Language and Thought
Does the way we speak influence
how we think?
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
• The language we use determines
(strong) or influences (weak) our
thoughts
– e.g., nouns in Hopi vs. English
– e.g., use of the word “empty”
The power of words
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Old woman
Elderly woman
Aged woman
Mature woman
Older woman
Woman who is not getting any younger
Woman who is getting on in years
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How do you feel about…
• Euthanasia/Assisted suicide/Mercy killing?
• Crazy/Insane/Psycho/Emotionally unstable
individuals?
• Emergency contraception pills/Morning after
pills/Abortion pills?
• Queer/Gay/Homosexual individuals?
• Health nuts/Health conscience people?
• Tree hugger/Environmentally friendly/Ecologically
aware/Green individuals?
• Plantations/Old Southern mansions?
Semantic slanting
• Vietnam war: retreat by US troops referred to
as “strategic withdrawal”
• Bush admin. referring to coffins or body bags
carrying deceased soldiers back to US as
“transfer cases”
• “friendly fire”
• “collateral damage”
• Terrorist vs. freedom fighter
• Insurgent vs. rebel vs. revolutionary
• Other examples?
Framing
Imagine that the US is preparing for the outbreak of an
unusual disease, which is expected to kill 600 people.
Two alternative programs to combat the disease have
been proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimate
of the consequences of the programs are as follows:
If program A is adopted 200 people will be saved.
If program B is adopted, there is a 33% chance that 600 people will
be saved, and a 67% chance that no people will be saved.
Which of the two programs do you favor?
Now, imagine the same problem, and select between the
following two programs.
If program C is adopted, 400 people will die.
If program D is adopted, there is a 33% chance that nobody will die,
and a 67% chance that 600 people will die.
Which of these two programs do you favor?
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More examples of framing…
• Is a pound of stones heavier than a
pound of feathers?
• “Did you see the car run the stop sign?”
vs. “Did you see the car stop at the stop
sign?”
• “The ground beef is 75% fat free.” vs.
“The ground beef is 25% fat”
• “10% employment vs. 90%
unemployment”
Group labels
• Sex-biased word usage
– Generic ‘he’ (e.g., When someone has a fever of
102, he needs to see a doctor.)
• Khosroshahi (1989)
• Briere & Lanktree (1983)
– -man vs. -person (e.g., chairman vs. chairperson;
mailman vs. mail carrier)
• McConnell & Fazio (1996)
• Ethnic stereotypes
– -an/-ish vs. -ese
• Lee, Lin, & Shi (2001)
Different languages, different
ways of thinking?
• Early research
– Color perception
– Counterfactual reasoning
• failed to find differences
• But, theorists have pointed out
problems…
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Space
• Differences in the way languages express
spatial regions, orientations
– English, Dutch rely mostly on relative spatial terms
to refer to directions and locations
• left/right, front/back
– Tzeltal (Mayan language) relies on absolute
reference to refer to directions and locations
• uphill (south), downhill (north), ‘transverse to the incline’
Space (Brown & Levinson,
1993)
Handed original objects in random order and asked
to position them “in the same way as before”
Number terms
• English system relatively complex
– 11, 12 unrelated to names for 1 and 2
– 13-19: unit name + decade name (e.g.,
seventeen)
– 20-99: decade name + unit name (e.g., forty-three)
• Asian language (e.g., Chinese) systems more
regular
– 11-99: decade name + unit name (e.g., 18 = ten
eight; 35 = three ten five)
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Miura (1987)
• First-grade children from US and Japan
• White ones blocks, purple tens blocks
• Canonical approach
• Noncanonical approach
• One-to-one collection
Grammatical gender
• Boroditsky, Schmidt, & Phillips (2003)
– Stimuli—objects with opposite genders in
Spanish and German (e.g., ‘key’ is marked
masculine in German but feminine in
Spanish)
– Had Spanish and German speakers…
• provide similarity ratings b/t people and objects
• generate descriptions of pictures of objects
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