Language and Thought

Question 1

What is the traditional view of thought and language - promoted by Aristotle, Piaget and Chomsky.

Answer 1

Thought has priority over language; languages have been tailored to express the thoughts we have.

Question 2

What did Fodor (1980) argue in his book “The Language of Thought”?

Answer 2

Mentalese is the language of thought, and the need for its expression is the reason why natural languages are the way they are.

Question 3

What is another name for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

Answer 3

The Linguistic Relativity hypothesis

Question 4

What does the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis propose?

Answer 4

Thought is relative to language; language determines the way we think about the world

Question 5

What are 3 well-known claims attributed to Whorf>

Answer 5

• 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

Question 6

What are the strong, weak and very weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

Answer 6

• 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

Question 7

Give 3 criticisms of Whorf

Answer 7

• 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

Question 8

What research evidence challenges Whorf?

Answer 8

Speakers of languages with very different colour vocabularies (e.g. Dani have 2 words for colour) see colour in similar ways.

Question 9

What are basic colour terms?

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Roberson et al (2000) investigated the basic colour terms of the Berinmo; what did they find?

Answer 10

Berinmo have 5 basic colour words; across tasks, categorical perception of colour was aligned with colour terms.

Question 11

Winawer et al (2007) investigated basic colour terms for ‘blue’ in Russian; what did they find?

Answer 11

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)

Question 12

Fausey and Boroditsky (2010) investigated linguistic relativity when describing actions; what did they find?

Answer 12

• 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’

Question 13

What did Vygotsky propose about language and thought?

Answer 13

Language and thought are separate in the initial stages of development, but internal speech soon becomes the major form of thinking

Question 14

Describe Vygotsky’s 3 stages

Answer 14

1. language and thought independent
2. speech connected to behaviour through spoken accompaniments (egocentric)
3. 7+ years; speech is internalised and becomes main way of thinking