I just listened to a story on NPR that talks about the sensual experience that comes along with spoken language. It asserts that language you speak changes your experince of the world, and how you think and feel about people, places, and things. The irony is that this is an idea I heard quite some time ago and something I have actually argued with former students and collaegues (but mostly my husband) for years.
Here’s the story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102518565
Conducted by Lera Boroditsky, an assistant psychology professor at Stanford University, the study asks Spanish speakers and German speakers to examine objects – a table, a chair, a bridge – and name them. In the instance of the bridge the articles differ between these two languages: in Spanish “bridge” is masculine, and in German it’s feminine. Next the study asked participants to give three adjectives to describe the bridge. The German speakers chose words like “beautiful,” and “elegant,” while the Spanish speaker chose “sturdy,” and “towering.” Her hypothesis is that Spaniards and Germans see and experience things differently as a result of their language.
Boroditsky suggests that the grammar we learn from our parents, whether we realize it or not, affects our sensual experience of the world. Spaniards and Germans can see the same things, wear the same cloths, eat the same foods and use the same machines. But deep down, they are having very different feelings about the world about them.
To test this theory she invented her own language, one that randomly assigns masculine and feminie articles to various nouns, and then taught it to English-speaking participants. After being drilled in the language she tested to see if there was a similar effect on descriptive adjectives based on the gender assigned to that noun. And the answer was yes!
I find this absolutely fascinating. Language shapes and defines our world, but that it affects how we feel about both natural and constructed landscapes is, I think, both amazing and underappreciated. It may not seem like a big deal. But think about it, people get attached to objects. The first stereotype that comes to mind is Americans and their cars. But the list is exhaustive - a business exec and his cell phone, a fashionista and her shoes, a triathlete and her bike, an electrician and his tool belt. But if those objects have certain qualities we assign to them, which shape not only our attitudes toward those objects but also our experiences with those objects and by extension our jobs and activities. In essence, language dictates how we see and experience the world. And it does so in much more subtle ways than our cultural traditions and norms.
The implications for me are even more interesting when I extend them to environmentalism. Whether or not a developer or city planner chooses to preserve more trees in a proposed development might very well depend on how they perceive a “tree.” Likewise, a company might have a different attitude toward dumping in the ocean versus on land based on how they feel about each (off the top of my head, I kow that ocean in Spanish is masculine “el mar” while land is feminine “la tierra.”) Would it make a difference? Who knows? But the fact that it might brings all new challenges to educating the public about sustainability. And decision-making processes that one would typically perceive as objective, suddenly become much more gendered. I realize that this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the ramifications of this study but it’s a fun place to begin a conversation. Anyone else have any thoughts about it? Let me know. The idea that multi-lingual people perceive the world differently has always fascinated me.
And on a totally unrelated note, I have tons of pictures of fun stuff we’ve done to post. I will get to these soon. I promise. Given that some of these go back to the Towhead’s birthday in January I need to get my ample behind moving. I’m working on it Nana, I swear 
