Language and Thought Flashcards

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1
Q

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

A

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

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2
Q

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

A

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

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3
Q

What is another name for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

A

The Linguistic Relativity hypothesis

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4
Q

What does the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis propose?

A

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

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5
Q

What are 3 well-known claims attributed to Whorf>

A
  • 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
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6
Q

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

A
  • 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
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7
Q

Give 3 criticisms of Whorf

A
  • 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
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8
Q

What research evidence challenges Whorf?

A

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

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9
Q

What are basic colour terms?

A

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

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10
Q

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

A

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

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11
Q

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

A

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)

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12
Q

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

A
  • 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’
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13
Q

What did Vygotsky propose about language and thought?

A

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

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14
Q

Describe Vygotsky’s 3 stages

A
  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
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