I just discovered this Ted talk online and thought I'd share it! In this short talk, Steven Pinker shows how language is like "a window on to human nature." He shows how subtle differences in the way we express ideas actually give us valuable insights into the way we think and function as humans. For example, Pinker points out that the difference between the verb usage in each of the following sentences:
Give the muffin to a mouse.
Give the mouse a muffin.
He claims that the first sentence denotes causation: "cause X to go to Y", while the second indicates "cause Y to have X". This subtle difference can be further put under the microscope to reveal that "there's a level of fine-grained conceptual structure, which we automatically and unconsciously compute ever time we produce or utter a sentence, that governs our use of language." This offers a framework for human thought, which, Pinker argues, sheds lights on some of the most philosophical questions of human nature.
Pinker also shows that the different ways that we can use language to conceive thoughts are a basis for argumentation in times when the facts may not differ, but the interpretation of the facts do immensely. For example, "invading Iraq" and "liberating Iraq" in our society refers to the same action, but construed in entirely different ways.
If you're interested in the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and linguistics, definitely check it out!
Maggie this is actually super interesting. I remember seeing this Ted Talk a while back, long before I had ever taken a linguistics course. I find the point that you raise, the usage of linguistics as a basis for argumentation, most interesting. I see these usages as linguistic manipulation and we're aware that we're exposed to so much of it on a daily basis, particularly in news media and marketing. However I wonder how often are we able to pick up on less obvious manipulations? Also how often do we ourselves subconsciously use these linguistic manipulations to suite our needs?
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ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting topic, and I wonder how this could be applied to general psychological frameworks for how people view the world. Perhaps it could be the case that the type of language used in one's inner monologue could distinguish how the same event is taken differently by different individuals. For example, the more possessive of language one uses in their internal monologue may bring about a notion of responsibility for one's actions. On the other hand if all events were framed in a less possessive and more incidental way, one may feel less responsible for their actions.
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting. We do seem to assert causation from normal uses of language that logically do not imply causation. Hume wrote to this effect stating, "I do not ascribe to the will that unintelligible necessity, which is suppos'd to lie in matter. But I ascribe to matter, that intelligible quality, call it necessity or not, which the most rigorous orthodoxy does or must allow to belong to the will." This quote, in context, refers to humans' ability to mistake causal forces of nature with her causal effect on those forces, i.e. free will. Causal forces paint a more clear picture in which we can assert responsibility for results, even when none exists. This flaw in human analysis naturally applies to language, where we seek causation just as often, as Pinker shows. Great find!
ReplyDeleteMaggie’s commentary on invading/liberating Iraq reminds me of another TED talk that discussed the evolution of the English language and how words can change their meaning based on the words they are paired with. The example given is a hearty welcome versus a cordial reception. On their own, hearty and cordial, and welcome and reception, have quite similar meanings, but combined, they invoke very different images in the mind. As the talk explains, this difference, too, stems from how society construes these words, or rather, how they construed them hundreds of years ago, when only the educated elite spoke French. This meant that words derived from French came to be perceived as high-class, and this difference has lasted to today.
ReplyDeleteYou can find the relevant part of the TED talk here: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-did-english-evolve-kate-gardoqui
I don't know if I'm too fond of the idea of being a "linguistic detective". For example, "cause X to go to Y" vs. "cause Y to have X". Can we really make the conclusion that the emphasis shifts from the object to the person in the two different constructions of the (almost) same sentence? If so, how far can we use this conclusion to predict the context or even make a judgment about the speaker? It seems like the more utility we try to derive out of this, the more far-fetched our inferences become.
ReplyDeleteAs for the idea of "invading" vs "liberating", I think to a certain point, the difference can be attributed to perspective, but beyond that point, it would just be perversion of language. This issue was really ripped open during the post-WWII era. My history teacher once pointed out that every authoritarian regime of that era had the word "democratic" or "republic" in their title. Can we truly not distinguish between the two? At some point, it really takes a psychopath or a liar to keep arguing to twist the meaning of language.
I think that describing of the invasion of Iraq as a “liberation” involves more complicated phenomenon than simple perversion of language. To be more precise, I think the word liberation is not being so much "perverted", or changed in meaning, but rather, the word references a particular aspect of a larger invasion that most would say is not that important in light of negative consequences. In a very limited sense, it's true that an oppressive regime in Iraq ended with the US invasion. The word "liberated" emphasizes this aspect, which I would think pro-invasion supporters honestly believe is more important than the related negative consequences such that they think this description is fair.
DeleteWe use words to emphasize different aspects of events all the time. For example, I think the change in name from the US "Department of War" to the "Department of Defense" honestly reflects the perspective that many defense spending advocates hold, wherein defense spending is an act of security rather than aggression. Calling things by what we believe them to be, whether they be "liberation" or "defense", more honestly communicates what our perspectives and beliefs truly are, even if our perspectives themselves are highly contestable and short-sighted.
I find this topic super interesting – thank you for sharing Pinker’s thoughts with us. I wrote a post on linguistic relativism earlier this quarter, discussing how the form of a language – its structure and grammar – shape the way we think. However, a counter-argument to this theory came through the belief that the brain may have modules. If language is a different module in the brain, then it is difficult to argue that language indeed shapes our whole thought process.
ReplyDeleteLet us consider this counter argument in light of Pinker’s theory that our subconscious use of language reflects our deepest human nature. If language is a different module of the mind, then basic thought does not necessarily originate as language. If this is the case, then there is a conversion process from “brain-thought” to “language-thought.” Without properly understanding this conversion, it is impossible to state that our use of language indeed reflects our nature. However, if language is indeed the fuel for our thinking, Pinker’s argument holds more water.
Thank you for sharing! I watched the video and am impressed by the example of veiled bribe. So in Pinker’s example, when an officer asks a kidnapper (? maybe not) to pull over and check his license, the kidnapper used a veiled bribe to try to get around. Why does he use veiled bribe instead of direct language? So internally, the kidnapper calculates the chance of each case: the officer is honest and the officer is dishonest; so the consequence for using a direct language to bribe/not bribe are going free (very low chance), traffic ticket (the most possible), and arrest for bribery (low chance, high cost). But the use of veiled bribery gives the lowest ‘cost’ and highest ‘profit’. This example reminds me of Lelia’s lecture about Grice’s maxims. And we again see people’s mastery of language: people break some maxims of communication to achieve their goal, or to maintain some other maxims of communication. In this case, the kidnapper breaks the maxim of relation and manner to get the best possible benefit. I feel really amazed about the fact that people can process all these complex information.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this very interesting Ted talk! One related question to the notion of the subtle implications of language and the idea of Grice's maxims is to what extent our decision to follow these maxims or use language is particular ways is conscious. I intuitively agree with the notion that there is often subtlety of meaning expressed beyond the literal meaning of sentences/phrase, but wonder to what extent these meanings are intentionally made versus just a subconscious choice. For example, does the kidnapper consciously think about what the best way to ask for the bribe is or does he just want the bribe to work and subconsciously make these language choices. Any thoughts from you all?
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this! This is definitely a topic of interest that benefits multiple disciplines not only, as you mentioned in the end of your blog, philosophy and psychology, but also in law enforcement and forensics. I made this connection when I started watching Criminal Minds a few years back. Being able to correlate the linguistic elements in one's speech, writing, and mannerisms would allow one to understand how that individual operates. As a result, law enforcement agencies develop efficacy in gleaning information out of suspects and can get a step-ahead of perpetrators who leave behind linguistic clues, which can ultimately save lives. It can be a potentially very powerful tool and possibly the gateway to understanding our complex cerebral processes.
ReplyDeleteWhile all of the points that have been brought up in the discussion so far are interesting, what I find most fascinating is the idea that we all unconsciously make these distinctions. Even more interesting, we make these distinctions both in understanding the meaning that others are communicating as well as when we are forming our own sentences. The fact that most of us never consciously realize why we choose to express a sentence as “cause X to go to Y” instead of “cause Y to have X,” or vice versa, is evidence of the complexity of natural language. I would be interested to see if any non-native speaker of English, or any other language, would understand and be able to reproduce these nuances in language unconsciously, or whether it would require a concerted effort.
ReplyDeleteIt would be very interesting to see if there is any mimetic root to this kind of perspective on the world. To what extent do people who linguistically distance themselves from causes or attribute behavior to situations come from environments where that was the norm versus the opposite. Moreover, it would be fascinating to try to find a correlation between the automatic or "sub conscious" perspective on events and the political affiliation of the person in question. It is my intuition that someone with a liberal perspective would be more inclined to attribute causes elsewhere -- to society, economics etc -- where as a conservative would tend to apply personal blame. If we put these two intuitions together it could explain why there tends to be an overwhelming unity in political perspectives in towns and states. If we put this together with Carol Dweck's work on entity versus quantity theory of intelligence, perhaps we could find that people who tend to put themselves at the center of causal events have a higher propensity to improve over time where as those who divorce themselves from actions tend to stay the same over time.
ReplyDeleteThanks for an awesome post! This post made me think of passive sentences, and exactly why they're considered "wrong." (Well, people consider them "wrong" because passive sentences give less clarity in writing.) In fact, when you write passive sentences, Microsoft Word underlines the sentence in green and tells us to consider revising it. However, in some other languages, passive sentences are not treated as a "wrong" way to write. Even in English, I think it's absolutely correct (and even necessary) to write sentences in passive form, depending on the situation.
ReplyDeleteGive the muffin to a mouse.
Give the mouse a muffin.
The mouse was given a muffin.
The third sentence is different from both "cause X to go to Y" and "cause Y to have X." I'm curious as to how others feel about passive sentences! I actually really like them... and I hope that one day, it becomes more of an acceptable way to write!
Pinker’s talk made me wonder: To what extent do cultural differences in causal attribution theories give rise to cross-cultural linguistic differences in the treatment of “cause X to go to Y” and “cause Y to have X”?
ReplyDeleteA well-known finding in social psychology is that European Americans and East Asians differ in causal attribution of events. In particular, European Americans tend to make more fundamental attribution errors* than East Asians. The prevailing theory nowadays suggests that these cultural differences in causal reasoning may stem from cultural differences in views of the self. That is, European Americans may make more fundamental attribution errors than East Asians because European American culture puts more emphasis on being an individual (e.g., being unique, finding one’s “true” or “authentic” self) and being independent, whereas East Asian culture puts more emphasis on being part of a group (e.g., family and kinship roles, hierarchical relationships at work) and being interdependent. These cross-cultural differences may also be rooted in historical philosophical differences between analytic vs. holistic thinking. In the West, the ancient Greeks took an analytic approach, in which they focused on categorizing objects by their attributes and using rules about their category memberships to explain their behavior. By contrast, in the East, the ancient Chinese took a more holistic approach, focusing on the field of objects rather than the object itself and explaining each object’s behavior in terms of its relation to other objects in the field (Norenzayan & Nisbett, 2000).
My question is whether these cultural differences in causal reasoning and views of the self correlate with linguistic differences in the kinds of word patterns used in causation-talk. Do all Western languages treat the distinction between “cause X to go to Y” and “cause Y to have X” in a syntactically and semantically similar way? Do non-Western languages treat this distinction the same way Western languages do?
* The fundamental attribution error (FAE) is the tendency to attribute the cause of an event to a person rather than to the situation that person finds himself in. In other words, the FAE overestimates the role of the person’s internal characteristics, choices, and drives and underestimates the role of external factors in the person’s environment that may be beyond his control.
Reference:
Norenzayan, A. & Nisbett, R. (2000). “Culture and Causal Cognition.” Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9 (4): 132-135. http://decisionsciences.columbia.edu/uploads/File/Articles/Nisbett1.pdf.
I think this is super interesting - I remember reading about how we would live different lives becasue of the passive/active voice in languages. The Japanese are people who don't accept blame necessarily, and as a people tend not to accept blame or praise for what they do, while American language has people take ownership of things that happened, and so Americans are people who take ownership for they do, good or bad.
ReplyDeleteDespite being instructed not to judge a book by its cover, a person’s appearance is the first thing we judge about a person, followed immediately by the language used in their introduction. Thus, the language we use communicates a great deal about a person’s thought process and priorities. Although I am sure that the two forms of the sentences presented have different connotations, I wonder why this is the case. “Give the muffin to a mouse” makes me feel as though the speaker is more passive and unengaged, whereas “Give the mouse a muffin” sounds more forcefully and demanding. Yet, how do I make these distinctions out of sentences that make mean the exact same thing? Is this distinction universal or individual? I look forward to watching this Ted Talk and further immersing myself in this topic.
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