Ted Talk Language Thought

“Language and Thought”
TED Talk by Lera Boroditsky
General notes
❖ Language is making sounds out of your mouth as you exhale, and my eardrums receive
vibrations, and the brain takes these vibrations to create thoughts. So, we can transmit
knowledge and complex ideas across space.
❖ There are multiple languages with different sounds, vocabulary, and structures.
❖ Does the language we speak shape the way we think? Does language craft reality? I think it
does, to an extent.
❖ In Kuuk-Thayorre, they stay oriented based on cardinal directions. The cognitive ability
develops orientation in complex ways.
❖ For the Kuuk-Thayorre, the direction of time is locked on the landscape, which is really
different. It is a new way of thinking of things.
❖ There are languages that don’t have exact number words, and have trouble keeping track of
the same quantities.
❖ A lot of languages have masculine or feminine forms of words, and this affects how people
think about normal nouns, based on feminine or masculine stereotypes.
❖ Different language speakers will perceive different things based on the structure of the
language (people will remember different things about an event- blame v. punishment)
Language guides reasoning about events.
❖ Language can have big (time), deep(number), early (color), and broad effects (grammatical
gender), personal weight (blame/punishment, etc.)
❖ Humans have invented 7,000 different cognitive universes, and about half of these are
expected to be extinct by the next century.
Reflection Questions
1. Why do I think the way that I do?

I think the way that I do because of the way that I grew up and the environment that I grew
up in. I grew up speaking both English and Spanish, and my first language was English. So
instead of taking my first language for granted, my whole world expanded when I began to
speak Spanish at the age of 6. This gave me perspective, and my hardworking family helped
me to figure out who I was and affected the way I think.
2. How could I think differently?

I could think differently by creating an environment that enables me to broaden my
perspective or change my viewpoints. For example, by moving to another country, I would
inevitably begin to think about the cultural values of that specific country. This would
broaden my perspective, and force me to think within a different cultural setting.
3. What thoughts do I wish to create?

I wish to create more deep and complex thoughts. I am a hard worker, but I always have
room to improve, and I wish to develop my thinking capacity.
“Lost in Translation”
by Lera Boroditsky
General Notes: Compare and contrast with texts and ideas explored
Notes:
● In different languages, the way you describe even a simple nursery rhyme like Humpty
Dumpty varies. You could change the tense of the verb, change the gender of the verb, leave
the verb in infinitive, or even include how you acquired the information.
● Charlemagne said that ‘to have another language was to have another soul’, while Chomsky
said that there is a universal structure to language.
● People rely on spatial knowledge to greet each other, which in turn shapes the culture
of the Pormpuraaw people. These people automatically had spatial awareness of
where they were sitting in the study, but arranged objects and images from east to
west based on that cultural knowledge.
● People also place blame differently based on their knowledge of what happened.
People with languages that distinguish accidental v. intentional action are less likely to
remember who did it in times of accidental action.
● If you change how people talk, it changes how they think. Emphasis on different
linguistic aspects creates cultural emphasis, which allows people to think the way they
do.
Comparisons:
- This article is very similar to the TED talk ‘Language and Thought’ in that it conveys
much of the same ideas, examples, and style. It gives examples about how the
Pormpuraaw people arrange their sentences and way of life according to direction.
The main difference was that the article focused a lot more on the idea of blame and
language, including the example about Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson.
- This article conveys a lot of the same ideas of “Politics and the English Language as
well”. Orwell focuses a lot on how the degradation of the English language affects
public interest in politics. This perception changes with the word choice used. This is
similar to “Lost in Translation” because it shows how different languages have different
perceptions of the same events. They are different in that “Politics and the English
Language focuses on just the English language, but “Lost in Translation” focuses on
the spectrum of different languages.
- This article is very different from the New York Times articles. The New York Times
articles were written specifically about historical racism, and does not talk about how
language or literature affects power or culture. However, they did talk about how
culture and mainstream media affect the public’s perspective of African Americans and
racism in general.
Statement about language and thought in regard to politics, power, and

justice
Language is a big factor in regard to politics, power, and justice, because it changes your
emphasis on facts and perspective. If, for example, your language emphasizes gender and labels all
nouns as either male, or female, you are more likely to see events or issues with that lens.

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“Language and Thought”

TED Talk by Lera Boroditsky

1. Why do I think the way that I do?

2. How could I think differently?

3. What thoughts do I wish to create?

Statement about language and thought in regard to politics, power, and

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