Neuroplasticity through the looking glass (part 1)

In the last couple of days I read two very interesting and though provoking books: Guy Deutscher’s Through the Language Glass, Why The World Looks Different in Different Languages (Arrow Books, 2011)  and Bruce E. Wexler’s Brain and Culture, Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change (MIT Press,2008). This time I’ll look at the first of these, next time the second and I may even then get to my point, if you are really lucky.

Through the Language Glass, follows the linguistic Alice through the wonderland of cultural construction. Split into two parts, it begins by taking us through ‘the language mirror’ into the rather troubled relationship between colours and the words we use to describe them. As it turns out, many cultures have very different ways of understanding what colours are what, with some, like Russia, having terms that different between light blue and dark blue, while others are unable to understand the differences between black and blue, or green and yellow linguistically, even though they were able to sort these colours one from the other visually. This seemingly unusual labeling of colour stretches as far back as Gladstone’s observation of Homer’s rather odd use of colours. It is true, the Iliad and Odyssey are filled with wine-soaked seas,, black skies and violet sheep; if you don’t believe me, go and have another read. Another odd discovery is that as societies become more complex, and so the complexity of the language alters (Deutscher has no time for the dogma that all languages are of equal complexity), the more labels for colours we find. Some thought this might be due to the eye evolving over time, but there is scant evidence of this, especially in so short an amount of time. Others thought it was due to a complication of language, although contrary to this, Deutscher argues that languages simplify the larger and more elaborate the community we find them in. Deutscher’s hypothesis is that simpler cultures simply don’t need more complicated words.  For example, if you live in a jungle, the only useful words might be green and brown for the trees, red and yellow for ripeness, white and black. Therefore other colours are superfluous to language and describing the sky as a darkened green, or a lightened form of black - the word blue is just not important. Deutscher emphasises this by explaining how children find colour words very difficult during development, often able to identify a square shape long before a yellow one.

In the second part, Deutscher takes on the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, exposing it for all its silliness. To cut a long story short, this hypothesis suggests that our understanding of the world is developed through language, and that we cannot understand anything that our language does not expressly have terms for. This means that people with different languages have entirely different conceptual schemes and live in entirely other worlds to us. This hypothesis was drawn from a study of the ‘Hopi’ people by Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1930s, who based his ideas on previous work by Edward Sapir (amongst others). Whorf's study suggested that the Hopi language had ‘no words, grammatical forms, constructions or expressions that refer directly to what we call “time”, or to past , present, or future’ and that as a result the Hopi ‘has no general notion or intuition of TIME as a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at an equal rate’ [Whorf quoted in Deutscher, p142]. They saw the world, even the world of time, differently; so differently it is impossible for us to really conceive of their understanding of time.

Although Deutscher himself does not touch upon it, it is worth pointing out that this idea of linguistic relativity went on to influence the likes of Thomas Kuhn, whose concept of scientific paradigms - concepts and dogmas untranslatable between intellectual camps until the great upheaval of a paradigm shift - causes titillation in philosophers of science and consternation and frustration in actual scientists to this day.

Linguistic relativity, conceptual schemes, and paradigms are a deeply flawed concept for a number of reasons. One of the most famous comes from philosopher Donald Davidson who in ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’ pointed out that the concept of ‘triangulation’ – in short, the ability for different paradigms to point to a single frame of reference and agree what it is, makes translation possible. Indeed, without this, none of us would ever be able to learn a language past the age of 18 (I’ll get to why next time). This is highlighted by Deutscher who points out that English speakers are quite capable of understanding what is meant by taking joy from another’s misfortune, with or without the word schadenfreude. There is another problem with Whorf’s hypothesis, however.

Whorf didn’t really study the Hopi language in the round. He studied the Hopi language as described to him by a member of the Hopi  he knew who lived locally. When anthropological linguist Ekkehart Malotki eventually did a proper study of the Hopi in the early 1980s, it led to the first page of his book becoming one of the greatest examples of academic pwnage in history. 

This virtually blank page had only the following text

After a long and careful study and analysis, the Hopi language is seen to contain no words, grammatical forms, constructions, or expressions that refer directly to what we call ‘time’.

(Benjamin Lee Whorf ‘An American Indian Model of the Universe’, 1936)

 pu’ antsa pay qavongvaqw pay su’its talavay kuyvansat, pàasatham pu’ pan piw maanat taatayna

Then indeed, the following day, quite early in the morning at the hour when people pray to the sun, around that time then, he woke up the girl again

(Ekkehart Maltoki, Hopi Field Notes, 1980)

Ouch indeed.

Would you like more cream for your burn Dr Whorf?

Deutscher doesn’t think that the idea of language affecting a worldview should be dismissed altogether, however. Instead, he gives the example of groups who use geographical centres for direction – north, east, south, and west – rather than egocentric ones – such as left and right – as evidence for what he calls the ‘Boas-Jokobson Principle’, named after, linguists Franz Boas and Roman Jakobson from whom Deutscher drew the idea. This suggests that those areas of language that must be expressed influence the speakers worldview. For example, if an English person were asked who they were going away this weekend, they could answer without giving away the gender of the person they are going away with; in many languages, such as French, it would not be so easy. Equally, Deutscher, whose first language is Hebrew, points out that Hebrew has one word for both hand and arm, so they ‘think’ of the hand and arm as one unit as they have no other choice. This does not mean that they cannot understand that there might be a boundary, anymore than it suggests that an English person might be unable to understand that an apple is masculine to a German, but it does add a certain tincture to thought that, to Deutscher at least, carries over into his secondary languages at a fundamentally psychological level.

Coming back to colours, Deutscher reminds us that what we see is not what is real. Humans, contrary to popular belief, do not see with their eyes but with the workings of their occipital lobes, with colours and objects filtered, distorted, and tweaked to fit the patterns our mind has come to expect through a combination of billions of years of evolution and the neuroplastic schemata imprinted by culture through development [more next time] and language. This means that some people really do see the sky as grue, or blueack. Russians see the dark sea as one colour and the light sky as another and find it odd that we conceive of it as lighter and darker shades of a single colour. It also means that children can learn how to recognise where North, South, East and West are at such an early age it becomes a second-nature part of their universe.

I am sure many of the #emostorians out there, or even emotion scientists, have an idea where I might be going, but I’ll leave that for next time as my hour is up.  Next I’ll discuss how by combining the role of language in culture with neuroplasticity, and to some extend the fledgling field of neurepigenetics, it may be possible to find a compromise in the nature/nurture, culture/evolution debate that rages on within the emotion sciences and humanities.

Let’s hope I get to it soon!