Language and Thought Flashcards
What is the traditional view of thought and language - promoted by Aristotle, Piaget and Chomsky.
Thought has priority over language; languages have been tailored to express the thoughts we have.
What did Fodor (1980) argue in his book “The Language of Thought”?
Mentalese is the language of thought, and the need for its expression is the reason why natural languages are the way they are.
What is another name for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
The Linguistic Relativity hypothesis
What does the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis propose?
Thought is relative to language; language determines the way we think about the world
What are 3 well-known claims attributed to Whorf>
- The Hopi don’t have a linear concept of time
- The Inuit have many more words for snow than English speakers
- Not having a word for a concept makes it hard to understand
What are the strong, weak and very weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
- Strong: the language someone speaks determines how they think
- Weak: the language someone speaks makes certain types of thought easy and others difficult
- Very weak: the language someone speaks affects how easily information can be encoded/remembered
Give 3 criticisms of Whorf
- used simplistic/word-by-word approach to translation
- assumed every aspect of language is reflected in thought
- ignores how languages can express concepts they don’t have single words for
- ignores how language differences coincide with cultural differences; difficult to disentangle
What research evidence challenges Whorf?
Speakers of languages with very different colour vocabularies (e.g. Dani have 2 words for colour) see colour in similar ways.
What are basic colour terms?
Terms whose primary meaning is just a colour; appear in languages in a fixed order
Black/white - red/green - blue - yellow - grey - orange - brown/pink - purple
Roberson et al (2000) investigated the basic colour terms of the Berinmo; what did they find?
Berinmo have 5 basic colour words; across tasks, categorical perception of colour was aligned with colour terms.
Winawer et al (2007) investigated basic colour terms for ‘blue’ in Russian; what did they find?
Russian has 2 terms for blue; distinction makes discrimination of blues easier, but the effect is abolished if simultaneous performance of a verbal interference task (prevents from using verbal labels)
Fausey and Boroditsky (2010) investigated linguistic relativity when describing actions; what did they find?
- When accidental, false intentional attributions were more common in English
- When accidental, English speakers correctly remembered the actor more frequently than Spanish speakers; possibly because ‘it broke’
What did Vygotsky propose about language and thought?
Language and thought are separate in the initial stages of development, but internal speech soon becomes the major form of thinking
Describe Vygotsky’s 3 stages
- language and thought independent
- speech connected to behaviour through spoken accompaniments (egocentric)
- 7+ years; speech is internalised and becomes main way of thinking