Abstract language, global perception: How language shapes what we see

Abstract language, global perception: How language shapes what we see Emiel Krahmer (E.J.Krahmer@uvt.nl) Department of Communication and Information Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, Tilburg University, The Netherlands Diederik A. Stapel (D.A.Stapel@uvt.nl) Department of Social Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tilburg University, The Netherlands Abstract Pullum 1991), but recent work has revealed highly interesting cross-linguistic differences related to, for instance, spatial orientation (e.g., Majid et al. 2006), perception of time (e.g., Boroditsky 2001), and perception of color (e.g., Winawer et al. 2007). Nevertheless, there are arguably two basic problems with this general approach: (1) the problem of cross-translation between languages and (2) the problem that differences between languages may covary with other characteristics of populations and that such differences may not solely be attributed to linguistic differences (e.g., Ji et al. 2004). These two problems arise when different languages are compared, but vanish as soon as we try to answer the question within a given language. The “Does language shape thought? ” question then becomes: can within- language variation lead to differences in thought? There is a sense in which this is clearly true: as many studies in psycholinguistics and social psychology have shown, words may influence how we perceive and evaluate the world. To give but one recent example (from Labroo et al., 2008): participants that are exposed to a word like “key,” are quicker in processing a picture of a lock and evaluate this lock more favorably. Studies such as these show that a specific word may influence the perception of a specific image. Put another way, in such studies (as in the majority of priming studies), the semantics of the priming words is assumed to stand in a direct relation to the effect under consideration (e.g., priming with words like “rude” and “polite” makes people behave in a more rude or polite way, Bargh et al., 1996; priming with “warmth” increases interpersonal warmth, Williams & Bargh, 2008, etc.). In this paper, however, we do not focus on the semantics of words; rather we address a more basic question, to wit: can classes of words (i.e., concrete or abstract ones) influence basic, general cognitive processes? We show that the abstractness level of words and sentences influences basic cognitive processes. In particular, we show that abstract language causes participants to pay more attention to global features in a perceptual focus task and makes them more inclusive on a categorization task, while concrete language leads to a more detailed perceptual focus and more exclusive categorizations. These effects are shown for nouns, adjectives and verbs, as well as for sentences with ambitransitive verbs. Keywords: Language, Perception, Linguistic Relativity, Categorization, Abstract and Conrete Language Introduction Some words are abstract, vague and insubstantial, while others are concrete, definite and easily visualized. This much is uncontroversial (e.g., Glenberg et al., 2008). But what, if any, are the cognitive effects of abstract and concrete language use? Do people perceive the world differently after having processed abstract and concrete language? We argue that they do. More specifically, we show that abstract language results in a more global perceptual focus and more inclusive categorizations, while concrete language induces more attention to perceptual details and more exclusive categorizations. In this paper, we report on a series of experiments that, to the best of our knowledge, show for the first time that the abstractness level of words indeed influences basic cognitive processes. Language and Thought Our research fits in with a wider research tradition, asking whether language shapes thought. Providing a definite answer to this seemingly straightforward question has proven to be surprisingly difficult (Boroditsky, 2003: 917). Probably, the best-known interpretation of the “does language shape thought? ” question is the one due to Sapir and his student Whorf: the linguistic relativity interpretation (more commenly known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis), which states that systematic differences between languages give rise to systematic differences in thought between speakers of these languages (Whorf, 1956). For a long time, research directly addressing the Sapir- Whorf hypothesis has had a somewhat negative reputation (consider, for instance, the Eskimo-words-for-snow debate; Concrete versus Abstract Language We argue that differences in abstractness-level between words and sentences have a direct influence on basic cognitive processes. But what makes language abstract or concrete? First of all, it is intuitively clear that some words (“democracy”) are more abstract and others are more concrete (“office chair”). Moreover, it is also clear that this distinction does not only apply to nouns, but to other syntactic categories as well. An adjective such as “spiritual”, for instance, is intuitively more abstract than,