I'm doing an honor's project for my Semantics class, and am researching the hypothesis that the languages you speak shape how you see the world (also referred to as the Whorf Hypothesis, or linguistic relativism). This hypothesis was widely refuted a few decades ago, but it is making a comeback with recent experiments, such as the one I just read about by Stanford psychologist Lara Boroditsky:
In order to check if languages with grammatical gender affect thought, she rounded up a group of native German and Spanish speakers. German has three gender agreements: masculine, feminine, and neuter--der, die, and das--(which, incidentally, are giving me quite the headache on my vocabulary quizzes), and Spanish has two: masculine and feminine, el and la. These speakers were asked to describe the word key in English, which is grammatically masculine in German but feminine in Spanish. The results? The native German speakers overwhelmingly described a key with such words as "jagged, rough, hard, heavy, metal, serrated, useful," while the Spanish speakers said a key was "golden, intricate, little, shiny, tiny, lovely." (Experiment aside, would you ever describe a key as lovely? Were these participants high?)
Next up was the word for bridge, which is feminine in German and masculine in Spanish. The results were consistent! German speakers described a bridge (in English) with adjectives like "beautiful, elegant, fragile, peaceful, pretty, slender," all words that usually personify females. Spanish speakers came up with "big, dangerous, long, strong, sturdy, towering," much more stereotypical of male attributes.
Do you think language shapes thought? How would you describe these words? I am a native English speaker, a fluent Spanish speaker, and a painfully slow learner of German, and the first word that pops into my head for "key" would be rusty. But then again, my Isla Vista landlord has probably been recycling these house keys since Reagan was president.
Tell me these findings are not the most fascinating thing you've read on a blog all day.
(Oh wait, Cupcakes and Cashmere says that this Fall, wool dresses are in. I stand corrected.)
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