Language and Thought

Question 1

Child development studies:

Answer 1

Piaget: developmentally, thought precedes language.
Language requires the construction of an underlying
conceptual structure
Vygotsky: developmentally, language precedes thought.
Thought as a form of inner, self-directed speech.
Language, and therefore thought, is influenced by social
system and culture.

Question 2

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Answer 2

Sapir, a linguist, studied Native American
Languages, and argued that speakers have
to pay attention to different aspects of
reality to produce sentences

Whorf argued that the worker was
misled by the semantics of empty, which can
mean “empty of its usual contents”, whereas the
drum was in fact FULL of a dangerous gas.

Question 3

Degrees of Whorfianism?

Answer 3

Linguistic Determinism (strong Whorfianism) = Language
determines thought: different languages incorporate different world
views, which determine how people think.
• Linguistic Relativism (weak Whorfianism) = Language biases our
perception of the world: native language influences the way its
speakers think and perceive the world.
– So a culture that has different words for two related objects will tend to think about
those objects differently, whereas a culture that has only one word will tend to treat
them more similarly.
• Implication: Fundamental categories are not in the world, but are
imposed by one’s culture, and can be challenged (e.g. The Great
Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax).

Question 4

Evidence from colour perception

and discrimination

Answer 4

Classic experiment by Heider (= Rosch) in1972. Dani
tribe in New Guinea - use only two colour terms (light and
dark).
• Heider presented colour chips, then asked people to try to
recognise which (of two) was previously presented. The
chips were either a focal colour (e.g. a typical red) or nonfocal
(a dull red).
• The Dani did not have names for these different reds, BUT
they could still recognise the focal colours more easily
(just as we would). They could also distinguish between
colours for which they did not have different words.

Question 5

Evidence from colour perception
and discrimination (Roberson)

Answer 5

Participants given individual Munsell chips (as used by
Heider). Task - name colour in one word
• Berinmo (New Guinea) need only 5 words for whole
colour space.
• Results were that colours within those regions look more
similar to Berinmo than they do to us.

Question 6

Is thought possible without

language?

Answer 6

There is also evidence that human babies and monkeys can
represent concepts and reason even in the absence of
language.
• Adults with speech can think in non-verbal ways
(movement sequences, visual imagery), and many creative
people emphasise their use of non-verbal images.
• Evidence from pathology: speech and language deficits
(e.g. aphasia) do not necessarily impair thinking and
reasoning.