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[johnslat]

ScienceDaily (Nov. 17, 2010)

"The language we speak may influence not only our thoughts, but our implicit preferences as well. That's the finding of a study by psychologists at Harvard University, who found that bilingual individuals' opinions of different ethnic groups were affected by the language in which they took a test examining their biases and predilections.
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."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101103111206.htm

[killthebuddha]

[johnslat]

Dear ktb,

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.

They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons-a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million-who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world."

Sounds right to me - of course, I may be being manipulated by the wire-pullers who wrote this stuff


Regards,
John

[killthebuddha]

[johnslat]

Dear ktb,

Come to think on it, don't we, to some degree, at least, do the same to our students?

"their minds molded, their tastes formed, their ideas suggested, largely by"

US.

Oh, I realize that all that takes time, but after all, most people are in school for many years.

Regards,
John the wire-puller

[Hod]

[johnslat]

Dear Hod,

And have you never had a teacher/teachers who made such an impression on you that you've never forgotten him/her/them?

I hope you have - I have, and I know that "to some degree, at least" they influenced me in many ways (including my choice of profession.)

Regards,
John

[killthebuddha]

[artemisia]

From Johnslat's post:

[johnslat]

Dear klb,

But . . . but isn't the purpose of your posting to try to influence the way I (might) think about language?

I eschew absolutism (I do love that word: eschew.) so, to say that language has absolutely NO effect on how our minds are molded, how our tastes are formed, how out ideas are suggested seems to me as wrong as saying that language has a profound effect on all three.

http://www.newsweek.com/2009/07/08/what-s-in-a-word.html#

http://blog.longnow.org/2009/06/16/does-language-affect-thought-a-new-look-at-an-old-debate/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/06/22/new-nicaraguan-sign-language-shows-how-language-affects-thought/

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/051226_langbrainfrm.htm

http://ed-matters.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-language-affects-thought.html

http://www.comparative-psychology.de/pdf/LevinsonCognition2002.pdf

I'll close with a quote from one of the above sources:

"Who knows whether any of this is true, but it is certainly thought-provoking. It indicates how much of what we find �natural� or �intuitive� is actually based in culture."

Regards,
John

[wangdaning]

[killthebuddha]

[johnslat]

Dear ktb,

Oh, I like this guy:

"One of Whorf's most important insights that get lost in the Whorf Hypothesis Hoax is the very real possibility that some of our least questioned assumptions about reality, including 'time,' 'space,' and 'matter,' are more like verbal hallucinations born of a noun-happy family of languages that look at the world in this way, rather than deep 'intuitions' of the 'really real' state of reality. That is, we all live our everyday habitual lives as if these notions are real, and not just part of our language and its way of helping us 'see' reality. We have seen how 'time' in our normal sense is such an hallucination, and according to Heisenberg was abolished by Einstein's mathematics. It is only the existence of languages other than those of the Indo-European family that can bring in this counter-evidence to a worldview logic grown wild and considering itself "true" in the absence of just such exceptions."

Many thanks for the link.

Regards,
John

[killthebuddha]

Dear johnslat,

"Pray God us keep / From Single vision & Newton's sleep!"

I knew you'd like him...what's not to? And at least there's something here TO like and to think about and appreciate. So thank you, for your original post and your dogged determination. (I knew that you knew that there had to be more to it than met the eye, even if all the good and juicy bits had been left out.)

In honor of the estimable Mr. Whorf and all amateur enthusiasts everywhere, and with thanks to Mr. Dan Moonhawk Alford who perhaps isn't quite yet ready to allow the experts ruin the world...

Look what they've done to my song, Ma
Look what they've done to my song
Well it's the only thing I could do half right
And it's turning out all wrong, Ma
Look what they've done to my song

Look what they've done to my brain, Ma
Look what they've done to my brain
Well they picked it like a chicken bone
And I think I'm half insane, Ma
Look what they've done to my song

I wish I could find a good book to live in
Wish I could find a good book
Well, if I could find a real good book
I'd never have to come out and look at
What they've done to my song

La la la...
Look what they've done to my song

--ktb

[gaijinalways]

I think I am ready to be molded!


From Johnslat's post:

Quote:
"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."

artemisia posted