Vygotsky/Sapir/Whorf/Saussure discussions.
Best,
Serpil S. Fox
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101103111206.htm
The paper appears in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
"Charlemagne is reputed to have said that to speak another
language is to
possess another soul," says co-author Oludamini Ogunnaike, a
graduate
student at Harvard. "This study suggests that language is much
more than a
medium for expressing thoughts and feelings. Our work hints that
language
creates and shapes our thoughts and feelings as well."
Implicit attitudes, positive or negative associations people may be
unaware they possess, have been shown to predict behavior towards
members of
social groups. Recent research has shown that these attitudes are
quite
malleable, susceptible to factors such as the weather, popular
culture --
or, now, by the language people speak.
"Can we shift something as fundamental as what we like and
dislike by
changing the language in which our preferences are elicited?"
asks co-author
Mahzarin R. Banaji, the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social
Ethics at
Harvard. "If the answer is yes, that gives more support to the
idea that
language is an important shaper of attitudes."
Ogunnaike, Banaji, and Yarrow Dunham, now at the University of
California,
Merced, used the well-known Implicit Association Test (IAT), where
participants rapidly categorize words that flash on a computer
screen or are
played through headphones. The test gives participants only a
fraction of a
second to categorize words, not enough to think about their answers.
"The IAT bypasses a large part of conscious cognition and taps into
something we're not aware of and can't easily control," Banaji says.
The researchers administered the IAT in two different settings:
once in
Morocco, with bilinguals in Arabic and French, and again in the
U.S. with
Latinos who speak both English and Spanish.
In Morocco, participants who took the IAT in Arabic showed greater
preference for other Moroccans. When they took the test in
French, that
difference disappeared. Similarly, in the U.S., participants who
took the
test in Spanish showed a greater preference for other Hispanics.
But again,
in English, that preference disappeared.
"It was quite shocking to see that a person could take the same
test,
within a brief period of time, and show such different results,"
Ogunnaike
says. "It's like asking your friend if he likes ice cream in
English, and
then turning around and asking him again in French and getting a
different
answer."
In the Moroccan test, participants saw "Moroccan" names (such as
Hassan or
Fatimah) or "French" names (such as Jean or Marie) flash on a
monitor, along
with words that are "good" (such as happy or nice) or "bad" (such
as hate or
mean). Participants might press one key when they see a Moroccan
name or a
good word, and press another when they see a French name or a bad
word. Then
the key assignments are switched so that "Moroccan" and "bad"
share the same
key and "French" and "good" share the other.
Linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf first posited in the 1930s that
language is so
powerful that it can determine thought. Mainstream psychology has
taken the
more skeptical view that while language may affect thought
processes, it
doesn't influence thought itself. This new study suggests that
Whorf's idea,
when not caricatured, may generate interesting hypotheses that
researchers
can continue to test.
"These results challenge our views of attitudes as stable,"
Banaji says.
"There still remain big questions about just how fixed or
flexible they are,
and language may provide a window through which we will learn
about their
nature."
Ogunnaike, Dunham, and Banaji's work was supported by Harvard's
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Mellon Mays
Foundation.
]
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