Short | Why Language Doesn't Shape You | John McWhorter
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ต.ค. 2024
- We think we see the world the way it is.
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But how we think changes what we see, and more radically every organism sees the world in its own unique way. Is this because perception does not simply reflect reality but plays a part in its creation? And if so what is reality and what are the limits on how it can be perceived?
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Joanna Kavenna: Winner of the Orange First Novel prize, Kavenna’s works include A Field Guide to Reality, The Ice Museum and Inglorious.
John McWhorter: Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, McWhorter specializes in linguistics and music history. He is the host of the Lexicon Valley podcast, and the author of The Language Hoax: Why The World looks the Same in any Language.
Andy Clark: Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Edinburgh University, Clark is author of Natural Born Cyborgs, Supersizing the Mind and Surfing Uncertainty
Rufus Duits: Head of Philosophy at St. Paul's School London, Duits is a Heidegger expert.
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Most people commenting seem to not really know what he's talking about. The Sapir Whorf hypothesis of linguistic determinism has nothing to do with being educated or speaking intellectually, or about how language is used by a cultured person. Of course the way people express themselves and the language or dialect they use expresses who they are and their education. But the hypothesis is that language structure itself drastically shape the ability of a person to even conceive of or perceive a concept of thing. Like if your language's syntax is head final you solve problems or conceive of events backwards, or if you lack grammatical tense you can't perceive time because there is no way for you to represent it in your grammar. In the century since the theory was proposed all attempts at empirically supporting the theory have failed or have only shown extremely minor impacts on cognition and support for a very minor linguistic relativism. In fact, Whorf himself seemed to not really know what the hell he was talking about with the Hopi language, upon which he based much of his theory; he made numerous claims like not only do they have no tense, but they have no words for temporal concepts at all. Both of these statements are completely false, as is the idea that Hopi people exist in this strange mentality of an eternal present, not being able to plan for the future or recal the past because they can't encode it in their mental grammar. Just ask a Chinese person who speaks a language with no grammatical tense or inflectional morphology indicating mood or tense, if they can think about the past or the future.
Yes; which is what McWhorter argues in the book he mentions here.
What also doesn't help are all the tin-foil hatters who misinterpret and try to appropriate the material for their own wackaloon purposes.
Well said.
I've been a big McWhorter fan for years. The man is brilliant.
This would've been extremely useful when I learned about Noam Chomsky's linguistic determinism in developmental psychology.
light blue is also used as a pejorative term for gay people in Russia.
seems like the missing piece of the video title is: "... because it leads to ideologically incorrect conclusions to believe that it does"
I would gather that the material conditions of a society shape the language first while it shapes the culture. Maybe the language is more of an expression of that culture rather than that which shapes the culture.
That sounds right. It's a mutually arising and self shaping-pattern.
There's a school for deaf children in Nicaragua who developed their own new language. Cognitive tests have demonstrated that their ability to perform many cognitive functions we take for granted have changed dramatically as their language has developed to incorporate more complex abstract concepts. It really blows his whole idea out of the water. You literally can't think about thinking without a word for "thinking".
Interesting. Can you provide a link or name for the school.
How did we come up with the word for "thinking" in the first place? You literally cannot invent a word to describe a thing without knowing the thing you're trying to describe!
@@TheFartoholic Exactly; what Garrett just described is McWhorter's idea for how languages acquire complexity. Children who learn a language tend to complicate it's grammar, while adults learning the language tend to simplify the grammar. Garrett ironically proves McWhorter's point.
Language absolutely defines people! It defines their intellect, their discipline, their ability to form a cogent argument! Irrespective of the language, it’s appropriate use defines your position on the intellectual scale!
Thanks for your commen! I totally agree with you! That is why it is important to teach one's children to speak in a sophisticated way.
That's not what he's talking about though.
@@vovac8915 The two you respond to have it backwards.
well not really you have geniuses who are bad at speaking and people who are verbose and articulate eloquent who are far from it..
I’m not a linguist but the title seems misleading. At least based on this short clip, the speaker isn’t actually saying that language doesn’t shapes on view into he world. In fact, what he says is that there’s experimental evidence to show that it does for seemingly innocuous abilities like color perception (by a bit, but presumably with statistical significance), but then if you accept those claims, then you also have to accept other claims that come off as racist. If language makes you more sophisticated in certain ways of perceiving and interacting with the world, then it makes you dumber with respect to other ways. That’s what it seems he is saying here, and not actually making a strong claim for experimental results that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is incorrect. I’m going to read his book and see whether he offers a stronger attack on Sapir-Whorf. The other problematic claim that he makes is that small differences don’t matter. Small differences can add up to tremendous differences if they scale up and the interact with other factors; that’s what study of complex and dynamic systems show. How precisely these small differences in perception might potentially add up to noticeable cultural traits isn’t clear, though. But if small differences exist, are measurable, and are statistically significant, then it will probably create some kind of larger scale impact down the line.
I'm not sure whoever uploaded this understood what he said here...
You mean the Institute itself? Of course some lackey maintains the channel isn't gonna get it.
Yeah, you're right. That's weird.
I heard the French don't even have a word for entrepreneur.
Why are they all sweating?
Probably because they're all packed into that canvas tent.
Because it's hot.
Using language to explain language. There can be no hypnosis without language.
What is reality? The question is the answer: That which can't be named.
The lady's comment is just silly. We can extrapolate from significant sample sizes to the individual.
i reckon there is something of merit to what he is saying ...language definitely affects us german for example is rubbish compared to english when it comes to making casual asides or banterig ich weiss wovon ich spreche ...now i dunno wether thats to do with the fact that the germans are the way they are hence they dont use german that way even if its possible to use german that way and it is possible certainly or if german in itself only lends itself to being used that way akwardly so people just dont or an interplay of both factors ...people influence language but language allso influences people .....if krauts are stiff pedantic non bantering humorless dullards and uncasual to boot its going to affect how language develops or how its used ...
Some had noticed Russian bots eaves-dropping in You Tube. They let themselves be known. Facebook opened wide to them, maybe unwittingly.
Your comment seems irrelevent, but I will say that russian bots are a superficial problem, Americans need to remove their surrogate internet lives and come back to reality.
The title of this video could not be further from the truth. Language OF COURSE shapes you.
Every word that comes out of your mouth, and every way you express those words, reveals exactly who and what you are.
The title of the video is "Why language doesn't shape you" yet one of the first thing he says is that too a small extent language does shape us thus contradicting the clickbait title.
A small extent can hardly be said to "shape you"
@@BobbyBermuda1986 Does to any extent is not "doesn't shape you"
@C o The title didn't qualify the extent, it clearly says "doesn't shape you."
He is trying to counter the exaggerated popular impression of the power of the Sapir-Whorf hypotheses, which struck a chord in the popular mind and led to such silly ideas as "Navajos have no conception of the future because of their language".
@@myothersoul1953 Lack of qualification in a title does not equal the claim in the title being intended in the absolute strictest possible interpretation.