I first encountered Boroditsky’s study on language 3 years ago when I taught an introductory epistemology course, Theory of Knowledge (TOK), for the first time. One “unit” in that course is Knowledge and Language, and the textbook recommended Boroditsky’s TED Talk to get students to start thinking about the effects of language on knowledge. While a lot of the examples overlap between the two mediums, there are far more details and examples in the hour-long lecture. In this task I will point out 6 different parts of the hour-long lecture that resonated with me.
At 1:46 Boroditsky mentioned that there are over 7000 languages in the world, with many more in the past. This was actually one point that I felt was better communicated in the TED Talk rather than the lecture, as at the end of the TED Talk Boroditsky lamented that half of the languages in the world may be gone in the next century. This point resonated with me as a speaker of a dying language, Taiwanese (also known as Taigi, Hokkien, and Min Nan). With each language being unique in some way, such as gendered nouns and verbs, numerous words for one thing while another language only has one word for it, terms that are essentially untranslatable, and unique sounds, as we lose a language we lose an unique way to think and view the world. While I do my best to maintain my Taiwanese use, the reality is that while 66% of Taiwanese people ages 65 and older uses Taiwanese as their main language, that number is reduced to 7.4% for people ages 6-14 (Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics 2021). One can find more of my thoughts on Taiwanese, the political and historical reasons behind this decline, (though at one point turned into a rant), on my 2.2 reading reflection.
At 6:17, Boroditsky provided examples of Navajo verb stems for consumption, and how the word differs depending on the texture of the food. The presence of something extremely specific that isn’t present in English reminds me of Chinese counting words/units. While some words in English require counting words, such as two pieces of paper, often times we can put a number in front of the plural form of the noun (three pages, four dogs, etc.). In Chinese (both Mandarin and Cantonese), there is a need to place counting word/unit in front of every noun. Paper, photos, cards, and other flat objects uses the counting word 張 (zhang), although interestingly faces uses this same counting word. 台 (tai) can be a counting word for mechanical objects such as motorcycles and computers, though flying transportation objects such as planes and helicopters use the counting word 架 (jia). In a way, these counting words are similar to how English group certain things (a murder of crows, a school of fish), but while one can get away with saying “three fish” in English, in Chinese one needs to add a counting word, 隻 (zhi) between the number and the noun. This difference in language could potentially lead to different kinds of associations and categorizations: while an English speaker may not group a computer with a motorcycle, one can understand why a Chinese speaker would group them together when given this insight about their language.
At 7:42, Boroditsky brought up an interesting counterargument to the idea that language affects how one thinks. Rather than the difference of languages affecting cognitive processes, the potential argument is that speakers of different languages are paying attention to the same things but are expressing it differently. This counterargument was quickly debunked in my head; from my dabbling of undergraduate psychology courses, priming is a method to affect how one perceives something. An example would be if I were to just play a Youtube video in class to introduce a topic without any introduction, versus me saying a few things about the topic with words such as “pay attention to…” prior to playing the video. Rather than everyone paying attention to everything, language primes its speakers to pay attention to certain things that would be lost on a speaker of a different language.
At 11:16, Boroditsky discusses how speakers of different languages express time differently. A few years ago I was actually a volunteer for a similar research, where after filling out a questionnaire about what languages I am fluent in, the researcher (over Zoom) spoke a word or a phrase (such as past, future, yesterday, etc.) and asked me to point in a direction. They were specifically looking for polyglots, and now in reflection I wonder if I would have pointed in different directions if I was given the words in English versus words in Chinese. Certain Chinese documents orient up and down first, then right to left, while English goes left to right first then up and down. There’s also the potential that despite spending the first eight years of my life in Taiwan, the majority of the subsequent thirty years in Canada has led me to follow the English orientation regardless of the language cues.
At 40:38, Boroditsky discusses the importance of what a thing is called, using examples such as patriot vs activist vs terrorist. This is particular relevant in TOK as we discuss various things such as bias and spin, analyzing the lean of certain media sources that, for example, call it “pro-life” as opposed to “pro-choice” or “anti-abortion.” Interestingly, this section was not in the TED Talk. One thing related to this topic that was present in the TOK textbook is how, without even a phrase or word in the popular vernacular to describe something, it becomes difficult to put that idea into words. The TOK textbook uses the example of sexual harassment: prior to 1975 when the term was coined, it was difficult to describe the horrible experience that many women suffered through. By coining and spreading the term, “no longer did they have to explain to their friends and family that ‘he hit on me and wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I had to quit.’ What he did had a name” (Blakemore 2018).
At 51:45, Boroditsky answered a question about universality of languages. While this isn’t universal but just common, but one example that came to mind is kiki vs bouba. In many studies, participants were given two images: one of a spiky object and the other with rounded edges, and were asked to name one “kiki” and the other “bouba.” Most participants across cultures and languages named the spiky one kiki and the rounded one bouba, and I observed the same trend with myself and my students.
As a side note, it’s interesting that there was a large section of the lecture that did not resonate with me. My experiences with gendered nouns were the years in elementary and secondary that I had to study French, and I did not have enough proficiency and familiarity with French to let the gendered nouns affect my perception of certain objects. In Chinese, while pronouns are gendered in written form (他 vs 她, the second one is the female form; the radical on the left is 女 meaning woman), they have the same pronunciation (ta). The discussion on differentiating between purposeful action and accidental action also did not resonate with me.
Finally, another side note is that while Boroditsky’s 2011 article mentions syllables of numbers for counting, this example was not part of either the TED Talk or the lecture. In my 2.1 reading response post I have shared my thoughts about this.
References
Blakemore, E. (2018, January 8). Until 1975, ‘Sexual Harassment’ Was the Menace With No Name. History. https://www.history.com/news/until-1975-sexual-harassment-was-the-menace-with-no-name
Boroditsky, L. (2011). How language shapes thought. Scientific American, 304(2), 62-65.
Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics. (2021, September). 2020 Population and Residence Preliminary Census Results. Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics of the Republic of China. https://www.stat.gov.tw/public/Attachment/1112143117MKFOK1MR.pdf
SAR School for Advanced Research. (2017, June 7). Lera Boroditsky, how the languages we speak shape the way we think [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGuuHwbuQOg
TED. (2018, May 2). How language shapes the way we think | Lera Boroditsky | TED [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKK7wGAYP6k
Hi Matt,
I really appreciated reading your post as you add a unique perspective to Dr. Boroditsky’s video with your own professional experience and personal journey with Taiwanese. I had no idea that Taiwanese is a dying language, but the points you make on the consequences of language loss really resonate. I speak Punjabi, and though I don’t think it’s a dying language (not yet), I can see how it is being lost through the generations of Canadians in my own family. My parents made a pointed effort to teach us to read, write, and speak Punjabi, and still we aren’t fully fluent because we conduct about 95% of our lives in English. My nieces and nephews cannot speak the language and the range of how much they can understand varies according to the kids who were born earlier vs later.
Like you, the section on time was pretty fascinating to me. I never thought twice about the directionality of time, but now I find myself curious. I do wonder how differently we may respond to questions if they are being asked in another language. I’ve only ever done surveys in English, so I wonder how my responses could differ if those same surveys had been conducted in Punjabi or French.
Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts, I look forward to reading more posts from you!
Hi Joti,
Thanks for the comment! I teach in an area with a large Punjabi population, so I always want to find out more about the it. A few activities I do in TOK that provides an opportunity for students to talk about Punjabi include asking students to determine of groups of things Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi are languages or dialects, and then asking them to distinguish between the two terms, and an assignment where I ask students to provide examples of something that is untranslatable to English in another language of their choosing.
Out of curiosity, you mentioned English makes up 95% of your life; what makes up the other 5%? Is it only to communicate with a Punjabi speaker, or are there other times in your life where you felt that it would be easier to use Punjabi? I feel that depending on how you answer the question, we can further support various arguments made by Boroditsky.
Me for example, outside of communicating with other Taiwanese or Mandarin speakers or engaging in Taiwanese media, I almost never think in Taiwanese or Mandarin, with the exception of memorizing numbers. I feel that with Mandarin numbers always being one syllable, it’s a lot easier to memorize numbers that way (though a quick attempt to test this theory led to inconclusive results).