Does Language Shape Thought?: Mandarin and English Speakers´ Conception of Time by Lera Boroditsky

Does language shape thought?: Mandarin and English Speakers´ Conception of time

by Lera Boroditsky

presenters: Danica Utermöhlen,

Kim-Vivien Lichtlein, Angelina Daum

Does language shape thought?: Mandarin and English speakers' conceptions of time

-Does the language we speak affect how we think about the world?

-Mandarin and English → different conceptions of time, they talk about time differently

-English: time is horizontal

-Mandarin: time is vertical

(1) Language is a powerful tool in shaping thought about abstract domains

(2) one's native language plays an important rule in shaping habitual thought (e.g. how one tends to think about time) BUT does not entirely determine one's thinking in the strong Whorfian sense

according to Whorf: languages differ → their speakers, thus, should differ in how they perceive and act in objectively similar situations

several problems/limitations for research:

(1) speakers of different languages are usually only tested in their native language

(2) stimuli and instructions are not particularly exactly the same in both languages

(3) participants may make conscious decisions

TIME: each moment in time only happens once; we can only be in one place at one time; we can never go back; many aspects of our experience are not permanent (= not everlasting)

our experience dictates that time is a phenomenon in which we, the observer, experience continuous unidirectional change that may be marked by appearance and disappearance of objects and events → should be universal across cultures and languages

terms: ahead/behind or up/down

spatial metaphors (e.g. “looking forward to a brighter tomorrow”, falling behind schedule”)

Time

English

-predominantly use front/back terms to talk about time

eg. “good times ahead of us” or “hardships behind us”

-words: forward, back, before

-terms used to order events are the same as those used to describe asymmetric horizontal spatial relations

Mandarin Chinese

-also use front/ back spatial metaphors

Spatial morphemes:

前 “qián” (”front”)

space:

zai zhuozi qian-bian zhan-zhe yi ge xuesheng

there is a student standing in front of the desk

time:

和年的前 一年是什么年？

he nian de qián yi nián shi shénme nián?

What is the year before the year of the tiger?

“hou” (“back”)

space:

zai zhuozi houbian zhan-zhe yi ge laoshi

there is a teacher standing behind the desk

time:

大学毕业 以后我有进了研究院

daxué biye yihou wo you jin le yánjiuyuan

after graduating from university, I entered graduate school

Mandarin speakers also use vertical metaphors to talk about time!

shang (“up”)

-to talk about earlier events

space:

mao shang shu

cats climb trees

time:

shang ge yue

last (/ previous) month

下 xia (“down”)

-to talk about later events

space:

ta xia le shan méiyou ?

has she descended the mountain or not?

time:

xia ge yue

next (/following) month

English vertical spatial terms:

• for example “the meeting was coming up”

But: not as common as shang and xia in Mandarin

Do the differences between the English and Mandarin ways of talking about time lead to differences in how their speakers think about time?

Question can be expanded int two issues:

1. Does using spatial language to talk about time have short-term implications for on-line processing?.

2.Does using spatial language to talk about time have long-term implications?

1. Does using spatial language to talk about time have short-term implications for on-line processing?

• people also use spatial knowledge to think about time
• advantageous to use spatial knowledge when answering questions about time

• it appears that spatiotemporal metaphors do have implications for online conceptual processing.

2. Does using spatial language to talk about time have long-term implications?

• using spatial metaphors may cause relational structure to be imported from space to time
• frequently invoked mappings may become habits of thought
• e.g.: English speakers often use horizontal metaphors, therefore might think about time horizontally (same with Mandarin speakers and vertical metaphors)

Experiment 1

• designed to test whether using spatial metaphors to talk about time can have immediate and long-term implications for how people think about time
• answer: 1. spatial priming question (horizontal or vertical); then 2. target question about time (true/false)

spatial priming questions

horizontal

vertical

Target questions

• one half of the target questions designed to test immediate effect of metaphors on processing

--> horizontal spatiotemporal metaphors

• if horizontal spatiotemporal metaphors are processed by activating horizontal spatial knowledge, people who only saw this kind, should be faster in understanding a metaphor than if they had just seen a vertical prime

• other half of the target questions designed to test long-term effects of metaphor use
• purely temporal terms earlier and later (eg. “March comes earlier than April”)
• if the metaphors frequently used in one´s native language have a long-term effect on thinking, people may use spatial knowledge to think about time in a way that is consistent with the particular metaphors popular in their language

• Mandarin speakers should be faster to answer purely temporal target questions after solving vertical spatial primes than after horizontal spatial primes

• English speakers should be faster after horizontal primes since horizontal metaphors are predominant in English

• if Mandarin speakers are influenced by the vertical primes to talk about time even when they are “thinking for English”, language must have an effect on peoples´thinking habits

Results

• English and Mandarin speakers think differently about time, even though both groups were tested in English
• English were faster to confirm that “March comes earlier than April” after horizontal primes than after vertical primes

= researchers related this to the predominance of horizontal thinking about time

• reverse was true for Mandarin speakers, therefore it appears that language-encouraged habits in thought can operate regardless of the language one is currently thinking for

• results suggest that experience with a language can shape thought

Experiment 2

(1) horizontal spatial prime

(2)vertical spatial prime

• participants: 25 Mandarin-English bilinguals (with varying degrees of experience with Mandarin and English)
• primes used in the experiment were spatial scenarios accompanied by a sentence description as were either horizontal (picture 1) or vertical (picture 2)
• unlike Experiment 1, all targets were earlier/later statements about time (e.g. “March comes earlier than April”)

Results

• the bias to think vertically about time was greater for Mandarin speakers who started learning English later in life
• other cultural factors: writing direction
• English: written horizontally from left to right
• Mandarin: written in vertical columns that run from right to left

Experiment 3

• Participants: all native English speakers
• Learned “a new way to talk about time”
• Received a set of example questions
• System used above/below and higher than/lower than
• Events closer to past: above or higher than
• Events close to future: below/lower than
• TRUE/FALSE testing

• above/below phrasings = syntactically similar to before/after targets

higher than/lower than phrasings = syntactically similar to the earlier than/later than targets

• after training: completion of Experiment 1

Results

After short training: results looked more like those of Mandarin speakers than those of untrained English speakers!

• no difference in answer speed after horizontal/vertical primes
• primes affected response times differently for different targets
• before/after targets: response times shorter after horizontal primes
• purely temporal earlier/later targets: response times shorter after vertical primes
• shorter response time: before/after questions than earlier/than (just as untrained English speakers)

Only difference: trained English speakers answered faster than Mandarin speakers

after training: no differences as those in

Experiment 1

• pattern of results very similar to that of Mandarin speakers

Conclusion: “Even in the absence of other cultural differences (e.g. writing direction), differences in talking do indeed lead to differences in thinking”

Native language exerts strong influence over thinking about abstract domains such as time.

Experiment 1

• Mandarin speakers prefer to think about time vertically because of commonly used vertical time terms in Mandarin.
• English speakers prefer to think about time horizontal because horizontal spatial terms predominate in English.
•  MORE NATURAL!

Experiment 2

• Acquisition of semantic biases decreases with the age of second-language exposure
• Acquisition of semantic biases is effected by same variables as acquisition of basic language skills

Experiment 3

• Briefly trained English speakers show same results as Mandarin speakers in Experiment 1
• Confirms: Experiment 1 effects caused by differences language not culture

• Learning a new way to talk about a familiar domain can change your thinking about that domain.

• Taken together: a strong case for language shaping habitual thought!

An interesting discrepancy

• Rosch and colleagues on color
• Color perception domain: strong evidence for universality

Possibility #1

• Color perception predates language both in evolution and in development
• Perceptually based concepts may be relatively fixed before language is learned

Possibility #2

• Language is most powerful in abstract domains
• Not so reliant on sensory experience
• Effect of language more apparent in conceptualization of relations than objects
• Object-concepts are easily individuable from perceptual experience
• learning the extent and generality of a relational concept requires considerable experiences with language

• silent films study
• concrete activity verbs (e.g. “push”): easier guessed from silent observation
• verbs and abstract activities (e.g. “think”): more easily guessed from syntactic frames
• in general: difficult/impossible to pick out abstract terms just from observing context

Consequences

Acquiring first language:

• children take longer to learn relational terms than object-reference terms
• Lexicalization of abstract/relational concepts varies cross-linguistically more than that of concrete object concepts
• Acquiring abstract concepts requires more experience with language
• Eventual form: largely shaped by language experience

But how does language affect thought?

• “Spatial metaphors can provide relational structure to those aspects of time where the structure may not be obvious from world experience.” (Boroditsky, 2000)
• Using spatial metaphors to describe time encourages structural alignment between the two domains and may cause relational structure to be imported from space to time.
• Language-encouraged mappings between time/space: stored in domain of time
• When spatiotemporal metaphors differ  people’s ideas of time may, too.

Conclusion

• Language can be a powerful tool for shaping abstract thought
• Sensory information = scarce or inconclusive (direction of motion of time)
•  languages may play most important role in shaping how their speakers think

Re-evaluating evidence for linguistic relativity: Reply to Boroditsky

Alexandra Schwindt, Markus Fischer

Questioning Boroditsky’s Results

Empirical replication showed contrary results

Conclusion from results of „English speakers after training“-experiment contradicts Boroditsky’s earlier conclusion in the same paper:

• after short training response patterns were reversed and resembled Mandarin response patterns
• evidence for language influencing thought VS.
• lasting effects of native language metaphors on temporal representation

If Mandarin speakers persist in a default mental representation of temporal relations as vertically oriented after years of speaking English, why don’t English speakers persist in a default mental representation of time as horizontally oriented after only 90 examples of a different metaphor?

What is the confounding variable?

• The assumption that vertically oriented representation is not part of English speakers’ /Westerners’ cognition?

• Is horizontal time orientation a cultural or linguistic preference?

Kako & January doubt the Whorfian effect found in Boroditsky’s paper:

• effect could not be replicated
• contradictory conclusions within paper (adaptation after short exposure vs. resistance after long exposure to new/different metaphors for time representation)
• mechanism to drive the effects in Boroditsky’s study is language
• study appeals to cultural preferences but does not prove the internal representation of time shows familiarity with horizontal representations but does not refute the cognition for vertical representations
• Does language or cultural convention drive the effect?

Pro Relativist? Pro Universalist?

Thanks for your attention!