Lera Boroditsky | 语言如何塑造我们的思维方式？

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《理论语言学五道口站》（2020年第52期，总第116期）生物语言学及脑科学系列专题与大家分享斯坦福大学心理学助理教授Lera Boroditsky关于语言与思维的研究。全球大约有7000种语言，Boroditsky教授说: “语言多样性的美妙之处在于，它向我们展示了人类思维的独创性和灵活性。” 

那么，语言与我们的思维有怎样的关系呢？我们的语言是否塑造了我们的思维方式？这些问题将在本期视频“语言如何塑造我们的思维方式？”中透过真实的科学实验和数据一一找到答案。

欢迎大家持续关注本系列专题！

01

专家简介

Introduction to the speaker

Lera Boroditsky 教授

Lera Boroditsky，现任斯坦福大学心理学助理教授，Frontiers in Cultural Psychology杂志主编。获斯坦福大学心理学博士学位，曾在麻省理工学院大脑与认知科学系任教。Boroditsky主要研究知识是如何从思维、世界和语言的相互作用中产生的，以及语言和文化是如何塑造人类思维的。为此，Boroditsky的实验室收集了来自印度尼西亚、智利、土耳其、澳大利亚土著等世界各地的数据。她的研究被媒体广泛报道，并获得多个奖项，包括美国国家科学基金会职业奖、塞尔学者奖和McDonnell学者奖。

Lera Boroditsky is an assistant professor of psychology at Stanford University and Editor in Chief of Frontiers in Cultural Psychology. She holds a PhD in Psychology from Stanford and has previously served on the faculty in the department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. Boroditsky's research centers on how knowledge emerges out of the interactions of mind, world, and language, and the ways that languages and cultures shape human thinking. To this end, Boroditsky's laboratory has collected data around the world, from Indonesia to Chile to Turkey to Aboriginal Australia. Her research has been widely featured in the media and has won multiple awards, including the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, the Searle Scholars award, and the McDonnell Scholars award.

02

语言如何塑造我们的思维方式？

How  language  shapes  the  way  

we  think？

Lera Boroditsky：我已经给你们举了几个例子来说明语言是如何通过多种不同的方式来深刻地塑造我们的思维方式的。所以语言可以产生巨大的影响，就像我们所举的时间和空间的例子：人们可以在迥然不同的坐标系下对空间和时间进行排序。数字的例子同样为我们证明了语言的深远影响。如果你的语言里有计数词，有数字，那么一个数学世界将会为你开启。当然，如果你不数数，你自然不会做代数，你就不能做任何需要数学的事情，像是建立一个这样的演播厅或放送节目，对吧？小小的数字为我们提供了踏入整个认知领域的垫脚石。

语言的影响还可能很早就发生，就像我们在颜色的例子中看到的那样。这些都是非常简单、基本、感性的决定。我们无时无刻不在做出成千上万个这样的决定，然而，语言就在其中影响着每个细微的感知型的决定。语言也可以产生非常广泛的影响，我们所举的语法上词性的例子看似有些可笑，但同时，它却适用于所有名词。这意味着语言可以影响你如何思考所有能用名词表达的东西。那可是不胜枚举。

最后，我举了一个语言可以如何影响跟我们切身相关的事件的例子，比如责备、惩罚或目击证词。这些都是我们日常生活中至关重要的方面。

语言多样性的美妙之处在于，它向我们展示了人类思维的独创性和灵活性。人类大脑创造的不是一个认知体系，而是7000个——世界上有7000种语言。而我们还可以创造更多。当然，语言是有生命的，我们可以打磨它、改变它来适应我们的需求。然而可悲的是，这种语言多样性正在不断丧失。大概平均每个星期就有一种语言消失，据估计，在未来的一百年里世界上一半的语言将会消失。更糟糕的是，现在我们所知道的关于人类思维和大脑的知识，几乎都是来自于说英语的美国大学生的研究。这就几乎排除了所有人类，不是吗？所以我们对人类思维的了解实际上是非常狭隘和具有偏见的，我们的科学必须做得更好。

最后，我想给各位留下一个问题来思考。我已经告诉过你不同语言的使用者思考的不同方式，当然，这不是是关于其他地方的人怎么思考，而是关于你怎么思考，关于你说的语言如何影响了你的思维方式。这样你就有机会问问自己，“我为何要用这种方式思考? ”，“我能换种方式思考吗? ”还有，“我想要创造出什么样的想法? ”

Lera Boroditsky：Now, I've given you a few examples of how language can profoundly shape the way we think, and it does so in a variety of ways. So language can have big effects, like we saw with space and time, where people can lay out space and time in completely different coordinate frames from each other. Language can also have really deep effects -- that's what we saw with the case of number. Having count words in your language, having number words, opens up the whole world of mathematics. Of course, if you don't count, you can't do algebra, you can't do any of the things that would be required to build a room like this or make this broadcast, right? This little trick of number words gives you a stepping stone into a whole cognitive realm.

Language can also have really early effects, what we saw in the case of color. These are really simple, basic, perceptual decisions. We make thousands of them all the time, and yet, language is getting in there and fussing even with these tiny little perceptual decisions that we make. Language can have really broad effects. So the case of grammatical gender may be a little silly, but at the same time, grammatical gender applies to all nouns. That means language can shape how you're thinking about anything that can be named by a noun. That's a lot of stuff.

And finally, I gave you an example of how language can shape things that have personal weight to us -- ideas like blame and punishment or eyewitness memory. These are important things in our daily lives.

Now, the beauty of linguistic diversity is that it reveals to us just how ingenious and how flexible the human mind is. Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe, but 7,000 -- there are 7,000 languages spoken around the world. And we can create many more -- languages, of course, are living things, things that we can hone and change to suit our needs. The tragic thing is that we're losing so much of this linguistic diversity all the time. We're losing about one language a week, and by some estimates, half of the world's languages will be gone in the next hundred years. And the even worse news is that right now, almost everything we know about the human mind and human brain is based on studies of usually American English-speaking undergraduates at universities. That excludes almost all humans. Right? So what we know about the human mind is actually incredibly narrow and biased, and our science has to do better.

I want to leave you with this final thought. I've told you about how speakers of different languages think differently, but of course, that's not about how people elsewhere think. It's about how you think. It's how the language that you speak shapes the way that you think. And that gives you the opportunity to ask, "Why do I think the way that I do?" "How could I think differently?" And also, "What thoughts do I wish to create?"

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