Shaping of the Mind Through Language

Essay written on March 2019

Benjamin Lee Whorf, a chemical engineer, published an article in 1940 in M.I.T’s magazine that brought up the topic of language’s influence on people’s brains for the first time. However, he was wild enough to suggest that language actually prohibits a person to think in broader terms than the language itself has. This theory was diminished by the enormous amount of contrary evidence just inferred by common sense. However, his mistakes should not prevent us from evaluating the effect that language has on our understanding of the world.

Thus, Guy Deutscher, a researcher at the University of Manchester, has proposed in his article “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” a new approach to the topic. He claims our experience and mind are shaped through language because each language “habitually obliges us to think” about certain aspects of reality. As opposed to Whorf’s theory, Deutscher insists that all languages may communicate anything but each one of them requires to communicate certain details that others don’t. Hence, people consistently communicate the type of information compelled by the language itself. So, speakers tend to focus on those aspects of reality, that speakers of other languages may not. Various examples are given to prove this theory, related to gender, space, color, and time.

The first example provided by the researcher is about how gender is expressed grammatically. Some languages, such as Spanish, French, and others, require you to specify the gender when speaking of neighbors or friends, while English does not. Moreover, the first group of languages also attributes gender to objects. Several experiments have demonstrated that this phenomenon affects the connotation that the speakers have toward certain elements.

For instance, some objects are feminine in Spanish and masculine in German, or vice versa. When asked to identify the qualities of the objects, Spanish and German speakers tend to correlate the object to masculine or feminine characteristics depending on the article that precedes the word in their language. The same happens when speakers are requested to choose an animated voice for the objects. So, the next question that Deutscher introduces is: does the gender connotation of words affect how we shape objects in real life? How far do the repercussions of this phenomenon go?

Quite impressive examples were found related to space notions. In most of our societies, we use “egocentric coordinates”. These consist of the regular way we communicate to give directions in most languages: the prepositions right, left, behind, and in front of. As opposed to this, the “geographic directions” do not depend on our bodies but on the coordinates north, south, east, and west. Believe it or not, the Australian language Guugu Yimithirr does not admit the egocentric coordinates and simply depends on the geographic directions. You may hear one of its speakers say “I left my purse at the southwest of the room”. Without a hint of a doubt, the speakers of this language have developed a sense of the cardinal directions beyond our understanding. The language itself needs its speakers to be constantly aware of where north is from a very early age.

This creates a “habit of mind” as Deutscher calls it. A geographic language speaker may as well remember reality quite different than us, as everything is located according to the cardinal points. Furthermore, when a Guru Yimithirr speaker points at himself, he really is pointing backward, which may never occur to an English speaker for whom that gesture means to point to oneself. The researcher goes as far as to suggest that this sense of space may bring a less egocentric point of view on life to its speakers.

Other experiments have shown that language can even influence how we perceive colors, understand time, and define the truth. As for colors, not all languages have a name for the same colors or tones. Some of the popular ones are even neglected in a few languages. Consequently, our brains create broader differences between each color that has a name in our language.

When it comes to the perception of time, some languages require you to provide certain information that others do not. English does ask you to mention the timing of certain events because of its grammar, while Chinese does not because all verb forms look exactly the same.

On the other hand, the perception of truth seems to be questioned by the Matses language in Peru. Its grammar compels you to specify if you directly experienced, inferred, or conjectured what you are telling. It’s considered a lie if you fail to report your source of information accurately. This phenomenon goes beyond our own understanding of truth.

Guy Deutscher concludes by saying that while our tongue should not be considered imprisonment to our minds, we do have to take into consideration the colossal effects of language in our thinking. The habits of mind that language creates in us since we are children can carve our outlook on reality and our response to it. Although the length of the consequences of the language’s rarities has not been fully explored in the lab, we may speculate they go as far as to impact the very construction of our core values. So, as the author points out, the least we can do for now is acknowledge all of us do not think the same way.