“Language and Thought”

TED Talk by Lera Boroditsky

General notes

● Language is very weird, were just making sounds and our brains interpret them as thoughts
○ Transmits knowledge and ideas
● Language can make us think thoughts that we have never thought before
● Does the language we speak change the way we think?
○ Does it craft reality??
○ Kuul Thaayuur
■ Don't use left or right, only directions
■ Don't say hello, greet with which way they are going
● Language and culture trains us to be good at directions
■ Language and culture determines how we think about directions
○ Time
■ Directional
■ East to west, not locked on the body, locked on landscape
● Egocentric to have it locked on yourself
○ Numbers
■ Some languages don't have exact number words
■ Have trouble matching numbers
○ Colors
■ How we divide colors
■ Dark and light
■ Russian separates blues in language, English does not
● Testing Russian is faster separating
● Notice the categorical change because they have categories
○ Grammatical gender
■ Differ across languages
■ Feminine, words are usually described as more feminine (beautiful, elegant)
vs male (strong)
○ Events
■ The vase broke itself vs I broke the vase
■ Accidents aren’t described as you doing something
■ Pay attention to different things depending on what your language requires
● Intention vs who did it
■ Eyewitness, blame, punishment, etc.
● Punish more if you say “he broke it” vs “it broke”
○ Big, deep, early, broad, weighty
● Human minds are flexible, invented 7 thousand different cognitive universes (languages)
○ Losing this over time
 ○ Everything we know is usually from English speaking people
■ Excludes a bunch of other people
■ Biased and narrow knowledge
● What thoughts do I wish to create
○ Is it possible that we haven’t thought of certain things because our language limits it?

Reflection Questions

1. Why do I think the way that I do?

I think the way I do because of the language I speak. I speak English, so my thoughts will be
shaped by the constraints of that language. I also think the way I do because of the society
and culture around me. I think the way I have been thought to think through observation,
education, etc. For example, because my parents usually talk in a certain way, I have similar
speaking patterns to them.

2. How could I think differently?

I think that in order to think differently, we kind of need to step outside the boundaries of
language. In English, we have a big expansive dictionary of words that we can use to express
nearly every thought we have, but not always. I think that sometimes the way we think is
limited by the language we know, so in order to think differently, we either need to expand
our knowledge of the language we already speak or look at it from a new perspective through
another language or culture.

3. What thoughts do I wish to create?

I wish to create thoughts that I cannot express. I wish to think about things that I know but in
a new way. I feel like my thoughts now are too shaped by the people around me. I would like
to create thoughts that break that mold, that are from a different perspective. It's weird to
think that we can think things that we have never even thought to think of before. Is it
possible that we are limited as a species because of our language? What are we missing out
on? If we are missing out on things, I wish to create those thoughts.

“Lost in Translation”
by Lera Boroditsky

General Notes: Compare and contrast with texts and ideas explored

“Danger of a single story”

Listening to stories from other languages and cultures can change perspective. Only listening to
English stories means that you are limited by that language. Reading stories from other parts of the
world can change the way you think, breaking the bounds of your “home” language.

“Politics and the english language”

English is meant to be simple and direct, so because of this, we often think in simple and direct
ways. This affects the way we think about things.
“1984”
Their language values different things, so they think about things differently.
NY times articles
English focuses on different things than other languages. How would other cultures have responded
to these same situations?
Civil rights articles
Even though these articles were all from different perspectives, they were all written in English. I
wonder how that affected my interpretation of them.

Language and thought

● Change the way we think without even realizing it

● Gender
● Untestable?
○ Conflicting studies and ideas
● Conceptualization of time and space (time moves with space, not relative to a person)
● Casualty
○ English does things, other languages (Spanish) the things do the act
■ English remembers who did it
■ Describe events differently
● Differentiate between shades of blue
● Language is a human creation
○ Changes how we think
○ Express our thoughts but also shave those very thoughts
○ Human nature is effected

Statement about language and thought in regard to politics, power, and

justice

Language can completely change the meaning of evidence, meaning that in politics, power, and
justice, the way a word is said and the context around it can change the way it is interpreted.
Furthermore, the language one speaks in can entirely change how our language is expressed and
interpreted. In these issues, the way one person thinks about a certain subject can change entirely
based on what language that person has learned because they are restricted by the bounds of their
own language.
Comments: toxic trait
Procrastinating, doing too many things, perfection, staying up late, being mean