Language is a fundamental component of culture; the process of coining roots and deriving
new lexemes is inherently tied to how the speakers conceptualize the world around them,
meaning that every language will be filled with artefacts of the speakers’ culture
and worldview.
But how deep does this relationship go?
Could it be that language isn’t just a byproduct of culture, but also the other way around?
Could it be that a given language actually forces the speakers to view the world within
the constraints of its structure and lexicon?
This idea is called linguistic relativity, also commonly referred to as the Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis, and posits that the language that a person speaks will affect the way they think.
This concept has garnered an increasing amount of attention and controversy over the past
century, and lot of variations of the idea have been put forward, but most interpretations
can be described on a spectrum between “strong” and “weak”.
The “strong” version is most often called Linguistic determinism, which, as the name
suggests, posits that language actually determines thought, and that speakers are only able to
conceive of and express ideas that their language allows for.
One of the most frequently discussed contexts for this is in conceptions of time: In English,
because of the way verbs conjugate for tense, it’s impossible to form a grammatically
correct sentence without having some implication of when the action occurs, meaning time is
an inextricable element of every sentence.
However, in a language like Mandarin, while time can still be expressed using adverbs
and various other strategies, it isn’t an inherent, inseparable property of every verb
like it is in English, and sentences often don’t take any sort of marking to indicate
when they happened.
Or, on the other hand, some languages distinguish a far greater number of tenses than English
does, and pay attention to far more specific temporal distinctions, or in other cases,
instead of caring about absolute tense, or when the action happened relative to the present
moment, time is instead measured based on some other contextually established reference
point.
Linguistic determinism would suggest that each of these different ways of encoding time
forces the speakers to think about time in a different way.
Indeed, there is a lot of evidence for cultural variation in how time is thought of.
In English, time is often described as moving forward, as can be seen from the sorts of
words used to describe the passage of time, but in Mandarin, earlier and later can be
described using the same terms for “up” and “down” respectively.
In some languages, time is described as moving from downhill to uphill, while in yet others,
the past is viewed as being in front of the speaker, walking backward into the future
that lies behind them.
Could these different ways of describing time mean that these different cultures experience
time differently as well?
A particularly extreme extrapolation of this idea is presented in the film Arrival.
Warning: major spoilers ahead.
If you haven’t seen Arrival, I’d recommend watching it before proceeding with this video,
or skipping ahead to *this* timestamp.
Based on the novel “The Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, Arrival tells the story of
first contact between humans and an alien species called “the heptapods”, with the
majority of the film focusing on the humans’ efforts to decipher the hepotapods’ language
and to communicate with them.
From the very beginning, it’s obvious that the heptapods’ language is radically different
from any human language; their primary method of communicating with the humans is a written
language in which complex phrases are encoded in a single circular glyph.
The humans quickly learn that this writing system is non-linear, having no set writing
direction, and that instead of producing one glyph at a time, the heptapods write all the
glyphs in an utterance simultaneously.
This turns out to be a product of the fact that heptapods don’t perceive time linearly
like humans do, but instead experience the past, present, and future all at once.
In accordance with the premise of linguistic determinism, as the protagonist Louise studies
and learns the language, she begins to experience time the way the heptapods do, gaining the
ability to “remember” in a sense, events that haven’t happened yet.
This means that perceiving all of time simultaneously is not a product of the heptapods’ neurobiology,
but of their language, and that learning their language will grant this capability to the
learner.
Or, to look at it from another way, humans perceive time linearly because their languages
force them to.
Similar ideas of language controlling thought have been explored in works like 1984 by George
Orwell, where the language Newspeak is designed to restrict the speakers’ ability to communicate
and comprehend subversive thoughts, and in the Native Tongue Trilogy by Suzette Haden
Elgin, in which the conlang Láadan is created specifically to influence the culture to more
readily express the views of women.
In stories like these, linguistic relativity can be used to justify having language serve
a purpose within the story, with Arrival being a particularly extreme example, since linguistic
determinism forms the basis for the entire plot structure and allows the film to execute
its twist ending in a really thought-provoking way.
I won’t go into the details here, but if you’re interested in the narrative aspects
of the movie, check out Campfire’s video on it for a great rundown of how the movie
uses its premise to serve its plot.
However, while linguistic determinism is certainly an interesting topic for discussion in fictional
contexts and thought experiments like these, in reality, the idea has been pretty thoroughly
discredited by this point.
For one thing, studies have failed to demonstrate any differences in cultures’ abilities to
track and describe time, regardless of how their language conceptualizes it, and beyond
that, linguistic determinism would imply that if a language doesn’t have a way of expressing
any given concept, the speakers somehow won’t be able to comprehend it, but this doesn’t
seem to pose any problem when translating between radically different languages.
Whatever can be said in one language will be capable of being translated into any other
language, even if it takes some extra verbiage to do so.
And even if a language doesn’t have a word for a particular concept, there’s nothing
stopping the speakers from deriving or borrowing new words for it if it becomes necessary to
do so.
So, yeah, it looks like the strong interpretation of linguistic relativity isn’t actually
a thing, but there might still be some merit to the weak version, which simply proposes
that linguistic categories only influence thought processes rather than limiting or
controlling them.
For example, there’s no evidence that having a gender system in a language will notably
alter the speakers’ cognition, but it might predispose them to make associations based
on the semantic properties that the gender system distinguishes.
Essentially, the way new concepts are interpreted will be framed in categories the language
already pays attention to, which will largely be determined by the culture anyway.
So, long story short, if you’re a conlanger, unless you’re specifically aiming to explore
bizarre abstract meta-linguistic ideas, you’ll probably find it easier and more fruitful
to focus on how the culture impacts the language, not the other way around.
Sticking with the theme of perceptions of time, the different ways of describing the
passage of time we discussed earlier are all examples of conceptual metaphors, where one
domain of thought is framed or described in terms of another, in this case a metaphor
of temporal dimensions being discussed in terms of spatial ones.
But there are many other conceptual metaphors that can be played around with that make languages
distinct from each other.
Some other cross-linguistically common conceptual metaphors are anger being heat or fire, emotions
will feature unique, culturally-specific metaphors, like in Hindi, negative experiences are eaten
like poison, and in Arabic, happiness is associated with cold.
These sorts of metaphors can sometimes provide some insight into the culture.
Some Nilotic languages use metaphors relating to different types of animals, which is informative
of how these animals are characterized by the speakers.
A long history of agriculture has given English a huge number of expressions relating to plants
and farming, but one could easily imagine that a culture without this same kind of agrarian
tradition would likely use a different source for its conceptual metaphors, like, for example,
a seafaring culture using metaphors having to do with sailing or swimming.
These metaphors will most commonly manifest in the form of idioms, but they can also affect
the language in more subtle ways that may not even occur to the speakers.
Think about how in English, the verbs used when discussing time are often the same ones
that used for discussing money.
This is ultimately based on the conceptual metaphor that time is a valuable resource,
but this usage is so standard that the average speaker doesn’t even think about it.
What words and associations are present in a language’s lexicon will be reflective
of what’s in the speakers’ environment.
Although the myth that the Inuit languages have dozens of words for snow is completely
false, the concept of “snow” is still a more richly lexicalized category than it
is in many other languages, containing at least two basic roots, and Somali is often
cited as having lots of words for camels, which isn’t too surprising considering many
European languages have about as many words for animals that serve an equivalent role
in their cultures.
Most often, a culture will have relatively basic terms for the plants and animals in
their home territory, but as they spread into new areas, they’ll need to derive terms
for the new species they encounter, which they might do by comparing them to those they’re
already familiar with.
A language’s lexicon will also need to adapt to new technological innovations.
The English expression “brand-new” originates from blacksmithing, describing something as
newly smelted metal fresh from the forge, which eventually became generalized in sense
to the point where in modern English it can be applied to practically anything.
Interestingly, this phrase actually superseded an older phrase that meant something along
the lines of “newly carved or chipped”, describing the object as made of wood or stone,
which saw less and less use as metal-working became more common.
Also think about what verbs the speakers use to describe interacting with these new technologies.
In Mandarin, electrical devices aren’t turned “on” and “off” like they are in English,
instead they’re “opened” and “closed”, and photographs aren’t “taken”, they’re
“shined”.
All of these processes can be used to leave linguistic hints about the history and culture
of the speakers and help make the language feel unique.
But again, none of these will force your speakers to view the world in any particular way, they’ll
just predispose them to thinking of things in terms that are most relatable to them.
In short, if you put the time and effort into making a fleshed-out culture, then the language
will naturally evolve to reflect it.