Which theory explains why bilingual speakers seem to think differently when they change languages?

When we speak one language, we agree that words are representations of ideas, people, places, and events. The given language that children learn is connected to their culture and surroundings. 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. Two researchers, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, began this investigation in the 1940s. 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). Sapir and Whorf proposed that language determines thought. For example, in some languages there are many different words for love. However, in English we use the word love for all types of love. 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). Today, psychologists continue to study and debate the relationship between language and thought.

Think about what you know of other languages; perhaps you even speak multiple languages. Imagine for a moment that your closest friend fluently speaks more than one language. Do you think that friend thinks differently, depending on which language is being spoken? You may know a few words that are not translatable from their original language into English. For example, the Portuguese word saudade originated during the 15th century, when Portuguese sailors left home to explore the seas and travel to Africa or Asia. Those left behind described the emptiness and fondness they felt as saudade (Figure 1). The word came to express many meanings, including loss, nostalgia, yearning, warm memories, and hope. There is no single word in English that includes all of those emotions in a single description. Do words such as saudade indicate that different languages produce different patterns of thought in people? What do you think??

Figure 1. These two works of art depict saudade. (a) Saudade de Nápoles, which is translated into “missing Naples,” was painted by Bertha Worms in 1895. (b) Almeida Júnior painted Saudade in 1899.

Language may indeed influence the way that we think, an idea known as linguistic determinism. One recent demonstration of this phenomenon involved differences in the way that English and Mandarin Chinese speakers talk and think about time. English speakers tend to talk about time using terms that describe changes along a horizontal dimension, for example, saying something like “I’m running behind schedule” or “Don’t get ahead of yourself.” While Mandarin Chinese speakers also describe time in horizontal terms, it is not uncommon to also use terms associated with a vertical arrangement. For example, the past might be described as being “up” and the future as being “down.” It turns out that these differences in language translate into differences in performance on cognitive tests designed to measure how quickly an individual can recognize temporal relationships. Specifically, when given a series of tasks with vertical priming, Mandarin Chinese speakers were faster at recognizing temporal relationships between months. Indeed, Boroditsky (2001) sees these results as suggesting that “habits in language encourage habits in thought” (p. 12).

Language does not completely determine our thoughts—our thoughts are far too flexible for that—but habitual uses of language can influence our habit of thought and action. For instance, some linguistic practice seems to be associated even with cultural values and social institution. Pronoun drop is the case in point. Pronouns such as “I” and “you” are used to represent the speaker and listener of a speech in English. In an English sentence, these pronouns cannot be dropped if they are used as the subject of a sentence. So, for instance, “I went to the movie last night” is fine, but “Went to the movie last night” is not in standard English. However, in other languages such as Japanese, pronouns can be, and in fact often are, dropped from sentences. It turned out that people living in those countries where pronoun drop languages are spoken tend to have more collectivistic values (e.g., employees having greater loyalty toward their employers) than those who use non–pronoun drop languages such as English (Kashima & Kashima, 1998). It was argued that the explicit reference to “you” and “I” may remind speakers the distinction between the self and other, and the differentiation between individuals. Such a linguistic practice may act as a constant reminder of the cultural value, which, in turn, may encourage people to perform the linguistic practice.

One group of researchers who wanted to investigate how language influences thought compared how English speakers and the Dani people of Papua New Guinea think and speak about color. The Dani have two words for color: one word for light and one word for dark. In contrast, the English language has 11 color words. Researchers hypothesized that the number of color terms could limit the ways that the Dani people conceptualized color. However, the Dani were able to distinguish colors with the same ability as English speakers, despite having fewer words at their disposal (Berlin & Kay, 1969). A recent review of research aimed at determining how language might affect something like color perception suggests that language can influence perceptual phenomena, especially in the left hemisphere of the brain. You may recall from earlier chapters that the left hemisphere is associated with language for most people. However, the right (less linguistic hemisphere) of the brain is less affected by linguistic influences on perception (Regier & Kay, 2009)

Learn more about language, language acquisition, and especially the connection between language and thought in the following CrashCourse video:

You can view the transcript for “Language: Crash Course Psychology #16” here (opens in new window).

Did you have an idea for improving this content? We’d love your input.

Improve this pageLearn More

1. European Commission Special Eurobarometer Europeans and their languages. 2006. Retrieved October 1, 2012, from http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_243_en.pdf.

2. United States Census Bureau American Community Survey. Retrieved October 1, 2012, from http://www.census.gov/acs/www/

3. Associated Press Some facts about the world’s 6,800 tongues. 2001. Retrieved October 1, 2012, from http://articles.cnn.com/2001-06-19/us/language.glance_1_languages-origin-tongues?_s=PM:US.

4. Marian V, Spivey M. Bilingual and monolingual processing of competing lexical items. Applied Psycholinguistics. 2003;24(2):173–193. [Google Scholar]

5. Tanenhaus MK, Magnuson JS, Dahan D, Chambers C. Eye movements and lexical access in spoken-language comprehension: Evaluating a linking hypothesis between fixations and linguistic processing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. 2000;29(6):557–580. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

6. Thierry G, Wu YJ. Brain potentials reveal unconscious translation during foreign-language comprehension. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2007;104(30):12530–12535. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

7. Gollan TH, Montoya RI, Fennema-Notestine C, Morris SK. Bilingualism affects picture naming but not picture classification. Memory and Cognition. 2005;33(7):1220–1234. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

8. Gollan TH, Acenas LA. What is a TOT? Cognate and translation effects on tip-of-the-tongue states in Spanish-English and Tagalog-English bilinguals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 2004;301246:269. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

9. Bialystok E, Craik FI, Luk G. Bilingualism: Consequences for mind and brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 2012;16(4):240–250. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

10. Abutalebi J, Annoni J-M, Zimine I, Pegna AJ, Segheir ML, Lee-Jahnke H, Lazeyras F, Cappa SF, Khateb A. Language control and lexical competition in bilinguals: An event-related fMRI study. Cerebral Cortex. 2008;18(7):1496–1505. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

11. Abutalebi J, Pasquale ADR, Green DW, Hernandez M, Scifo P, Keim R, Cappa SF, Costa A. Bilingualism tunes the anterior cingulate cortex for conflict monitoring. Cerebral Cortex. 2011 doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhr287. [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]

12. Green DW. Bilingual worlds. In: Cook V, Bassetti B, editors. Language and bilingual cognition. New York: Psychology Press; 2011. pp. 229–240. [Google Scholar]

13. Prior A, MacWhinney B. A bilingual advantage in task switching. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. 2010;13(2):253–262. [Google Scholar]

14. Hernandez AE, Martinez A, Kohnert K. In search of the language switch: An fMRI study of picture naming in Spanish-English bilinguals. Brain and Language. 2000;73(3):421–431. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

15. Abutalebi J, Green DW. Control mechanisms in bilingual language production: Neural evidence from language switching studies. Language and Cognitive Processes. 2008;23(4):557–582. [Google Scholar]

16. Garbin G, Sanjuan A, Forn C, Bustamante JC, Rodriguez-Pujadas A, Belloch V, Avila C. Bridging language and attention: Brain basis of the impact of bilingualism on cognitive control. NeuroImage. 2010;53(4):1272–1278. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

17. Krizman J, Marian V, Shook A, Skoe E, Kraus N. Subcortical encoding of sound is enhanced in bilinguals and relates to executive function advantages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2012;109(20):7877–7881. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

18. Mechelli A, Crinion JT, Noppeney U, O’Doherty J, Ashburner J, Frackowiak RS, Price CJ. Neurolinguistics: Structural plasticity in the bilingual brain. Nature. 2004;431(7010):757. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

19. Fabbro F, Skrap M, Aglioti S. Pathological switching between languages after frontal lesions in a bilingual patient. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry. 2000;68(5):650–652. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

20. Mohades SG, Struys E, Van Schuerbeek P, Mondt K, Van De Craen P, Luypaert R. DTI reveals structural differences in white matter tracts between bilingual and monolingual children. Brain Research. 2012;1435(72):80. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

21. Luk G, Bialystok E, Craik FI, Grady CL. Lifelong bilingualism maintains white matter integrity in older adults. Journal of Neuroscience. 2011;31(46):16808–16813. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

22. Kaushanskaya M, Marian V. The bilingual advantage in novel word learning. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. 2009;16(4):705–710. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

23. Bartolotti J, Marian V. Language learning and control in monolinguals and bilinguals. Cognitive Science. 2012;36(1129):1147. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

24. Kovacs AM, Mehler J. Cognitive gains in 7-month-old bilingual infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2009;106(16):6556–6560. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

25. Craik FI, Bialystok E, Freedman M. Delaying the onset of Alzheimer disease: Bilingualism as a form of cognitive reserve. Neurology. 2010;75(19):1726–1729. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

26. Schroeder SR, Marian V. A bilingual advantage for episodic memory in older adults. Journal of Cognitive Psychology. 2012;24(5):591–601. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

27. Schweizer TA, Ware J, Fischer CE, Craik FI, Bialystok E. Bilingualism as a contributor to cognitive reserve: Evidence from brain atrophy in Alzheimer’s disease. Cortex. 2012;48(8):991–996. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

28. Linck JA, Hoshino N, Kroll JF. Cross-language lexical processes and inhibitory control. Mental Lexicon. 2008;3(3):349–374. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

29. Diaz R, Klingler C. Towards an explanatory model of the interaction between bilingualism and cognitive development. In: Bialystok E, editor. Language processing in bilingual children. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1991. pp. 167–192. [Google Scholar]