Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages by Guy Deutscher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Interesting and easy to read (clear book) with lots of examples. Deutscher definitely loves language.
He asks the question, how does language relate to experience? Though specific examples, like color, deixis and gender, he attempts to eek out an answer. While historically we’ve assumed language, or at least well formed language, accurately reflects experience, the conclusion of Deutscher’s book shows us somewhat reservedly, that language in fact shapes our experience in very subtle ways. He isn’t saying that language closes off the door for us to abstract concepts, but he does say that language through its internal syntax, or connotations does force us to reveal specific information and suggest certain meanings to us before hand.
This book isn’t too deep, but I did enjoy its anecdotes, well researched information and clear writing. What Deutscher is basically saying however, is that language creates its own reality, as a subtle, filter that then can be used to create whatever concepts we wish to express. He is correct in pointing out, through the example of Orwell’s 1984, that the absence of certain words doesn’t mean a lack of one’s ability to conceive them. Although with the example of British researchers on color and the Guugu Yimithirr about English speakers regarding directions, that speakers generally attribute a lack of word conception as absolutely correlative of another speaker’s inability to convey the same information. An abstraction of this, Deutscher does write can be aptly summed:
According to the dominant view among linguists and cognitive scientists today, the influence of language on thought can be considered significant only if it bears on genuine reasoning–if, for instance, one language can be shown to prevent its speakers from solving a logical problem that is easily solved by speakers of another language. Since no evidence for such constraining influence on logical reasoning has ever been presented, this necessarily means–or so the argument goes–that any remaining effects of language are insignificant and that fundamentally we all think in the same way.
But it is too easy to exaggerate the importance of logical reasoning in our lives. Such an overestimation may be natural enough for those reared on a diet of analytical philosophy, where thought is practically equated with logic and any other mental processes are considered beneath notice. But this view does not correspond with the rather modest role of logical thinking in our actual experience of life. After all, how many daily decisions do we make on the basis of abstract deductive reasoning, compared with those guided by gut feeling, intuition, emotions, impulse, or practical skill? How often have you spent your day solving logical conundrums, compared with wondering where you left your socks? Or trying to remember where your car is in a multilevel parking lot? How many commercials try to appeal to us through logical syllogisms, compared with those that play on colors, associations, allusions? And finally how many wars have been fought over disagreements in set theory?
The influence of the mother tongue that has been demonstrated empirically is felt in areas of thought such as memory, perception, and associations or in practical skills such as orientation. And in our actual experience of life, such areas are no less important than the capacity for abstract reasoning, probably more so.
With this Deutscher comes to the point of the book, and its exploration. While he is simply reciting other examples, theories, other people’s studies, he provides the connective tissue to preform what is essentially a philosophical argument, one that is predicated on a higher sophistication in how we should all deal with one another in our daily lives. This argument isn’t completely overpowering in his book, as the meat of his book is also very interesting. But it is nonetheless a good reason to have written (or to read) it.
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