Thinking in Other Languages
A brilliant article by Lera Boroditsky in the Wall Street Journal makes an important link between cognition and language, a link many of us have experienced. One reader’s comment on the article sums up the feeling:
That language embodies different ways of knowing the world seems intuitive, given the number of times we reach for a word or phrase in another language that communicates that certain je ne sais quoi we can’t find on our own.
An old language tree
Noam Chomsky’s contribution to the idea that languages around the world contained a “universal grammar” is debunked by new research on the ways we experience space, time and causality. Below are some examples from the article of how language affects our perception of the world.
Russian speakers, who have more words for light and dark blues, are better able to visually discriminate shades of blue.
Some indigenous tribes say north, south, east and west, rather than left and right, and as a consequence have great spatial orientation.
The Piraha, whose language eschews number words in favor of terms like few and many, are not able to keep track of exact quantities.
In one study, Spanish and Japanese speakers couldn’t remember the agents of accidental events as adeptly as English speakers could. Why? In Spanish and Japanese, the agent of causality is dropped: ‘The vase broke itself,’ rather than ‘John broke the vase.’
Words in Chinese and Japanese for specific positions within a family’s hierarchy, e.g. oneesan (“older sister”) and otoutosan (“younger brother”), convey the importance of knowing one’s role, which impacts the cognitive process. The use of kinship terms like “mother” and “brother” between strangers in Arabic-speaking countries is connected to the predominant sense of family and community. It seems that examples abound for the argument that language informs and reinforces culture and logic, which means our thought processes vary according to the language we speak.
What kinds of challenges does this idea pose to global business and cross-cultural interaction, even if people can speak in the same language? How does this affect the minds of multilingual people? Are they able to switch modes of thought, just as they switch from one code or language to another?
Grayson
I’ve asked people who are multi lingual if they think differently when speaking in different languages. It seems to depend on how long they have been bilingual for. Have there been any studies into this?
Great article!!! This is a very interesting topic and something we really don’t know much about, I would love to receive further information on this!!
I am fluent in Frenach and Enlgish (mother tongue is French), and think in both languages. I haven’t noticed having different thought patterns when thinking in Enlgish compared to French, but that may simply be because French and English are fairly close culturally. I do know that when I think about work-related subjects and situations, I think in English since I’ve always worked in English. Similarly, if I’m thinking about a person, conversation, or situation, the language I think in depends on the language I was using with that person or during the conversation or situation. As a result, although I am fluently bilingual, and have been for a very long time, I find I’m actually not all that good at translating between the two languages. Which actually seems to corroborate the info in this article!
Great article! I am working for a multinational company in Germany. My mother tongue is German, but at least half of a day I have to talk English. I often realized that native English speakers did not conceive the meaning of what I was saying. This was not because I used the wrong words or grammar. It was just that I tried to translate “German thinking” into English.
yes, having worked many years doing intercultural communication training at the German – American interface, I know an important piece to address is differing thinking styles. When asked to map out their approachs to thinking, analyzing and processing information, groups of Americans and groups of Germans come up with very different (but very predictable) patterns. Understanding these patterns makes doing business across borders much easier.