Blog Paper 4
The text is written by a Stanford University online magazine on Lera Boroditsky and her research on languages ability to shape how we think. She believes that language has the ability to shape how we think and answer one of psychology’s ‘most intriguing and fractious questions’. Languages are different between every culture. As Boroditsky mentions with her use of the example of accidentally breaking a cup, in other languages, intent matters. For example, she explains that in Japanese or Spanish there is ‘verb form to indicate’, meaning that there is a specific word to explain breaking the cup. The responses are also different depending on whether it was an accident or not. As Boroditsky continues, in Japanese or Spanish the speaker would say ‘the cup broke itself’ if the intent was accidental. Written by Edward Sapir and Lee Whorf, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis supports this as it supports the view that the words and grammar of a language directly shape t...