Research article: Lera Boroditsky, 'How language shapes thought'

[Erik_Kowal]

In the current issue of Scientific American, Lera Boroditsky, a linguistics researcher and assistant professor of cognitive psychology at Stanford University, writes about recent progress in establishing an empirical foundation for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that the language we use influences the way we think.

Read the article here: http://psychology.stanford.edu/~lera/pa ... m-2011.pdf

My thanks to Ken Greenwald for drawing my attention to this piece.

[marie26]

Thank you both for sharing the article. As an educator, it gave me a lot to think about and motivated me further to consider the importance of strengthening a child's oral language!

[PhilHunt]

Good article. I'd read about the Biased test before in a book called the Hidden Brain, but it did not mention the differing findings for bilinguals. I find that very interesting.

I've been preaching to my students for years that its necessary for them to change the way they think about time, causality and agents.

[marie26]

My friend says this article reminds her of a book, "The Outliers." She says it helps her to understand the academic differences amongst the various cultures represented in today's schools.

[Erik_Kowal]

Is your friend perhaps thinking of 'Outliers: The Story of Success' by Malcolm Gladwell?

[Wizard of Oz]

.. so does that explain why we, Downunderites .. with our heads pointed towards the south pole .. speak and think differently to youse lotUpoverites whose heads point towards the north pole .. *grin* ..

WoZ loving anything psycho

[PhilHunt]

There are a group of writers at the moment who seem to write 'ground-breaking' books using the same small pool of statistics and facts.

Gladwell, Steve Levitt, Shankar Vedantam, to name the ones that immediately spring to mind, seem to all quote from the same, or similar, statistics to support their 'unique' take on things. When I read one of their books I find myself thinking, 'but didn't I read about the very same event as being shaped by a completely different factor in another book'.

[Edwin F Ashworth]

Some books are more land-fill than ground-breaking.

[Erik_Kowal]

Or earth-shattering.