The linguistic relativity of person cognition: An English–Chinese comparison.

Abstract

We performed an experiment to test the possibility that distinct languages (in this case, English and Chinese) are capable of exerting language-specific effects on people's impressions of and memory for other individuals. Parallel English-and Chinese-language descriptions were created of two characters exemplifying personality schemas with economical labels in English but not in Chinese, and two characters exemplifying personality schemas with economical labels in Chinese but not in English. Three groups of subjects participated in the experiment: English monolingual^ Chinese-English bilinguals who read and responded in English, and Chinese-English bilinguals who read and responded in Chinese. We predicted that subjects processing the target descriptions in English would show greater evidence of schematic thinking in the case of the two characters representing Englishlabeled schemas, whereas subjects processing the target descriptions in Chinese would show greater evidence of schematic thinking in the case of the two characters representing Chinese-labeled schemas. This prediction was confirmed. Both impressions and memory were affected when the target's personality and behavior conformed to a labeled schema in the subject's language of processing. The results are discussed in relation to current social psychological conceptions of schematic processing and in relation to the Whorfian hypothesis of linguistic relativity.

The magic spell of language: Linguistic categories and their perceptual consequences.

“…In Turkish, for instance, a suffix on the verb explicitly specifies whether speakers themselves have witnessed an event or are recounting it from hearsay. Similarly, there are differences with respect to the types of lexical categories that are available to describe persons in English and Chinese (e.g., Hoffman, Lau, & Johnson, 1986). In the same way, there are striking differences in the manner in which spatial locations are described (Majid, Bowerman, Kita, Haun, & Levinson, 2004), with some languages relying on relative spatial terms (e.g., left, right) and others relying upon absolute spatial terms (e.g., east, west).…”

The Whorfian hypothesis and numerical cognition: is `twenty-four' processed in the same way as `four-and-twenty'?

“…For instance, Hunt and Agnoli note that English contains many more polysemous words than Italian, and wonder what the cognitive consequences of this could be. They also mention a study of Hoffman et al (1986) which indicated that spontaneous labelling by language users influences their memory for social or ill-structured perceptual events. Hoffman et al (1986) showed descriptions of persons to bilingual English-Chinese speakers.…”

“…They also mention a study of Hoffman et al (1986) which indicated that spontaneous labelling by language users influences their memory for social or ill-structured perceptual events. Hoffman et al (1986) showed descriptions of persons to bilingual English-Chinese speakers. The descriptions were chosen in such a way that the character traits were part of different stereotypes for the two languages.…”

Cognition and native-language grammar: The organizational role of adjective-noun word order in information representation

“…For example, key was described as stereotypically masculine (e.g., "heavy, jagged, metal") by Germans, but as feminine (e.g., "golden, intricate, little") by Spaniards. Similar crosslinguistic differences have been demonstrated for perceptions of causality as a function of causal language rules (Fausey & Boroditsky, 2008), the ability to remember and match arrays of objects as a function of available counting words (Frank, Everett, Fedorenko, & Gibson, 2008), stereotypic judgments as a function of available stereotype labels (Hoffman, Lau, & Johnson, 1986), and perceptions of colors as a function of available color words (Roberson, Davies, & Davidoff, 2000). …”