Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Linguistics
Language can directly impact, if not totally constrain, perceptions and cognitions, according to the Sapir-Whorf linguistic relativity hypothesis. Ample evidence supports the hypothesis, as conceptualizations of reality and events are experimentally different in different language contexts, evaluated by testing native speakers of different languages and requesting their interpretation of various events. For example, language impacts perceptions of colors, which can in turn impact salient issues in the perception of reality (Jraissati, 2013). Implications of color differentiation differences may be witnessed in the worlds of art, business, and design. Lai & Narasimhan (2015) show that different languages conceptualize motion differently, with some languages like Spanish concentrating more on the directionality or path of motion, versus languages like English, which emphasize the manner or methods of a motion. It is easy to see why differential motion perceptions might influence witness perceptions of a crime, which is why officers of the law may need to pay closer attention to linguistic relativity when interviewing witnesses and suspects. Language can influence heavily one's perception of other people and other cultures. For example, Chen, Benet-Martinez & Ng (2014) found that bilingual speakers exhibit a...
other. Being bilingual therefore makes it more possible for people to relate to or accept other cultures, given the expanded worldviews the additional language confers. The implications for research on linguistic relativity are important for politics and sociology.
Verbs particularly shape views of reality, in that events are described in a certain way. The English grammatical structure of Subject-Verb-Object also necessitates that an action is both caused by a party/parties, and an action is done to another. Issues related to blame and victimization may arise in a grammatical scenario such as that witnessed in English. Likewise, the way English describes actions, and the level of specificity applied to specific actions, will impact the perception of the action. That perception will also affect how the action is communicated or conveyed to others. The speaker will focus on certain aspects of the event, to the exclusion of others. Contextualization, or lack thereof, can also be a problem. One verb in English that lacks contextualization is the verb "to fry," which in the context of food preparation, can refer to deep frying or pan frying. In other languages, such as French or Mandarin, there are different words for deep-fry and for pan-fry or saute. Some speakers of the English language…
References
Chen, S.X., Benet-Martinez, V. & Ng, J.C.K. (2014). Does language affect personality perception? Journal of Personality 82(2): 130-143.
Jraissati, Y. (2014). Proving universalism wrong does not prove relativism right. Philosophical Physiology 27(3).
Lai, V.T. & Narasimhan, B. (2015). Verb representation and thinking-for-speaking effects in Spanish-English bilinguals. In Cognitive Science Perspectives on Verb Representation and Processing. Springer.
Linguistics Begley, S. (2009). What's in a word? Newsweek/The Daily Beast. Retrieved online: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/07/08/what-s-in-a-word.html Begley provides a helpful overview of the work of Boroditsky in the field of linguistic relativity. The theory was once lacking empirical grounding, but Boroditsky changed that, to provide scientific proof that language indeed shapes perception and cognition. Boroditsky, L. (n.d.). Linguistic relativity. Retrieved online: http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/linguistic-relativity.pdf Boroditsky's (n.d.) "intermediate paper" provides the foundation for linguistic relativity. The author describes how
The Pinker vs. Sapir-Whorf debate is central to the study of linguistics and related areas like psycholinguistics and cognitive science. Most linguists can at least agree that humans have a “unique language capacity,” (Levinson 25). Yet the innate capacity to learn language is where the similarities between Pinker and Whorf end. Whereas Whorf radically transformed both cognitive science and linguistics by using empirical evidence to show how language shapes thought,
In “’I don’t’ versus ‘I can’t,” Patrick & Hagtvedt (2012) explore a single dimension of self-talk, namely how people phrase refusals. The implications of the investigation are to show how self-talk may influence goal-directed behaviors. Moreover, the research falls within the provinces of cognitive and linguistic sciences, particularly with regard to semantic framing. The authors also point out that the results of this and similar studies on the role of
Apparently this view has much in its favor. When we compare modern English with some of those Indian languages which are most concrete in their formative expression, the contrast is striking. When we say "The eye is the organ of sight, the Indian may not be able to form the expression the eye, but may have to define that the eye of a person or of an animal is meant.
culture and subculture (p. 6-8) A culture is a "community or population sufficiently large enough to be self-sustaining," in that it can be self-perpetuating (p. 6). There are four main elements of culture, according to Hofstede: symbols, rituals, values, heroes, and myths (p. 6). These elements of culture are transmitted via formal institutions like schools and also informally via peers and family members. Identifying with culture helps to create a
" The authors go on to mention that by comparing the Navajo silent film research with similar research using African-American high school drop-outs in Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania filmmakers, some "universals" and some differences as well came to light in the relationships between film and "linguistic" and cultural variables. Zhu Zhifang, "Linguistic Relativity and Cultural Communication," Educational Philosophy and Theory. The author, a Whorf hypothesis believer, goes to some lengths