How Language Shapes the Way We Think
There are many languages spoken in the world. Do you think people who speak different languages have different ways of thinking? Lera Boroditsky,/a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego,/discusses this issue in a talk.
1
I’ll be speaking to you/using language. This is one of these magical abilities/that we humans have. Because of this ability,/we’re able to transmit our ideas/across vast reaches of space and time.
There are about 7,000 languages/spoken around the world. And all the languages differ from one another in all kinds of ways/—in sound,/vocabulary,/and structure. We may ask the question:/Does the language we speak shape the way we think?
Some people would say yes,/and others would say no. The arguments have gone back and forth/for thousands of years. Until recently,/there hasn’t been any data/to help us decide either way. But now we have scientific data/to weigh in on this question.
There are many languages spoken in the world. Do you think people who speak different languages have different ways of thinking? Lera Boroditsky,/a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego,/discusses this issue in a talk.
1
I’ll be speaking to you/using language. This is one of these magical abilities/that we humans have. Because of this ability,/we’re able to transmit our ideas/across vast reaches of space and time.
There are about 7,000 languages/spoken around the world. And all the languages differ from one another in all kinds of ways/—in sound,/vocabulary,/and structure. We may ask the question:/Does the language we speak shape the way we think?
Some people would say yes,/and others would say no. The arguments have gone back and forth/for thousands of years. Until recently,/there hasn’t been any data/to help us decide either way. But now we have scientific data/to weigh in on this question.