Laci

Quote:

I shall do another couple of posts soon, first dealing with the learning of language, and then after that, having disposed of the biological aspects, I'll deal with the sociopolitical issues

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Why does he make me feel like I'm back in high school. And he's the teacher?

:boohoo:

Gurdur

Greater sex appeal, that's why.






___________

Echidna, I'll answer you soon as I can.

oneofshibumi

Originally posted by paul30
quote:
Language and the culture it represents often supplies the categories by which we understand--or fail to understand--things.


(Reply from) Gurdur
No.
Language provides the basis on which we grammatically categorize things, but it hardly provides the basis on which we understand (concrete) things ---- that kind of understanding is often pre-language.

Gurdur, I would argue that language and culture provides the well worn groves through which we process data. Permit me to draw your attention to Benjamin Lee Whorf. According to one famous story about Whorf�s work as a fire prevention engineer, he went to investigate an accident at a factory. A fire started when someone threw a match into drums that had gas fumes in them. Over the drums was a sign, EMPTY GAS DRUMS. The word EMPTY, Whorf concluded, caused people to think the drums were safe. A single word, one whose meaning lurked in the unconscious, had CAUSED people to see the situation in a certain way. The word USED, does not cause that same safe feeling.

Whorf looked at grammar and vocabulary, noticed the differences between one language and another, and said that they were more than just arbitrary differences that let you talk about the same, objective world. The differences make you live in A DIFFERENT WORLD.

This is strong, subversive stuff. The world can�t be separated from the language used to talk about it. They�re wrapped up together like hydrogen and oxygen in water. You can�t pull them apart and still have water to drink.

Objectivity reality disappears in the mist. Two different languages aren�t just alternatives ways to talk about the same reality. Alternative languages carry with them a different theory of what reality in fact is. A shift from one language to another is a shift between two different worlds, where speakers of each one think their version is �objective,� but they�re both wrong.

As one of the most famous formulations of Whorf ideas put it:

�Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the �real world� is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group�We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.�


I do not believe in the hard version Wharf�s theory known as linguistic determinism. I do believe in the soft version known as linguistic relativism. Language isn�t a prison; it�s a room you�re comfortable with, that you know how to move around in. You know that the dress shirts are next to the socks in the third drawer down. But familiarity doesn�t mean you can�t ever exist in a different room; it does mean it�ll take awhile to figure it out, because it�s not what you�re used to.

Linguistic relativity says that your language is the familiar room, the usual way of seeing the world and talking about it. Your language lays down habitual patterns of seeing and thinking and talking when you learn its grammar and vocabulary. But it doesn�t HAVE TO BE a prison.

Culture is the parole form the Whorfian prison. Culture is exactly what happens when you realize that the room you grew up in is only one of several, that other languages lay down other habitual patterns of seeing and thinking and talking and acting.

It�s not impossible to move from one to another, but it�s not easy, either. Bilinguals exist, but they say there are times when it�s like living in two different worlds. Translators and interpreters can translate, but they complain about it a lot. In fact, one of their major complaints is that most monolinguals look at them as sort of advanced secretaries��Here, put this into Czech for me, will you? I�ll be back after lunch.� What anyone who�s done translation knows is how difficult it is to render the view of one world in terms of another.

I would argue that language and culture does influence how you see reality. I would argue that you can even have to people live in different worlds who speak the same language. Try talking to an American fundamentalist about certain aspects of reality and I am sure you will find them living in a different world. Another example would be someone who lives in a small town, talking about certain aspects of reality with someone from a large city.

Respectfully,

Daniel

Clutch

Daniel,It is unclear whether this sort of quote from Whorf really adds up to your spin:Whether it does is a (not very interesting) issue in Whorf exegesis. But if it does -- then so much the worse for Whorf. There is just no evidence to support the idea; it seems to hinge on irrelevant distinctions between the lexical and the phrasal; it has been widely argued on the basis of mythical data (see Geoffrey Pullum's "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax"); really, its sole motivation seems to be that it's so "subversive".

On the other hand, a distantly related idea is open to empirical testing and has some measure of experimental support. MIT's Lera Boroditsky has done some intriguing research on this. I heard her give a talk outlining results that suggested (IIRC) that in the case of true polyglots, the recent completion of a task in one language (or conducting the test in that language) can affect response times for judgements about phenomena concomitantly with the different semantic or syntactic representations of those phenomena in the languages in question.

This is so much more modest a claim, though, that it is misleading to call it Whorfian. It's not that your language determines "what world you live in", nor what you can think, nor even what you do think. The suggestion is that language can make measurable differences to the cognitive processes underlying what you think. The suggestion is: same thought contents, slightly different implementations of the thinking.

[Edit: My attempt to link to Boroditsky's webpage ended in tears. Oh well. She's in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT if you want to see some of her papers in pdf. The entry on Linguistic Relativity for the Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science might be particularly useful for its summary of the issues and bibliography.]

oneofshibumi

Clutch,

I will search for the website you mentioned.

One of the saner tests that I have read on Whorf�s ideas was put together by Roger Brown, a social psychologist, and Eric Lenneberg, neurobiologist. After they�d read Whorf, they were fascinated with the argument for linguistic relativity. So they designed an experiment.

This doesn�t strike me as the most direct approach to understanding the human situation. As someone, I can�t remember whom, once said, �The greatest source of information about the real world is, in fact, the real world.�

But the experiments Brown and Lenneberg did are a nice location to show how Whorf works. They show how Whorf works because the experimenters figured out a human similarity in terms of which differences in color perception from languaculture to languaculture could be compared. Brown and Lenneberg used a color spectrum, the rainbow squashed into a rectangle of color. The spectrum is divided into chips, so you can lift chips out and show them to people.

Then they invented two measurements that applied to each chip. One measurement they called codability. Codability means, how easy is it name that chip in some language? Say you lift out a solid red chip and show it to me. I tell you it�s called �red.� Then you lift out a strange-colored chip and show it to me. I say, well, it�s sort of the color of a sunset in Cozumel after it�s rained. My language offered �red� for the one chip, but I had to make up a phrase for the second. The first chip is more codable, easier to say, than the other.

The second measurement they invented was availability. Here�s one way they measured it. You show me a chip. I stare at it, wondering what�s the point. Then you take the chip away, toss it in a cookie sheet full of chips, shake them around, and ask me to pick out the chip you�d shown me earlier. How well do I do at this task? The better I do, said Brown and Lenneberg, the more available the concept. In other words, available concepts are right there, well oiled and warmed up and ready to use.

So, by now you�ve guessed the results. Brown and Lenneberg and that if Whorf is right, then the more codable the concept, the more available it should be. If a language packages the concept in a neat container that�s easy and frequently used, like �red,� that means the concept is more available to the speaker of that language than others that are more difficult to code.

As Whorf said, your language makes some things easier to do than others. And that�s the way it turned out. The hearts of the linguistic relativists soared like eagles.

That first experiment was performed with native speakers of American English. How would the test look in a different culture where codability was different? Lenneberg teamed up with anthropologist Jack Roberts to find out. They took the original experiment and transported it to the Zuni Indians in the American Southwest.

The Zuni have a single color term for the yellow and orange part of the spectrum. In other words, the yellow-orange part of the spectrum is less codable in Zuni than in English. So, the experimenters reasoned, if they did the same tests they�d done before, only this time on a group whose color vocabulary was less codable in a particular area, then the result should show that the color category was less available as well.

English speakers should do better in the yellow-orange area, not because they are any smarter, not because they can see differences that the Zuni can�t, but just because their language makes those concepts more available to them.

And by now it will come as no great shock to you to learn that that� exactly what the researchers found. Even better, it turned out that the monolingual Zuni had the lowest yellow-orange availability scores, the bilingual Zuni-English came next, and the monolingual English-speaking Indians had scores just like those of non-Zuni native speakers of English.

Language lays down comfortable ruts of perception, and people by and large stay inside them. They know the ruts, function quickly and efficiently within them. It isn�t that they can�t go outside them, but when they do, it takes some time and energy. And we all know how most people react when you ask them for a little time and energy.

Language carries with it patterns of seeing, knowing, talking, and acting. Not patterns that imprison you, but patterns that mark the easier trails for thought and perception and action. Linguistic relativity, the weaker form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, soared skyward on the evidence.

Respectfully,

Daniel

Clutch

Daniel, no. It doesn't come as a shock, since the Brown and Lenneberg experiment is widely known. It is usually taught in conjunction with the equally famous experiment by Heider and Olivier (1972), regarded as the classic refutation of B&L's colour-based linguistic relativity!

Nobody, to my knowledge, tries to make out Linguistic Relativity in the domain of colour vision these days. If you want more up-to-date information, check out Stephen Levinson et al, "Frames of reference and Molyneaux's question: Cross-linguistic evidence" (1996), which implicates language differences in explaining distinct results for some spatial orientation tasks. Be warned, however, that this data too is suspect; Li and Gleitman appear to have identified a serious confound, in that the two sets of tests were conducted in very different physical environments, giving different spatial orientation cues. Their paper and Levinson et al's reply are in Cognition from 2002, I can't remember what issue but you can track it down easily.

Good luck!

Luiseach

Ooops! Good point! Would you be so good as to add me to the 'mailing' list?

phaedrus

From an old thread, some ol comments of mine.....

Luiseach

Hmmm...I honestly don't know what to make of Merleau-Ponty's view of language as having a 'primitive' level of meaning that cannot be defined conceptually. If there is indeed a mode of meaning conveyance 'beneath the level of thought, beneath the level of the words themselves' (and there might be!), then how do we know that it is there, and how do we conceptualise the affective meanings contained therein, given that this level of language cannot be translated?

I'm hesitant to agree that language as a 'reliable medium for exploring, recording and developing man's knowledge of the external world and of his own nature.' Certainly, language is what we use to do these things, but the idea that this medium is 'reliable' (trustworthy? unbiased? transparent???)...how do we go about judging the reliability of language?

Interesting quotations to include.

Luiseach

No probs, Gurdur! I hope that the roses and renovations are coming along nicely.



[edited to add]
I'm still trying to figure out how to fit all the flowers I would love to grow onto my wee balcony!