does language influence culture?

[bcbm]

article here (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467304575383131592767868.html)

really fascinating stuff

[Sasha]

very intresting indeed, something connected, i always wondered, when i was in finland it seemed that sexism, on a pure level of day to day relations between women and men, was way less prevalent and i thought this might be connected to the lack of gender specification in finish (as far as i gathered they dont have an diffrence between he and she etc)

[Dr Mindbender]

Theres a very emotive and thought provoking Irish play on this called 'Translations' by Brian Friel. Its definitely worth a read, i had to study it for my A level.

[JazzRemington]

They have it backwards. Language doesn't influence culture - culture influences language. People came first, not what they spoke.

There are also other glaring errors in the article: Russians are better able to discriminate different shades of blue because they have words for them. If they had the same words for shades of blue that, say, English speakers have they would be just as bad at differentiating them.

Further, the studies conducted on the Piraha reek of cultural bias. The Piraha are comparatively underdeveloped and are a hunter-gatherer people. They have no need for a relatively exact numbering system (or at least one compared to those used by industrialized or industrializing cultures). Of course they aren't good determining exact quantities - they don't need to in their world. Hypothetically, if they developed beyond a hunter-gatherer society, they would eventually come to develop a more precise numbering system. The necessities of trade and commerce would demand it, if you will.

As for the Spanish/Japanese inability to remember who did what, it's more to do with their language and culture than anything else. It doesn't follow that because their language doesn't allow for naming specific agents of causality, that they are unable to remember or know. Cognitive psychology is fucking ridiculous, really.

[bcbm]

They have it backwards. Language doesn't influence culture - culture influences language. People came first, not what they spoke.

given the long coexistence of the two, wouldn't it be more accurate to say they both influence each other?


There are also other glaring errors in the article: Russians are better able to discriminate different shades of blue because they have words for them. If they had the same words for shades of blue that, say, English speakers have they would be just as bad at differentiating them.

um, isn't that exactly what the article is saying?


As for the Spanish/Japanese inability to remember who did what, it's more to do with their language and culture than anything else. It doesn't follow that because their language doesn't allow for naming specific agents of causality, that they are unable to remember or know. Cognitive psychology is fucking ridiculous, really.

the article doesn't say that they are unable, but that they are less likely to remember in the instances where the agent is not identified.

[JazzRemington]

given the long coexistence of the two, wouldn't it be more accurate to say they both influence each other?

Words can only influence a culture once the people in the culture have given them meaning. If anything, it's culture that influences people, not language.


um, isn't that exactly what the article is saying?

According to cognitive psychologists, "thinking" is an exclusively internal activity that happens because of neurological phenomenon (basically, the transmission and reception of neuro-chemicals between neurons). For them, being able to visually discriminate between colors is reduced to the same kind of phenomenon. The article infers that because Russians have more words for the color blue, that this influences their thought patterns. They can discriminate between shades of blue better not because of some internal process that's affected by language, but by the plain and simple fact that they have words they can use to discriminate between them.


the article doesn't say that they are unable, but that they are less likely to remember in the instances where the agent is not identified.

The author of the article doesn't talk about how exactly the pop quiz the research participates were given was conducted. This is a very important piece of information that was left out.

[Coggeh]

For example, in Pormpuraaw, a remote Aboriginal community in Australia, the indigenous languages don't use terms like "left" and "right." Instead, everything is talked about in terms of absolute cardinal directions (north, south, east, west), which means you say things like, "There's an ant on your southwest leg." To say hello in Pormpuraaw, one asks, "Where are you going?", and an appropriate response might be, "A long way to the south-southwest. How about you?" If you don't know which way is which, you literally can't get past hello.
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