DO YOU SEE THE WORLD DIFFERENTLY IN

FRENCH OR GERMAN?
A psychological perspective.
By Tien Yi Li; 2nd June 2017

Language is what us humans use to communicate
verbally and in written forms; language is composed of five
components: Syntax, Morphology, Phonetics, Semantics, and
Pragmatics (NCHE, n.d); they differ in them. Perception is
the response we give to different stimuli (Judd, 1909.) Does
the language you speak influence how you think? This
ancient question has been asked so many times by linguists,
psychologists, and even philosophers. Most studies like a
close comparison between macabre artworks by artists with
different dominant tongues suggested that there is linkage
between the language one speaks and how he or she thinks.
This raises the question: can it be learnt? Thanks to a recent
study conducted by Lancaster University, the answer seems
to be a Yes!
In order to converse in a language effectively, one
must understand the semantics in order to choose words that
represent the subject, object, and actions they would like to
talk about. For example, one uses the words a man,
apple, and eat to talk about a man eating an apple. One
must also understand the syntax to put the words in order that
makes logical sense to communicate even clearer. For
instance, one must say A man eats an apple instead of
Man a apple eat in order for the clause to make logical
sense.
From the Lulea University of Technology, Dr.
Maares study on the studies of macabre art from the United
States and across Europe suggests that this theory is valid. It
is found that in 85% of all studied work, the gender of
death (as it is being personified) corresponds to the
grammatical gender of the noun death in the artists
dominant tongue. (http://www.deathreference.com/Nu-
Pu/Personifications-of-Death.html) For instance, Hans
Holbein the Younger -a German painter from the 15-16th
century- personified death as a skeleton that displays
masculine features of those times (dressed like a bishop,
holds a sword, farms et cetera, as shown in figure 1.) which
aligns with the grammatical gender of death in German; on
the contrary, an anonymous French painter from Lavaudieu,
France portrayed death as a woman (as seen in figure 2.),
which also agrees with the grammatical gender of death in
French.
Figure 1. Selection of works by Hans Holbein the Younger

As I said, language differ in terms of their syntax

etc. To convey an idea with proper syntax (otherwise known
Figure 2. The Black Death by anonymous
as grammar) requires the speaker/writer to be perceptive of
different details and go through a different cognitive process.
For example, to be grammatically correct in French and
German, one must take into account the assigned grammatical
gender of a noun and make the adjectives agree with the noun
(https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/does-language-i-
speak-influence-way-i-think); on the other hand, English
speakers do not need to pay attention to/go over the fuss of
adjective agreement, since the English language lack
grammatical genders. Many theorised that having to go
through such a cognitive process forces the speaker/writer to
think of a particular gender when thinking of a certain noun.
In turn attaching connotative masculinity or femininity to
masculine and feminine nouns, respectively. (Romaine,
n.d)

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 Knowing the language that one speaks does play
part in how one connotes a noun to another, hence, ones
perception. The question rises as to whether bilinguals
perception differ from their monolingual counterparts, and if
their perception can change. A study conducted by Dr. Panos
Athanasopoulos with his team at Lancaster University
suggests that bilinguals perception (typically the details they
choose to be perceptive of changes when their language
setting is changed.) To test the fluidity of bilinguals
perception, Dr. A recruited thirty German-English bilinguals
(who all have German as their first language, and English as
their second.) They were randomly assigned into two groups
of fifteen to conduct the following experiment in English and
German respectively. The experiment is to show the
bilinguals two video clips: Clip A that shows a person doing a
clearly goal-oriented task (e.g. a person walking towards the
right to a building); and Clip B that shows a person doing the
same action (walking from the audience to a further distance
to the front, with no obvious purpose at all). The bilinguals
were then shown Clip X, which shows a person completing
an action similar to Clip B (walking in the same direction as
the person in Clip B), and has a low degree of goal
orientation (e.g. have a car to the side of the road, the person
might be walking towards the car. Clips are visually
presented in figure 3.) Bilinguals were then asked to choose
which of Clips A and B, does Clip X resemble more of.
Figure 3. Visual presentation of Clips B, A, and X
(in order from top to bottom); image courtesy:
(http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/73269/3/Two_languages_two_min
ds_final.pdf)
It is hypothesized
that when this experiment
is conducted in German,
the bilinguals will match
clip X with Clip A more
frequently, than when the
experiment is conducted in
English. On the opposite, it
is hypothesized that if the
experiment is conducted in
English, the bilinguals will
be more likely to match
clip X with clip B. This is
because German does not
distinct between simple and
continuous tenses, unlike
English. This makes it
difficult for them to narrate
an event, then, narrate what
happened in between. For
instance, they cant say I
was walking to the store, I
saw Jane, which would
imply that I saw Jane in
the middle of walking to
the store. To overcome this
limitation, they would narrate events in a temporal order that
stresses on the beginning, middle, and end of an event. Since
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English speakers narrate events in this way, they pay more
attention to what the subject I, in this case- is doing when
the event (seeing Jane) happened, whereas the Germans are
more attentive to what happened before and after the event of
seeing Jane. Thus, being more perceptive of the action,
English speakers are likely to categorize clip X with clip B
for their similar action, while German speakers will prefer the
opposite because clip X and clip A has some sort of an end-
goal unlike clip B, which they are perceptive of.
The results have supported the hypothesis. The
German-speaking group categorized clip X with clip A ~40%
of the time, and 25% of the time for the English-speaking
group. Despite being similarly fluent in both languages, the
results suggest that changing a language setting influences the
categorization preferences of individuals, likely because of
the different cognitive processes they go through producing
the two different languages. This also suggests that
perception is influenced not only by ones mother tongue, but
by second languages as well, as long as one is thinking in the
setting of that second language. In other words, second
language acquisition allows the speaker/writer to think in that
language, thereby changing their cognitive process of
language production, and hence, perception of certain details.
(Athanasopoulos, 2015)
These findings are not without challenges, though.
Even though it seems like language has heightened and
diminished our perception to details, it might not be on
account of the language, nor the cognitive process behind
producing it. It is widely considered as a chicken-or-egg-
question by psycholinguists is there not a word for that idea
because we simply do think about it, or do we not have that
word thus not think about it? (Briner, n.d) Some deem the
former more reliable, in support of it they simply ask: can one
not think of the shape of a pear, or the cosiness of drinking a
cup of warm tea without describing it literally? Obviously,
they can, which proves that we can think of ideas without the
use of words. Knowing that the lack of words does not inhibit
our thoughts, we can deduce the conclusion that we simply
choose not to think about that idea, hence, did not make a
word to describe it. Moreover, the external validity of Dr. As
research is challenged because the sociocultural influences of
learning a language is not controlled in his experiment.
Hence, we cannot tell whether the change in perception is
caused by changing the cognitive process of language
production, as opposed to the language being reminiscent of
different cultural heritage when changing language setting.
Overall, Dr. As research does provide a
breakthrough in this field of interest. It is very likely that
learning a language might open ones mind up to more
details. However, this theory must be further proven.
References:

1. Athanasopoulos, Panos. "Two Languages, Two Minds." Lancaster University. Lancaster University, 1 Apr. 2015. Web.

1 June 2017. <http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/73269/3/Two_languages_two_minds_final.pd>.

2. Birner, Betty, Dr. "Does the Language I Speak Influence the Way I Think?" Linguistic Society of America.

Linguistic Society of America, n.d. Web. 01 June 2017.

<https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/does-language-i-speak-influence-way-i-think>.

3. Judd, Charles H. What Is Perception? The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol.

6, no. 2, 1909, pp. 3644. JSTOR, <www.jstor.org/stable/2011607>.

4. Matterer, James L. The Hans Holbein Dance of Death - Page 14. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 June 2017.

<http://www.godecookery.com/macabre/holdod/holdod14.htm>.

5. Matterer, James L. The Hans Holbein Dance of Death - Page 31. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 June 2017.

<http://www.godecookery.com/macabre/holdod/holdod31.htm>.

6. Matterer, James L. The Hans Holbein Dance of Death - Page 38. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 June 2017.

<http://www.godecookery.com/macabre/holdod/holdod38.htm>.

7. Nicholas WeilerMar. 17, 2015 , 3:15 PM, 2017 Science News StaffJun. 1, 2017 Jop De VriezeJun. 1, Christa

Marshall, E&E NewsJun. 1, 2017, 2017 Jeffrey MervisMay. 31, Jean Chemnick, E&E NewsMay. 31,

2017, 2017 May. 25, 2017 May. 24, 2017 May. 19, and 2017 May. 17. "Speaking a Second Language

May Change How You See the World."Science | AAAS. N.p., 03 Feb. 2016. Web. 02 June 2017.

<http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/03/speaking-second-language-may-change-how-you-see-

world>.

8. Romaine, Suzanne. "Language and Gender." ELOSS. Merton College, Oxford University, n.d. Web. 1 June 2017.

<https://www.jstor.org/stable/2011607?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents>.

9. Tamm, Maare E. "Death and Dying." Encyclopedia of Death and Dying. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 June 2017.

<http://www.deathreference.com/Nu-Pu/Personifications-of-Death.html>.

10. "The Components of Language and Reading Instruction." Components of Language and Reading.

NCHE, n.d. Web. 1 June 2017. <https://nche.ed.gov/downloads/read_ch5.doc>.