One recent demonstration of this phenomenon involved differences in the way that English and Mandarin Chinese speakers talk and think about time. Language may indeed influence the way that we think, an idea known as linguistic determinism. (b) Almeida Júnior painted Saudade in 1899. (a) Saudade de Nápoles, which is translated into “missing Naples,” was painted by Bertha Worms in 1895. Today, psychologists continue to study and debate the relationship between language and thought.įigure 1. Does this affect how we think about love depending on the language that we speak (Whorf, 1956)? Researchers have since identified this view as too absolute, pointing out a lack of empiricism behind what Sapir and Whorf proposed (Abler, 2013 Boroditsky, 2011 van Troyer, 1994). However, in English we use the word love for all types of love. For example, in some languages there are many different words for love. Sapir and Whorf proposed that language determines thought.
They wanted to understand how the language habits of a community encourage members of that community to interpret language in a particular manner (Sapir, 1941/1964). Two researchers, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, began this investigation in the 1940s. But can words themselves shape the way we think about things? Psychologists have long investigated the question of whether language shapes thoughts and actions, or whether our thoughts and beliefs shape our language. The given language that children learn is connected to their culture and surroundings. When we speak one language, we agree that words are representations of ideas, people, places, and events.
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