Transcription
Translator: Valbona Emini
Reviewer: Helena Bedalli
I will speak to you through language... because I can. This is one of the magical abilities that we humans possess. We can transmit quite complicated thoughts to each other. So, what I am doing now, is creating sounds through my mouth, which I am letting out. I am creating voices, whistles, interjections that create air vibrations. These air vibrations reach you, and hit your ears, while your brain is signaled by these vibrations in the ear and transforms them into thoughts. I hope! (Laughter) I hope it happens! So, thanks to this ability, we humans are able to transmit ideas across unlimited space and time. We have the ability to transmit knowledge through our minds. I can convey a strange new idea into your minds. I can say: "Imagine a jellyfish dancing in a library, while you are thinking about quantum mechanics." (Laughter) So, if everything has gone well in your life so far, you most likely haven't had this thought before. (Laughter) But now I just made you think of it through language. Of course, there isn't just one language in the world, but around 7,000 languages worldwide. Languages differ from each other in many aspects. Some languages sound different, have different lexicons, different structures. Most importantly, they have different structures. So the question arises: Does the language we speak influence the way we think? This is an old question. People have always had different opinions on this matter. Emperor Charlemagne said: "To have a second language is to have a second soul" -- a powerful statement that suggests language creates reality. But on the other hand, Shakespeare, through Juliet, said: What's in a name? "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." So this statement makes us think that perhaps language does not create reality. These arguments have been discussed for thousands of years. But even today, there is no data to help us choose a single form. Recently, in my lab and other labs around the world, we started doing research and have scientific data that helps us answer this question. So let me show you some of my favorite examples. I will start with an example from an indigenous community in Australia with whom I had the opportunity to work. These are the people of the Kuuk Thaayorre tribe. They live in Pormpuraaw, the westernmost tip of Cape York. What is interesting about the Kuuk Thaayorre tribe is the fact that they do not use the words "left," "right," but connect everything to directions: north, south, east, west. And when I say everything, I mean everything. You might say: "Oh, you have an ant on the southwest of your leg." Or: "Move the cup a little more to the north-northeast." In fact, in Kuuk Thaayorre, they don't say: "Hello," when they see you, but: "In which direction are you going?" And the answer will be: "Somewhere far to the north-northeast. And you?" So, imagine if you were walking all day and every person you greeted on the way, you had to report their direction. (Laughter) But this can actually help you orient yourself very quickly, right? Because you practically wouldn't be able to greet anyone if you didn't know which direction you were going. In fact, people who speak these languages have a very good sense of direction. They are so well-oriented that we cannot imagine. We thought we were less capable than some other creatures in orientation, using biological reasons like: "Oh, we don't have magnetic compasses in our beaks or scales." No! If language and culture train you to do this, you can actually do it. There are people in the world who are very well-oriented. And to agree on how much this differs from the way we orient ourselves, I want everyone to close their eyes for a few seconds and point to the southeast. (Laughter) Keep your eyes closed and point to the southeast. Alright, now you can open your eyes. I saw you pointing there, there, there, there, there... I myself don't know which direction it is -- (Laughter) but you didn't help me much either. (Laughter) So, let's say the orientation in this room wasn't very accurate. This is a big difference in the cognitive abilities of languages, isn't it? So on one hand, your group -- which is so prepared -- couldn't find the right direction, while from the other group, if I ask a 5-year-old, they will surely find it. (Laughter) There are also big differences in the way people think about time. So I have brought some photos of my grandfather, from different periods. If I ask an English speaker to arrange them chronologically, they might place them like this: from left to right. This is related to the direction of writing. If you were a speaker of Hebrew or Arabic, you might place them on the opposite side, from right to left. But how do you think the Kuuk Thaayorre tribe, the indigenous people I just told you about, would arrange the photos? They don't use the words "left" and "right." I'll help you a bit. When people face south, they arrange time from left to right. When they face north, they arrange time from right to left. If they face west, time comes towards the body. What is the pattern they follow? That of movement from east to west, isn't it? So, for them, time is not related to the body at all, but is related to the terrain, the space. Thus, if I position myself in this direction, time passes in this direction; if I position myself in this direction, time passes in this direction; if I position myself in this direction, time passes in this direction. It's very egocentric for me to have the direction following me every time I move my body. For the Kuuk Thaayorre tribe, time is linked to the terrain, space. This completely differs from how we think about time. Here we have another clever human trick. If I ask you how many penguins are in the photo? I imagine how you will solve this problem, if you solve it. You counted: "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So you counted them. You marked them with a number, and the last number you said was the total number of penguins. It's a little trick you learned to use since childhood. You learn numbers and know how to use them. This is a little linguistic trick. But some languages don't do this, because some languages don't have specific names for numbers. There are languages that don't have the word "seven" or the word "eight." In fact, people who speak these languages don't count, and they have difficulty remembering exact quantities. For example, if I ask you to compare the number of penguins with the same number of ducks, you will be able to do it by counting. But people who don't have this linguistic trick cannot do it. Languages also differ in how they refer to the color spectrum, the visual world. Some languages have many words that name colors, others have fewer, like: "light" - "dark." Languages also differ in how they distinguish colors. So in English, there is one word for the color blue that includes all the colors you see on the screen, but in Russian, it's not a single word. Russian speakers have to distinguish between light blue "goluboy" and dark blue "siniy." So, Russians have spent their whole lives linguistically distinguishing these two colors. When we test people's abilities to distinguish different colors, we found that Russians perceive these linguistic differences faster. They can distinguish the difference between light blue and dark blue more quickly. And if we look at people's brains when they see colors -- colors will shift from lighter to darker -- the brains of people who use different words for light blue and dark blue will react when the colors change from light to dark as if, "Oh, something has categorically changed." Whereas the brains of English speakers, for example, do not have this reaction, do not need this categorical distinction, there is no reaction because there are no categorical differences. Languages have all sorts of special structures. This is one of my favorites. Many languages have the grammatical category of gender; every noun can belong to a gender, usually masculine and feminine. These genders differ in different languages. So, for example, the sun is feminine in German but masculine in Spanish, while the moon is the opposite. Can this affect how people think? Do German speakers think the sun is more feminine and the moon more masculine? In fact, this leads us to a case study. So, if you ask a German speaker or a Spanish speaker to describe a bridge, like this one -- "bridge" will be feminine in German and masculine in Spanish -- German speakers are more inclined to say bridges are "beautiful" and "elegant," typically feminine words, while Spaniards are more inclined to say "strong," "long," typically masculine words. (Laughter) Languages also differ in how they describe events, don't they? Look at an event like this in the photo, an accident. In English, you can say, "He broke the vase." In languages like Spanish, you are more inclined to say, "The vase broke" or "The vase broke itself." If it's an accident, you can't say someone did it. In English, surprisingly, we can also say: "I broke my arm." But in many other languages, you cannot use this construction unless you are "crazy" and went out of your way to break your arm -- (Laughter) and managed to break it. If it was an accident, you have to use other constructions. This also has consequences for thinking. People who speak different languages will pay attention to different things depending on what the language dictates. We saw how the same accident was treated by English speakers and Spanish speakers. English speakers will remember who caused the accident, as English requires you to say: "He did it, he broke the vase." Whereas Spaniards are less inclined to remember who caused the accident, if it was an accident, but are more inclined to remember that it was an accident. They are more inclined to remember the outcome. So, two people see the same event, witness the same crime, but end up remembering different things from that event. This undoubtedly complicates eyewitness testimony. It also complicates the punishment of the culprit. So, if you take an English speaker, and I just told you that someone just broke a vase and I say: "He broke the vase," instead of saying: "The vase broke itself," even if you can witness it yourself, even by watching the video, you see the crime against the vase, you will punish someone more, you will blame someone more, if you just say: "He broke the vase," instead of: "It broke." Language guides, dictates our reasoning about events. Now, I will give you some examples to understand how language profoundly influences the way of thinking, and it does so in different ways. So, language has a great influence, as we saw above, where people could determine space and time in completely different coordinates from each other. Language can also profoundly influence -- as we saw in the case of numbers. Having the ability to count in a language -- having words that name numbers enables us to know the vast world of mathematics. Because if you cannot count, you cannot do algebra, you cannot do any of the things that might be required to build a space like this, or to realize this broadcast, right? Precisely this trick of counting words enables you to have a cornerstone in the entire cognitive realm. Language can also have early effects, as we saw in the case of colors. These are truly very simple perceptual decisions. We make thousands of them all the time, yet language is also involved in the simple perceptual decisions we make. Language can also have other effects. So the case of gender as a grammatical category might seem strange, but meanwhile, all nouns have the grammatical category of gender. This shows how language shapes the way of thinking about everything that can be named. So, many things together. Finally, I want to show you an example of how language can shape things that have a personal impact on us -- thoughts about guilt, punishment, or eyewitness memory. These are important in our daily lives. The beauty of linguistic diversity is that it reveals how extraordinary, "genius," and flexible the human mind is. The human mind has not invented just one cognitive universe but 7,000 -- there are about 7,000 languages spoken worldwide. We can create even more -- because languages are alive, we can polish, change, or adapt them according to our needs. It is tragic that we are losing so much linguistic diversity all the time. We are losing a language a week, and according to some estimates, half of the world's languages will disappear in the next hundred years. And the even worse news is that everything we now know about the human mind and brain is based on studies, usually of American students, English-speaking university students, right? This excludes almost all people, right? So, what we know about the human mind is actually extremely limited and biased, so science must do its best. I want to leave you with this last thought. I have told you how speakers of different languages think differently, but of course, this is not related to how other people think. It's about how you think. About how the language you speak shapes the way you think. This gives you the opportunity to ask: "Why do I think the way I think?" How can I think differently? Also: "What thoughts do I want to create?" Thank you very much! (Applause)