PSYC 256 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Color Term, Determinism, Haemodynamic Response
13 Jun 2018
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LANGUAGE & THOUGHT
Language and Thought
• How are language and thought related?
o Are inner speech and thought the same thing?
• Does our language affect how we perceive the world?
o Can two people who speak different languages communicate effectively?
The Reciprocal Relationship Between Language and Experience
• *** See slides *** ///////
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
• A theory of the relation between language, perception, and cognition
• Simple version:
o Language is fundamental to the way we think and understand the world
o Therefore, the particular language of an individual will influence his or her
thought
o Different languages will create different patterns of thought
• Linguistic Determinism: the language we use to some extent determines the way in
which we view and think about the world around us
• Linguistic Relativity: people who speak different languages perceive and think about
the world quite differently from one another
• There is no thought without language
• Cultural differences in thinking are the direct result of differences in languages
o Speakers of different languages see the world in different, incompatible
ways, because their languages impose different conceptual structures on
their experiences
Weak Sapir-Whorf
• Language influences thought
• Languages differ not so much as to what can be said in them, but rather as to what
it is relatively easy to say
Testing the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
• Testing the strong view
o See if the cognitive system can make distinctions that are not linguistically
represented
• Testing the weaker view
o See if language influences thought in predictable and reliable ways
Color Perception
• If your language didnt have separate names for these, would you see them the same
way?
• Color labels artificially transform a continuous property into categorical values
• There are a few languages which have only two color terms, and some with three
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