Quiz 3

Language and Culture

Language and culture
Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis•Does culture affect language? Does language
affect culture? Both?

LanguageThought

Cognitive
Linguistics

Great Eskimo
vocabulary hoax••

Have you heard Eskimo hasdozens of distinct words for snow?
This is claimed to be massively
exaggerated, but it is reasonable
that if something is important inyour culture, you have more words
about it.

•It is probably not surprising that culture affects
words — Needless to say, physicists know morewords about physics, soccer players know more
words about soccer, and so on.

•But does culture affect grammar?

Does culture affectgrammar?
•Does culture affectgrammar?

What do you think about the following claims?
•“French (or most other European languages) has
grammatical gender, but English got rid of it. Frenchpeople are more conservative about gender.”•“English has grammatical number, while Japanese(or most Asian languages) lacks one. English
speakers are better at math.”••

Linguists are very skeptical about this kind of claims.

•“Unlike English, Japanese has the SOV order, inwhich the main predicate is not clear until the end.
This is related to the Japanese culture in whichpeople are reluctant to clearly state their opinion.”•“Japanese can omit the subject of a sentence.
This is because the Japanese culture tends toobscure who is responsible.”

Again, linguists are very skeptical about this kind ofclaims.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
and linguistic relativity

But..
•Honorifics••

Japanese has unusual grammatical honorificforms••It seems that Japan does have a culture inwhich people care about politeness

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
and linguistic relativity•

Language determines the way we think.
We dissect nature along lines laid down by ournative language. (Whorf 1940)

Color terms

There is some evidence that language affects
thought.
•In a psychological experiment, German
speakers sometimes confuse the sex of ananimal with the grammatical gender of thenoun for that animal.

•What’s the color of the traffic light that means‘go’?

A bit of history••“[French is] the most logical, the clearest, andthe most transparent language that has everbeen spoken by man.” (Ferdinaud Brunetière,1894)“[English is a] methodical, energetic, businesslike and sober language, that does not caremuch for finery and elegance, but does care forlogical consistency. (…) As the language is, so
also is the nation.” (Otto Jespersen, 1905)•

Until the early 20th century, it was common(even among professional linguists) to connect
linguistic features and cultural superiority/inferiority.

•Today, professional linguists tend to think that all
languages are equally rich and complex, and its
grammar has nothing to do with its social status.
•The decline of naïve eurocentrism•

Detailed grammar of minority languages
became available•

The rise of cognitive science, which sees
language as a universal human capacity

•However, there is a
revival of interests about
the relationship between
culture and language.

•You are free toinvestigate this topic
now, but you must be
careful so that you do notrepeat 19th-century-styleprejudice.

Reaction paper•

What is the name of each container? Which are ビン/カンetc., and which are bottles/cans etc.?

•Survey a non-native language by asking your classmates.

•Do your results match your intuition? Are they the same
as your native language? What is the decisive feature ofeach container name?

•Do you think linguistic difference can affect how you
behave in reality?

Books