PSY 369: Psycholinguistics

1
PSY 369 Psycholinguistics

• Language, culture, and cognition

2
Lanuage and thought

• How does language impact thought?
• E.g., Can two people who speak different
  languages communicate?
• The question has been debated for a long time
• And still is today (well, at least last week)
• New York Times article

3
Language, behavior, and our perception of the
world

• Behavior
• What aspects of an image does my language lead me
  to attend to?
• How will the categories of my language affect the
  way in which I sort objects?
• How will the categories of my language affect the
  distinctions I can perceive, e.g., on the color
  spectrum?
• The world
• We often talk about a linguistic system carving
  up reality.
• This implies that languages differ only with
  respect to the ways in which they describe
  physical reality.
• But language is also used to express concepts
  that humans createconcepts that might only exist
  within a single speech community.

4
Some history

• Plato THINKING INNER SPEECH
• Socrates And do you accept my description of the
  process of thinking?
• Theaetetus How do you describe it?
• Socrates As a discourse that the mind carries on
  with itself about any subject it is considering.
  I have a notion that, when the mind is
  thinking, it is simply talking to itself, asking
  questions and answering them. So I should
  describe thinking as a discourse, not aloud to
  someone else, but silently to oneself.

5
Some history

• Aristotle SPEECH IS THE SYMBOL OF THOUGHT
• Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience
  and written words are the symbols of spoken
  words. Just as all men have not the same writing,
  so all men have not the same speech sounds but
  the mental experiences, which these directly
  symbolize, are the same for all, as also are
  those things of which our experiences are the
  images.

6
Some history

• Franz Boas, father of American Anthropology
• grammatical meaning can only be understood in
  terms of the system of which it is part
• Edward Sapir, student of Boas
• the real world is to a large extent
  unconsciously build up on the language habits of
  the group.
• Benjamin Lee Whorf, student of Sapir (and
  insurance claims adjustor)

7
Benjamin Lee Whorf
We cut up and organize the spread and flow of
events as we do largely because, through our
mother tongue, we are parties to an agreement to
do so, not because nature itself is segmented in
exactly that way for all to see.

• Every language is a vast pattern system,
  different from others, in which are culturally
  ordained the forms and categories by which the
  personality not only communicates, but also
  analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of
  relationships and phenomena, channels his
  reasoning, and builds the house of his
  consciousness.

From this fact proceeds what I have called the
linguistic relativity principle, which means,
in informal terms, that users of markedly
different grammars are pointed by their grammars
toward different types of observations and
hence are not equivalent as observers
8
Does language affect thought?

• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
• Linguistic determinism
• Language determines thought.
• Speakers of different languages see the world in
  different, incompatible ways, because their
  languages impose different conceptual structures
  on their experiences.
• Whorf posited that cultural thinking differences
  were the direct result of differences in their
  languages
• Linguistic relativity
• Weak version(s) of the linguistic relativity
  hypothesis
• Language influences thinking conditions how we
  think and perceive the world

9
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• What evidence led Whorf to this conclusion?
• The bulk of his evidence was drawn from
  cross-cultural comparisons
• He studied several Native American cultures.
• But he also used examples drawn from his days as
  an insurance investigator

10
Does language affect thought?

• Whorfs famous example
• Empty gasoline drums

• Yet the empty drums are perhaps more dangerous
  (in comparison to the full drums), since they
  contain explosive vapor. The word empty is
  used in two linguistic patterns (1) as a virtual
  synonym for null and void, negative, inert, (2)
  applied in analysis of physical situations
  without regard to, e.g., vapor, liquid vestiges,
  in the container. The situation is named in one
  pattern (2) and the name is then acted out in
  another (1), this being the general formula for
  the linguistic conditioning of behavior into
  hazardous forms. (Whorf, 1956, p. 135)

11
Does language affect thought?

• Whorfs famous example
• Empty gasoline drums

• Linguistic form

Container no longer contains intended
contents
Linguistic meanings
Mental interpretations
Nonlinguistic observables
12
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• Some of the evidence
• Hopi Indians have only one word to describe
  everything that can fly but which is not a bird.
• Whorf claimed Inuit have several terms for snow

• Qanuk snowflake
• Qanir to snow
• Qanunge to snow
• Qanugglir to snow
• Kaneq frost

• Kaner be frosty
• Kanevvluk fine snow
• Natquik drifting snow
• Natquigte for snow to drift along the ground
• And more

13
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• Some of the evidence
• Hopi Indians have only one word to describe
  everything that can fly but which is not a bird.
• Whorf claimed Inuit have several terms for snow

• However, there are many different Inuit languages
  and not all posses the same number of terms.
• Boas (1911) reported one group with four root
  terms.
• This number is probably matched or surpassed by
  skiers regardless of their language.
• See Pullums Great Eskimo Hoax (1991)

14
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• Specialization based on experience
• Different groups within a culture vary in terms
  of the number of words they use for things
• Consider memory
• Most people are aware of two kinds of memory,
  short term and long term.
• As we discovered previously cognitive
  psychologists have many terms Sensory registers,
  Iconic and echoic, short-term or working or
  primary memory, long-term, verbal and imagistic,
  declarative, procedural, and episodic.
• It would be fair to say that the layman and the
  cognitive psychologist think differently about
  memory.

15
Testing the theory

• Two major approaches have been employed to test
  the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
• Test the strong view language determines
  thought by seeing if the cognitive system can
  make distinctions that are not linguistically
  represented
• Test a weaker view that language influences
  thought.

16
Cultural Variations

• Much of the initial research focused on an aspect
  of language which varies widely across cultures
• Color Terms
• There are a few languages which have only two
  color terms, and some with three.
• Most languages draw their color names from 11
  specific colors.

17
Color Terms

• Berlin and Kay (1969) Color hierarchy
• In 2 color term languages the terms correspond to
  Black White
• In 3 color term languages they correspond to
  Black, White Red
• Languages with additional terms items are added
  as follows yellow, green, blue then brown, then
  purple, pink, orange, and gray.
• This data runs contrary to Whorfs hypotheses
• They suggest a universal physiological basis for
  color naming

18
Color Terms

• So do naming practices influence our ability to
  distinguish or remember colors?
• Brown Lenneberg, 1954
• If something in a culture is named frequently it
  may be labeled with a brief name, less frequently
  with a longer name, and infrequently with a
  phrase rather than a single word
• The process of naming in this manner is known as
  codability.
• Codability how easily a concept can be
  described in a language, related to the length of
  the word.
• Asked people to name 24 colors (8 central, 16
  others). Those with longer names were named with
  hesitations and less consistency

19
Color Terms

• Hieder (1972) (Rosch, 1973same person)
• Dani tribe of New Guinea use only two color names
  
• They had no difficulty in recognizing color chips
  that were from an initial presentation from among
  distractors even though they had no names for the
  colors.
• Additionally, they were better at recognizing
  focal colors (e.g., the best example of blue)
  than non-focal colors (just as we English
  speakers are)
• This data does not support the strong view of
  Whorfs hypothesis.

Check out ISUs Mind Project Virtual
Anthropology Lab
20
Color Terms

• Comparative judgments among colors are affected
  by color naming practices
• Kay Kempton, (1984)
• Investigated English and Tarahumara
• In Tarahumara there are no separate terms for
  blue and green
• The task was see 3 chips pick the one least
  similar in color
• Some trials had chips English speakers would call
  C1 green, C2 blue and C3 was a focal example of
  green but farther away in light spectrum from C1
  than was the case for C1 vs. C2

21
Color Terms

• Comparative judgments among colors are affected
  by color naming practices
• Kay Kempton, (1984)
• Investigated English and Tarahumara
• In Tarahumara there are no separate terms for
  blue and green
• The task was see 3 chips pick the one least
  similar in color

• Predictions
• Visual stimuli as only basis pick C3 as odd
• Naming practices influence pick C2 as odd
• Results
• Tarahumara speakers pick C3
• English speakers tended to pick the chip they
  would label blue (C2) even though in the spectrum
  it was closer to C1 than was C3
• Support for a weak version of the Whorfian
  hypothesis

22
Color Terms

• Winawer, Boroditsky and others (2007)
• English and Russian divide up blues differently
• Russian makes an obligatory distinction between
  lighter blues (goluboy) and darker blues
  (siniy).
• Results
• Russian speakers were faster to discriminate two
  colors when they fell into different linguistic
  categories (one siniy and the other goluboy) than
  when they were from the same linguistic category
  (both siniy or both goluboy).
• English speakers tested on the identical stimuli
  did not show a category advantage in any of the
  conditions.
• Support for a weak version of the Whorfian
  hypothesis, categories in language affect
  performance on simple perceptual color tasks

23
Higher Cognitive Processes

• Color naming is not a very complex cognitive
  process
• What about more complex mental processes?
• Counting and other Arithmetic processes

24
Counting Arithmetic

• Greenberg (1978) has identified some cultures
  where the only number terms correspond to one,
  two, many.
• Piraha tribe Gordon (2004) (in conjunction with
  ISUs Dan Everett)
• Hoi (falling tone one), hoi (rising tone
  two), aibai ( many)
• Matching tasks - show an array of objects, they
  have to put objects down to match the array

• Results - relatively good matching up to 2 or 3,
  but performance was considerably poorer beyond
  that up to 8 to 10 items

• Different languages terms for numbers also has
  effects on arithmetic

25
From Miller Stigler (1987)
26
Counting Arithmetic
Miller Stigler (1987)

• The greater regularity of number names in
  Chinese, Japanese and Korean as compared to
  English or French facilitates the learning of
  counting behavior beyond 10 in those languages.
• Another advantage is earlier mastery of place
  value (understanding that in 23 there are 2
  tens and 3 ones)

27
(No Transcript)
28
Conclusions

• At this point it is apparent that the strong view
  of Whorfs hypothesis is not supported.

Steven Pinker (The Language Instinct, 1994)
The famous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic
determinism is wrong, all wrong. There is no
scientific evidence that languages dramatically
shape their speakers ways of thinking. Most
of the experiments have tested banal weak
versions of the Whorfian hypothesis, namely that
words can have some effect on memory or
categorization. Some of these experiments have
actually worked, but that is hardly surprising.
29
Conclusions

• At this point it is apparent that the strong view
  of Whorfs hypothesis is not supported.

• However, there is continued support for the
  weaker version(s) of the hypothesis
• The data from areas of investigation concerning
  color naming, counting arithmetic, reasoning,
  visual memory, and other areas (e.g., social
  inference) indicate that the use of certain
  specific terms can influence how we think
• The question that remains is how much of the
  differences are because of the language and how
  much due to the culture?
• Problems
• Language cannot be randomly assigned
• Therefore we cannot rule out some third variables
  such as culture.