On Language

While questions like If a tree falls down in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make noise? can be mildly confounding, an article questioning if language shapes how we think has gotten my ear without making a sound.

In the article, “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” author Guy Deutscher provides examples of how language is a unique prism through which we view the world. This uniqueness does not have to divide us but it certainly shades how an English speaker, a German speaker, and an aboriginal speaker each think and process information about the world they inhabit.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?scp=1&sq=does%20language%20shape%20how%20you%20think?&st=cse

In the 1940s a popular idea about the power of language posited that language restricts how we think of the world.  Benjamin Lee Whorf, an anthropology hobbyist caught public attention when he suggested that if a language does not have a word or a specific concept (say, future tense, for example) assigned to it, the speaker has no way to express either.  This theory took hold seventy years ago until it was determined that Whorf had no hard evidence to support his ideas.  Deutscher writes, that according to Whorf’s theory, “If a language has no future tense, for instance, its speakers would simply not be able to grasp our notion of future time. It seems barely comprehensible that this line of argument could ever have achieved such success, given that so much contrary evidence confronts you wherever you look.”  Deutscher goes on to give the example of the present tense question “Are you coming tomorrow?” The idea of a future (tomorrow) is adequately stated without using the future tense – we understand the idea that this is a time period in front of us even though the words are present day.  While Whorf’s idea was debunked, the idea of how language does shape our thoughts is intriguing. 

Take gender, for example.  One of the first things English speakers discover when learning French, Spanish, German and other European languages is the assignment of gender to inanimate things. In English, the word “mountain” is not given a masculine or feminine gender – a mountain is an “it” as are most English inanimate nouns.  However in the other European languages, a gender assignation is given.  In French, a mountain is la montagne (feminine) as it is in Spanish (la montaña) but in German it is der berg (masculine).

So, if a German speaker is describing the mountain, do they instinctively portray it in masculine-type terms such as mighty or sturdy?  Do French and Spanish speakers equally use more feminine characteristics such as graceful?  Does the gender of the inanimate noun guide the speaker to only think of it in terms of its gender?  Deutscher notes, that research has found that French and German language speakers did use feminine and masculine descriptions for the objects that were feminine or masculine.  “In a different experiment, French and Spanish speakers were asked to assign human voices to various objects in a cartoon. When French speakers saw a picture of a fork (la fourchette), most of them wanted it to speak in a woman’s voice, but Spanish speakers, for whom el tenedor is masculine, preferred a gravelly male voice for it. More recently, psychologists have even shown that “gendered languages” imprint gender traits for objects so strongly in the mind that these associations obstruct speakers’ ability to commit information to memory.”   Is it possible that the French feminize a mountain while Germans see it more from a masculine perspective?  Deutscher questions this further by asking, “Do the emotional maps imposed by a gender system have higher-level behavioral consequences for our everyday life? Do they shape tastes, fashions, habits and preferences in the societies concerned?”   

Cardinal directions are another interesting way language shapes our thinking.  I am more comfortable giving directions using landmarks, rather than using north, south, east, west.  Even though English contains specific words for precise directions, I just like using “Turn left at Rita’s Water Ice and drive until you get to the Amoco Gas Station, then turn right.” Yet there are languages in which the cardinal directions are only used to identify place.   Deutscher offers the example of Guugu Yimithirr, an aboriginal language from north Queensland, Australia.  Instead of stating things are to the right or left, the speaker of this tongue uses cardinal directions all the time.  “If they (Guugu Yimithirr speakers) want you to move over on the car seat to make room, they’ll say “move a bit to the east.” To tell you where exactly they left something in your house, they’ll say, “I left it on the southern edge of the western table. Or they would warn you to “look out for that big ant just north of your foot.”

The aboriginals’ compass is not dependent on where the sun is in the sky at the moment – the compass is inside their minds so their sense of orientation is something they feel.  This ancient language strikes me as so advanced and deeply intuitive.  It also has no room for my petty preference of ‘left at Rita's and right at Amoco!’ 

I worked as a company newspaper editor for a manufacturing firm in the eighties and interviewed many engineers and technicians on how and why the company products were made. I befriended a product engineer who had a high regard for knowing where to find information and he celebrated the English language by his precise use of it. In the pre-Internet era, Gene kept a miniature copy of the US Constitution in his wallet, just as a reference. Gene also kept a dictionary and thesaurus close by so the best word use would not elude him. I was intrigued that someone so science based had such fervor for language. 

I came to find that Gene's manner is always about passion and being interested.  One of Gene's pet peeves is using the cardinal directions.  It is unthinkable for him to give directions which state, "go down Main St. to the grocery and turn left."  Gene invokes the four (and often eight if he can include the ordinal directions of northeast, southwest etc.) when he offers directions. And just to make it interesting, he insists on receiving directions in that same fashion.  Gene's pleasure in being precise forces me to be more aware of my comings and goings.  Ironically his initials are 'EPS' -how could he have known that years later 'GPS'  (Global Positioning System) would come to be the bellwether for getting from point A to point B using the cardinal directions?  I am certain that pinprick irony is not lost on him.  

Gene operates from a place of using language to its fullest and most precise capacity.  As he would say, "We have it all right in front of us - we must use it!"  The aboriginal use of cardinal directions makes me think how Gene will delight in reading about the exact beauty of it all. 

So many nuanced things affect how we see the world and the language we are given can shape our perspective in such detailed ways.  It is no wonder that while we can misunderstand and be misunderstood when speaking in the same tongue, using another language opens up more opportunities to see the the point being made in different way.  Now, I don’t believe the glass is half empty here – it is just filled with a different liquid when it comes to language.