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.
