How Language Shapes Thought

How Language Shapes Thought

For a long time, people thought that language didn't really affect how we think. However, Lera Boroditsky, a professor of cognitive science at Stanford and MIT, has reignited this debate with her cutting-edge studies. Across research involving speakers from various regions—ranging from China and Greece to Chile, Indonesia, Russia, and Aboriginal Australia—Boroditsky has demonstrated that speakers of different languages indeed think differently. Astonishingly, even something as structural as grammar plays a role in shaping the way we perceive the world.

This raises profound questions: Do the languages we speak shape our thoughts about the world, influence how we see it, and affect how we live in it? Is language a prison—if so, who is the warden? Do different languages trap us in distinct ways of thinking? Do we think differently in different languages? Do polyglots' minds operate differently depending on the language they are using? Researchers—anthropologists, psychologists, and linguists alike—have been fascinated by these questions for decades.

You could lose your sight or your hearing and still work, socialize, and learn. But what if you lost your language? Could you maintain those aspects of your life? Language truly shapes how we experience the world. Does it ultimately determine our thoughts?

Before we delve deeper, I want to provide a passage from a short article that Boroditsky wrote for the Nov. 6, 2009, issue of Edge magazine:

"Most questions about whether and how language shapes thought begin with the simple observation that languages differ from one another. And a lot! You want to say, 'Bush read Chomsky's new book.' Yes! Let’s think about the word 'read.' In English, we inflect the verb for tense—saying 'red' instead of 'reed.' You don’t do this (nor can you do this) in Indonesian. In Russian, the verb morphs to match tense and gender—if Laura Bush read the book, you’d use a different form than for George. Russian also requires you to indicate whether the action was finished. 'You have to say in Turkish: 'I heard Zakabi say …' or 'Zakabi told me …' There is a big difference between what you saw and what you heard."

Put differently, languages have different requirements in terms of grammatical information—even just to discuss the same basic kind of event. This grammatical construction can even affect how we see and think about the world.

The Language Effect on Thought

Language is as magical and ineffable a human capability as any, and it has been said to shape our experience of being alive. As Boroditsky explains in her TED Talk: “It’s like asking you to imagine a jellyfish waltzing in a library, thinking about quantum mechanics.” That’s the kind of abstract thinking language allows.

There are approximately 7,000 languages spoken in the world, each with its own structures, sounds, and vocabularies, resulting in 7,000 ways of looking at, thinking about, and describing reality. This notion has intrigued thinkers throughout the ages. As the Holy Roman Emperor famously put it, “He who knows no foreign languages knows nothing of his own.” Shakespeare, however, also wrote, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” implying that words do not change reality. The debate continues.

In one striking example from Boroditsky’s studies, she examines the Kuuk Thaayorre, a group of people in Australia. Their language lacks words for certain concepts, such as "fire in the hole!" which is their version of "heads up," and "stand behind me" is what they say instead of "I love you." They do not have a word for zero but possess over 700 types of potatoes. They only adopted a word for "insect" in 1987, and even then, it referred to a slur! Among the Lakota, they do not have words like "left" or "right," "front" or "back"; instead, they use cardinal directions—north, south, east, and west. If there were an ant on your leg, they’d say: “There’s an ant on your southwest leg.” Even their greeting is oriented toward direction: “Where are you going?” rather than “Hello.” 

Research by Stephen C. Levinson and John B. Haviland, along with Boroditsky’s findings, reveals that speakers of such languages possess exceptional orientation abilities. They can accurately point to cardinal directions in unfamiliar settings—much better than members of their culture who do not rely on cardinal features of the environment to navigate. In a test, when participants in a room were asked to point southeast, they all pointed in different directions—except for the children from the Kuuk Thaayorre, who all pointed southeast without hesitation.

Language Perception and Memory

Language itself even affects how we think about time. In one experiment, participants were asked to arrange images of someone aging in order. The timeline was presented Left to Right for English speakers and Right to Left for Hebrew and Arabic speakers, reflecting the direction of their writing scripts.

Another interesting difference arises in number counting. Some languages do not have exact words for numbers larger than small quantities. In such languages, speakers often struggle with tasks that require precise counting, such as matching eight penguins to an equal set of ducks. This demonstrates that number words serve as cognitive tools, granting us access to mathematics.

Another area where language influences perception is in the realm of color. English has a single term, “blue,” for all shades, however, in Russian, there are two words for blue: “goluboy” for light blue and “siniy” for dark blue.

This linguistic distinction affects how quickly and accurately Russian speakers can differentiate between shades of blue, as they perceive blue alongside other dark colors, such as black or green, as part of its own basic color category, according to a study published in the Journal of Vision.

Grammatical gender is also a feature of languages like German and Spanish. Surprisingly, this aspect affects perceptions. For example, in German, the word for “bridge” is feminine, while in Spanish, it is masculine. When discussing a bridge in German, speakers might use adjectives like “beautiful” or “elegant,” while in Spanish, they might opt for “strong” or “long.” The gender of a term subtly influences the traits that people associate with it.

Language and Responsibility

Languages vary in how they encode events and attribute them to an agent. Consider the example of someone who accidentally breaks a vase. An English speaker might say, “He broke the vase,” while a Spanish speaker might say, “The vase broke itself.”

When presented with an accidental event, both English and Spanish speakers, like members of other communities, remember the agents involved and may categorize the agent based on their degree of volition or intentionality. This disparity shapes perceptions of blame, responsibility, and, in some cases, punishment.

The Deep Power of Language

From concepts of space and time to color perception and numerical understanding, language is not merely a tool for labeling reality—it is the means by which reality is constructed. The structure of a language shapes the thoughts it expresses, subtly inflecting, if not outright determining, how its speakers perceive, conceive of, and engage with the world.

REFERENCES;

Boroditsky, L. (2017, November). How language shapes the way we think. TED Talks. Retrieved May 1, 2025, from https://www.ted.com/dubbing/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shapes_the_way_we_think?audio=en

How language shapes the way we think. (2028, February 5). University of Missouri - St. Louis. Retrieved May 1, 2025, from https://irl.umsl.edu/oer/13/

HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? (2009, November 6). Edge.org. Retrieved May 1, 2025, from https://www.edge.org/conversation/lera_boroditsky-how-does-our-language-shape-the-way-we-think

How Language Shapes Thought. (2011, February 1). Scientific American. Retrieved May 1, 2025, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-language-shapes-thought/

Şahin, Ö. S. (n.d.). The Impacts of Languages on Thoughts. Retrieved May 1, 2025, from https://www.fbu.edu.tr/media/20211201101314Ozge-Sude-Sahin.pdf