Relatively Speaking

A number of interesting articles appeared in the world media last week about some of the consequences of being bilingual. Whilst the study of second language acquisition and use is not part of your AS/A2 course, the issue of language and representation is, and as you know, one of the key theories that helps us to think about the relationship between language and thought is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

If you remember, there are two strands to Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf's thinking: the theory of linguistic determinism suggests that language determines thought, while the theory of linguistic relativity proposes that if language determines thought, then different languages determine thought in different ways. You might recall that Ed 'n' Ben (as I like to think their respective mothers would have called them) cited the Hopi language as an illustration of their theory: Hopi lacks tense constructions, and so Sapir and Whorf argued that Hopi speakers conceived of the notion of time in very different ways from speakers of European languages.

Many linguists have since discredited the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, but this article would seem to offer compelling evidence in support of the theory of linguistic relativity. The article reports on a recent study of bilingual speakers, the results of which suggest that fluent speakers of more than one language have different personalities depending on the language they are using. The academics who carried out the study say that

language can be a cue that activates different culture-specific frames,

which is pretty much the point that Sapir and Whorf were making all those years ago. Interesting stuff...