Can language shape the way you think?

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In the 1930s, American linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf argued persuasively that language did indeed affect thought. For instance, Eskimos, who parse "snow" into at least seven different terms, must find our simplistic way of talking about it unthinkable, he suggested [see "Snow by Any Other Name" ]. While Whorf's views fell out of favor--especially that native language created what amounts to a straitjacket for thought-they weren't forgotten. Now a group of cognitive psychologists has revived the search for the effects of language on the mind, with some provocative results.

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[ March 29, 2002: Message edited by: clockwork ]

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how much beyond anecdotal evidence can we demand a specific mechanism that makes language "special" this way?

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Consider the word "deficit". As a result of use and abuse of this word, we now have a language and a cultural pattern of thought that no longer recognizes the good of government or even a language that can aid in conceiving of government as a "good" entity.

A person time-travelled here from the 1960s would, and I say this quite literally, not be capable of understanding a modern discussion on the nature of government because his or her language has the precondition that government is a necessary thing.

The trick, i suppose, is to reduce essential definitions to some common denominator. Parse any sentence: who does what to/for/with whom/what?

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Sure, language influences thought. But language does not necessarily determine the boundaries of thought.

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I wouldn't be so dismissive if I were you. The sea change accomplished in the last twenty years has involved just that - changing the boundaries of thought as to what is possible or doable by government by changing the language associated with it. This is anecdotal, but I heard from somewhere that the word privatization and the concept it embodied didn't exist before 1981.

If a person from the 1960's had to talk to a person from the 2000's about government and deficit and things like that, i prefer to believe that we could manage it.
How we might go about it is to avoid certain contentious or ambigous words, and begin with basic concepts. Who does what to whom? Fill in your blanks; i fill in mine; we compare the results. We try to finds words that fit the blanks and that we both understand. We may have to get down to very small words before we met, but then we could start building up again.

It might take a while, but i'm pretty sure it's possible. Of course, it would help if the person from the 1960's had lived thought the 70's, 80's and 90's, rather than parachuting in with a time-machine, but that's not strictly necessary.

Humans have a great talent for deception; therefore, human language has a great scope for creating bullshit. But, since all humans are familiar with the concepts - if not the words - of preverication and obfuscation, they also have the tools for cutting through bullshit. Including the variety generated by scholars. (I finally got 'round to reading the article.) The names of colours never slowed down a painter; whether a door is closed or cerrado has never stopped anyone going through it; the gender of a toaster has no obvious effect on whether the bread gets burned. There is scholarship and then there is, for want of a better term, reality.

[ March 31, 2002: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

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It might take a while, but i'm pretty sure it's possible. Of course, it would help if the person from the 1960's had lived thought the 70's, 80's and 90's, rather than parachuting in with a time-machine, but that's not strictly necessary.

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Au contraire. It IS necessary. Recall that our parents, those who grew up through the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s, both benefitted from the government interventionism of the 1960s and 70s but have since then been suckered in like most of the people our age as well into believing that government is limited and that it is incapable of doing what it once did.

For instance, the word 'privatization' did not exist when i was learning English. But i have no problem tracing it to etymological roots and grasping the concept. With practice, i can even use it in a sentence without retching. It means that some elected gangster is selling off the public assets i paid for, so that you and your putative children must pay for them all over again.

You can find (right here, if you look around) two people of the same age, speaking the same dialect, raised in the same educationial system, who nevertheless have different assumptions and sources of current information, and are totally incapable of communicating on certain subjects.

At the same time, you can find two people raised in different countries, with different mother tongues, in different decades, who nevertheless share assumptions and references, so that they understand each other perfectly.

[ April 01, 2002: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

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You can have two people of the same age, speaking the same dialect, raised in the
same educationial system, who nevertheless have different assumptions and sources of
current information, and are totally incapable of communicating on certain subjects.

At the same time, you can have two people raised in different countries, with different
mother tongues, in different decades, who nevertheless share assumptions and
references, so that they understand each other perfectly.

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Well, I think the point is that language will be a barrier, wether it's a different dialect, language, or from a different language family, or even if it's the same language/dialect/family, but from a different era.

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Mandos, I don't mean to irritate you, but I really want to understand that sentence and I don't. Can you elaborate just a bit? Specifically, are you wanting or not wanting to do this, find this (the mechanism), and what does "special" mean here?

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They regularly designate someone as their half-uncle-cousin brother. It turns out that there is a word in Somali for this relationship, and using the word arguably crystalizes the family connection in a way which English doesn't. I do not mean that the language causes the extended family to exist. No doubt the relationship began the other way around. But the continued availability of the words, I think, causes them to view people differently than if the words did not exist at all

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Jeff: Teasing out and recording kinship terminology was a major component of anthropological field research in the past (less so now, mostly because these systems of terminology have already been teased out and recorded).

What's often forgotten is that English has a whole slew of terms for designating distant relations (second cousins twice removed, etc.) that nobody really uses any more. Why? I'm inclined to point to the decline of the importance of the extended family in providing social support structures, with the corresponding rise in reliance on the immediate family of father, mother, and siblings, with even grandparents, uncles/aunts and cousins being outside the "family" for the purposes of frequent interaction. (Note: This is of course a trend and not a hard rule, heck, my family doesn't fit that characterization nicely..)

More grist: English follows what anthropologists would term an "Eskimo" system of kinship terminology, IIRC. "Hawaiian" terminology would have you referring to everyone of a given generation by the same term, distinguished only by gender. "Sudanese" systems are like the Somalian example you gave, with a different kinship term for every possible relationship.

Anyone see the Star Trek episode where Picard was trying to talk to an alien whose entire language consisted of references to ancient legends? A crock of poo*, but a cute example of finding ways to communicate.

What's often forgotten is that English has a whole slew of terms for designating distant relations (second cousins twice removed, etc.) that nobody really uses any more. UNQUOTE

Thank you for that information about teasing out kinship terminology; I hadn't known that.

I think you are right that the semi-disappearance of the once-in-existence English terminology for extended family relationships is largely a function of changes in social structure.