person asking me doesn't know that both cheese and yoghurt are available.

[Radius Solis]

Except that that's rarely an issue, because the underspecific-terminology problem has been around so long and is so omnipresent in all languages that they all have highly-developed systems for dealing with it whenever context doesn't already bridge the gap. Namely, using modifiers.

So passing someone the wrong dairy product is 1. atypical, though it does happen once in a blue moon; and 2. hardly unique to the language in question, as the same issue can arise with all nouns in all languages, varying only by likelihood.

[Salmoneus]

Except that that's rarely an issue, because the underspecific-terminology problem has been around so long and is so omnipresent in all languages that they all have highly-developed systems for dealing with it whenever context doesn't already bridge the gap. Namely, using modifiers.

So passing someone the wrong dairy product is 1. atypical, though it does happen once in a blue moon; and 2. hardly unique to the language in question, as the same issue can arise with all nouns in all languages, varying only by likelihood.

More evidence, I think of Radius' abnormal exoticism - he lives in a community in which errors of comprehension occur only 'once in a blue moon!'.

I pass the wrong dairy product on a near-daily basis.

And frankly, no, we DON'T disambiguate in these cases. If I want somebody to pass me the yoghurt, I don't say "please pass that french-set yoghurt near your left elbow there", I say "please pass the yoghurt". If it turns out that, unknown to me, behind some obstacle on the table, that there is also a pot of runny greek yoghurt, well then I just have to cope with him passing the wrong yoghurt sometimes. I only add the modifiers if I think there is ambiguity - otherwise I use the simplest term.

But if English called french yoghurt 'blurgle' and greek yoghurt 'nafftiwoggle', these errors in yoghurt transferral would be far less frequent. A change in frequency, as the term suggests, is a change.

[Trailsend]

errors in yoghurt transferral

I'm afraid my education in this field has been inadequate--is there any kind of general consensus among the literature concerning this phenomenon? If not, it could make for a most interesting dissertation.



Indeed, I wasn't trying to imply that the Thaayorre are super-human because they can tell their directions. I can too, with rather rough precision that gets much better if I have a moment to think it over. But the degree of off-the-top-of-your-head precision reported of the Thaayorre is, relative to what I have observed among English speakers, astonishing.

[Radius Solis]

"Errors in comprehension" is a vastly larger set than even the extended meaning of "passing someone the wrong dairy product".

I tend to find the great bulk of my comprehension errors involve failed pronoun resolution, or other types of having insufficient context to tell what someone is talking about. That, or I'll have mis-heard something or failed to parse the phones into words at all. But inadequate noun modification doesn't seem common to me at all.

[Torco]

I think so, tho not in a straightforward way. I think grammatical categories [syntactic, morphological, or whatever] force you to include, and therefore think about to some degree, stuff that you probably wouldn't have thought about in the first place, and therefore promotes cultural and individual promotion of those concepts on the scale of "things people think and speak more about"

Caveat: I think sex-based gender doesn't count at all... sex is, paraphrasing Manuel Castells IIRC, the prime term in a human's identity; before anything, you are your sex; it influences the way people treat you before you even take your first breath.

I'm not sure about it, and I don't -believe- it, as the OP posited, but I imagine it's likely. I mean, Spanish forces me to think about the time something happens (mandatory tense marking on the verb) or about whether or not I'm talking about something that does happen or that might happen (subjunctive mood), which are things I often wouldn't mention if the 'lang would let me; you englishers don't have you think about when something happens unless it's relevant, at least to such a degree as us: fucked vs. cogía/cogió, for instance. I dunno if I'm right, but I guess I am. Similarly, we all have to think about if the stuff we're talking about is a particular one of that thing or is just some random one of that thing; people without mandatory definiteness marking will only think about that when they need to, otherwise, they'll just say thing, instead of the thing/some thing.

[Salmoneus]

Caveat: I think sex-based gender doesn't count at all... sex is, paraphrasing Manuel Castells IIRC, the prime term in a human's identity; before anything, you are your sex; it influences the way people treat you before you even take your first breath.

Bollocks. If I were female, my life would be in all significant ways (barring some minor differences when going to the toilet and so on) exactly the same. And maybe I'd think more about having children and at a younger age, but that's not really relevant at my age (and will stop being relevant later on as well). Other than those points, the few slight differences are culturally imposed and culturally specific.

[I say this comparing myself to my sister. We behave and think quite similarly in many ways, and the ways in which we are different have nothing to do with our sex - indeed, she's more 'typically' male than I am. She has a boyfriend, and I don't intend to ever have one, but that's just a statistical correlation, since being attracted to men isn't an inherent part of being female]

[Torco]

Caveat: I think sex-based gender doesn't count at all... sex is, paraphrasing Manuel Castells IIRC, the prime term in a human's identity; before anything, you are your sex; it influences the way people treat you before you even take your first breath.

Bollocks. If I were female, my life would be in all significant ways (barring some minor differences when going to the toilet and so on) exactly the same. And maybe I'd think more about having children and at a younger age, but that's not really relevant at my age (and will stop being relevant later on as well). Other than those points, the few slight differences are culturally imposed and culturally specific.

[emphasis mine]

You miss the point, man. check the bolding.

Oh, and wasn't your sister like able to beat your teeth in? I mean, okay, but that's certainly not the standard. 'Sides my whole argument was based on cultural differences. Thing is, people, especially in less-gender-equal cultures, will most of the time consider if their interlocutor or some other people is girl or boy anyway. You seem to be arguing against one small idea within my larger point.

Besides, Bollocks-Back, if you were female, your life would NOT be the same. hands down.