How language shapes the cultural inheritance of categories

Abstract

It is widely recognized that language plays a key role in the transmission of human culture, but relatively little is known about the mechanisms by which language simultaneously encourages both cultural stability and cultural innovation. This paper examines this issue by focusing on the use of language to transmit categories, focusing on two universal devices: labels (e.g., shark, woman) and generics (e.g., "sharks attack swimmers"; "women are nurturing"). We propose that labels and generics each assume two key principles: norms and essentialism. The normative assumption permits transmission of category information with great fidelity, whereas essentialism invites innovation by means of an open-ended, placeholder structure. Additionally, we sketch out how labels and generics aid in conceptual alignment and the progressive "looping" between categories and cultural practices. In this way, human language is a technology that enhances and expands the categorization capacities that we share with other animals.language | categories | essentialism | norms | children

Stereotypes, theory of mind, and the action–prediction hierarchy

“…Famously, essentialist thinking about particular groups also appears to be triggered in part by certain linguistic cues, such as generic statements (e.g. "Boys like trucks and girls like dolls,") (Gelman and Roberts 2017;Rhodes et al 2012;Segall et al 2015). Thus, while younger children across different environments develop a similar basic set of theory of mind abilities, their reliance on particular essentialist stereotypes is greatly affected by numerous social factors.…”

Genomic Essentialism: Its Provenance and Trajectory as an Anticipatory Ethical Concern

“…As Steven Heine has found in his work about genetic essentialism across societal arenas (such as sex and gender, health, race and ethnicity, and criminality), a belief in the power of genes to determine people’s health status and social fates is commonly based on overly simplistic and somewhat distorted understanding of basic genetic science and information . Moreover, genomic illiteracy plagues multiple social groups across contexts: not just those who have low health literacy and lower educational attainment but also scientific educators and health care professionals, and not just patient‐clinician communications but also educators’ and parents’ communication with children . The challenge is further exacerbated given that genomic illiteracy, especially ignorance of gene‐environment interactions, has remained high despite ongoing efforts to increase genomic education, even as genomic information is ever more infused in public discourses.…”

The extension of biology through culture

“…Other, complementary contributions in the present collection focus on more specific topics, including the active role that children come to play in recognizing their ignorance, as well as their knowledge, and systematically seek information to remedy this (73); the ways in which related hypothesis testing changes through the long period of human development in relation to the stage of cognitive development and socio-ecological context (74); and the significance of language as both a product and medium of culture, illustrated by the linguistic labels and generics that provide special forms of both the transmission fidelity and affordance for innovation that permit cumulative culture (75).…”