ABSTRACT
For some reason the idea that the language one speaks affects the way one thinks, the Whorf or Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (e.g., Sapir, 1921; Whorf, 1956), is repugnant to some and stirring to others. Perhaps because of the passion it arouses, it produces clever experiments. Take speakers of Guugu Yimithirr, a language that uses only the cardinal directions to locate things in space, and drive them around every which way, and ask them to point home. They do so remarkably accurately. Take speakers of Dutch, a language that uses egocentric relations as well as cardinal directions to locate things in space and do the same-they point randomly (e.g., Levinson, 1996, 2003). Ask native German speakers to describe objects like a bridge in English. Some use terms like elegant, fragile, or slender. Ask the same of native Spanish speakers. Some use terms like strong, sturdy, or towering (Boroditsky, Schmidt, & Phillips, 2003). Why? In German, the word for bridge is feminine, whereas in Spanish it is masculine. Ask people who speak languages that refer to objects like boxes as units of substance, similar to ‘pieces of cardboard’, whether a plastic box or a piece of cardboard goes better with a cardboard box. They tend to group by stuff; they pick the piece of cardboard as often as the plastic box. In contrast, speakers of languages like English that individuate objects tend to group by kind; they pick the plastic box (e.g., Imai & Gentner, 1997; Lucy, 1992; Lucy & Gaskins, 2001, 2003). Effects of language have been shown for time (e.g., Boroditsky, 2001) as well as space, for color and shape as well as for substance/object (e.g., Roberson, Davidoff, & Shapiro, 2002; Roberson, Davies, & Davidoff, 2000). As for the effects of language on spatial cognition, the effects of language on perception of color, objects, and substance have been challenged. Sometimes the challenge is specific, that alternative explanations seem more plausible for the case at hand (e.g., Li, Dunham, & Carey, 2008), but sometimes the challenge is general, to the very idea that the language one speaks can affect the way one thinks (e.g., Li & Gleitman, 2002; but see Levinson, Kita, Haun, & Rasch, 2002).
