[17:55] “it may be that language is giving them a clue, but it may be also lots of other cultural practices and artifacts that create those difference we observe”

I think this is important because language is part of what makes up a culture. As Dr. Boroditsky said earlier in the video, languages select to focus on specific elements. And I think that selection reflects what is important or emphasized in that particular culture. For example, in Korean (and many Asian cultures), there are specific words to describe extended family members. There is a word that differentiates uncle from the paternal or maternal side, and it reflects the family order to your parent (e.g. younger or older than my father). There is also a word called “Hyodo” in Korean that translates to filial duty or piety. It is one of the principles that is emphasized in the culture. In English, there is no equivalent word except to string together a series of words to describe what it is. As someone who was born in South Korea but grew up in Canada, I notice the difference in language and in turn, the difference in what society selects to focus on. My value system is significantly different from my parents and I used to think of language as just a communication barrier. But now I think that language affects how thoughts are shaped and what we choose to focus on based on what words are available and how the sentences are constructed.

[18:27] “when you teach people to talk a new way, you are teaching them to think a new way as well”

I think this is important because it reminded me of the power of language to process one’s experience in the field of psychology and mental health. Sometimes, a difficult experience or grief does not get acknowledged or properly expressed. It could be due to many factors including unreceptive or unsafe environment, or the person’s unwillingness to face the situation. It could also be because no one taught this person to share their emotions or gave them vocabulary around what they are going through. I think it is powerful how new vocabulary or language can retrain the brain to think in a new way.

 

[25:35] “about 78% of time, you can predict gender in the personification from the gender in the artist’s native language”

This was something new to me. I remember struggling to learn French in high school with all the gender pronouns and not understanding what they were about. In both languages I speak, there is no distinction in gender for words. It was surprising to learn that it can affect the brain on a deeper level and shape how we view an object as shown through portrayal or artistic interpretation.

 

[32:30] “so there is trade off. There’s only so much stuff we can pay attention to.. speakers of different languages witness exactly same event but come away remembering different things about that event”

This reminds me of the story of blind men and an elephant. They are all touching the same elephant, but each blind man feels a different part of the animal, leading to a unique conclusion about what the elephant looks like. Similarly, language and what it focuses on can lead to people remembering different things about the same event. I think this is important because it reminds us that there are different perspectives not only based on personal experience and culture but also through language as well.

[33:45] “the kind of language that swims around you, the grammatical forms that swim around in your environment, change what you attend to even when you are looking at new events, unrelated to what you’ve just been hearing about”

I think this is important because it is almost as if language creates a lens through how you view and interpret the world. If you are seeing the world through a lens that zooms in on a specific element but is less clear on the other, then your experience or interpretation would differ significantly from another person who has a different lens. While that appears self-explanatory, I don’t think we realize how much our thoughts are affected by language every day.

[43:38] “take bilinguals and test them in one language or another and show that they think differently depending on what language they are being tested in and what linguistic environment they are in at the moment”

This resonates with my experience of growing up as a bilingual and shifting back and forth between speaking Korean at home and English in school. My parents spoke Korean as a primary language, whereas my brother and I mainly spoke English. I would reason differently when I am writing an essay in English compared to when I am expressing my opinion at home based on the language and the environment I was in. Both languages differ in how sentences are structured and what is expressed or emphasized through vocabulary.

 

 

Reference

SAR School for Advanced Research. (2017, June 7). Lera Boroditsky, how the languages we speak shape the way we think [Video]. YouTube.