Interesting questions: Does one’s language shape the way one thinks? Does it shape the way one perceives the world? Do bilingual individuals think differently, or experience the world differently when shifting between languages? How much of this is driven by biology, by culture, by identity, and by experience?
Many people are sympathetic to the idea that language influences cognition to some degree, but demand evidence. Recently, experimental evidence has been accumulating that language can indeed shape certain aspects of thought and perception.
Let’s get some background first.
What do we mean by a concept stored in the brain?
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Linguistic relativity asserts that language influences worldview or cognition. You’ll sometimes hear it called “The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” of which there are two main versions:
Language determines thought — we cannot think what we cannot say. Now largely discredited.
Language influences habitual thought. Now has empirical support.
The Wikipedia page on linguistic relativity provides a good overview.
There are a few interesting examples of how language can (or may) shape thought:
English and other languages are egocentric: the terms left, right, front, back are relative to speaker. But in Guugu Yimithirr direction is absolute: things are north, south, east, west, always, even indoors, even in the dark.
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Pirahã may not have exact numbers beyond one, two, few, many. But they get along fine without number words.
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We often think in language, but not always. Visual-spatial reasoning, musical thought, mathematical intuition are not obviously linguistic. Language may be a formatting layer that makes thoughts communicable and memorable, not the medium of thought itself.
The Pirahã, and their immediacy of experience, again:
Before you can teach a word, both parties must be attending to the same thing. Infants develop a (proto-linguistic) joint attention at ~9 months. Without joint attention, ostensive definition (“that’s a dog”) doesn’t work.
Pointing is surprisingly rare in non-human primates.
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Here are some questions useful for your spaced repetition learning. Many of the answers are not found on this page. Some will have popped up in lecture. Others will require you to do your own research.
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