Conceptualization of Time for Mandarin and English Speakers

Boroditsky, Lera

2001    Does Language Shape Thought? : Mandarin and English Speakers’ Conceptions of Time. Cognitive Psychology 43, 1-22

            In the introduction, we start with an explanation of the situation. It starts a long time ago (1956) when Whorf said that the language you grow up speaking shapes how you think about the world. This is an anthropological staple.  There have, however, been attempts to disprove this. For example, the Dani in New Guinnea have two color categories. If language shapes how we think, one can expect that the Dani would then have great difficulty conceptualizing any other scheme other than their two color system. Upon explanation of the English color system, they pick it up and understand it quickly.

            Additionally, in 1987 and 1996, Slobin said that the languages we speak are like the boxes that we are forced to fit abstract thought into. We think and feel in abstract, but to express it, we must obey the rules of syntax, grammar and vocabulary. So while we can understand things outside of your lingual constrictions, we can only convey it through our language.

            The specific topic of this article, is how the concept of Time is thought and talked about by English and Mandarin speakers. There are a few universals in the realm of time. For example, everyone knows, simply by observing the world that time happens in one direction. That is, we cannot move backwards in time, moments occur one at a time and that we can only be in one place and time at a time. Since these are all observable, they tend not to vary cross culturally. While things that are far more abstract, such as the direction of time and our movement through/around/upon it tend to vary a great deal cross-culturally.

            In English, time is generally conceptualized and talked about using front/back kinds of language. Up and down are used (your grandfather passes down heirlooms) but these are much more uncommon. Mandarin is the inverse: up/down are the commonly used phrases. Shang and xia are the pinyin for them. Their closest English translation is following/previous and earlier/later.

            So the question is, do the differences in how time is spoken of mean that the thought processes are different? Or are we all just prisoners to lingual tradition?

            In 2000, Boroditsky (the author of this article I’ve summarized), discussed how using metaphors about space lent itself to thinking about time. Spatial (space) information is also useful to the temporal (time) realm and that the metaphors for space have an effect on the conceptualization of time. Or rather, analogies used to talk about the physical space around us get used to discuss how time works. They then become habitual, and over time become the way people think and discuss time by default. For example, there really in reality IS NOT a timeline that all events are organized upon. But from an early age in school, I was made to create horizontal timelines to organize events, and learn that WWI came before WWII, but after the Spanish-American War. I did not learn that WWI came above WWII.

            Boroditsky created three experiments that were designed to test the hypothesis that the way we talk about time shapes how we think about time. If you want the specific details of the methodology (this is technically a psychology article), then go read it… I honestly just skimmed the methods in order to get back to theory.

Experiment 1 was created in order to test whether using spatial metaphors to discuss time can have short term and long term implications for how time is thought about. She took native Mandarin and English speakers (all Stanford students) and showed them pictures of things organized spatially and asked questions. Then they asked true/false questions about time. Half of them were to test immediate effect of metaphors and used a horizontal metaphor. The example she used was: March comes before April. The other half of the questions were about time and were metaphor-less. They also used temporal language such as earlier/later. The example being March comes earlier than April.

            The assumption is that if ones native language has a long term effect, then Mandarin speakers should be faster at answering temporal (time) questions after solving vertical spatial questions, while native English speakers should be the opposite. Additionally, this whole thing was conducted in English to see if it’s not just a language thing, but a thought thing. The Chinese answering would have to think for English.

            Both English and Mandarin speakers were affected differently by the pictures/questions about spatial organization. Both answered before/after (spatiotemporal) faster after horizontal pictures. This means that spatial knowledge is used to think about spatiotemporal metaphors. While the purely temporal lines of questions, earlier/later, the English speakers answered faster after horizontal questions and the Mandarin speakers answered faster after vertical.

            Experiment 2: designed to test native Mandarin-English bilinguals. These were people who grew up speaking Mandarin, but acquired English at a relatively early age, all at varying points of life. All had known English for at least ten years. Boroditsky was trying to see how the age at which they had learned English, and how long they had been speaking English affected the way they conceptualized time.

            All questions were earlier/later, and they were measuring the level of vertical bias. She found that there was more of a bias for those who learned English later in life, while those that learned it earlier, were more readily able to conceptualize time in the “English” way. She found no direct correlation in the duration which they had been speaking English. I suppose that the younger and more impressionable, the quicker you can adopt other modes of thinking.

            I must admit that at this point in the article, a few questions/comments/concerns popped into my head, which I will recount at the end.

            Experiment 3: designed to see if English speakers could be trained to think vertically. They were given a brief training: example cars were invented above fax machines. This test was to account for cultural factors outside of language, such as writing direction. If experiment one was purely language, it’s expected that after being trained/ surrounded by vertical thought, then the results that these English speakers got should mimic the Mandarin results. And that is exactly what ended up happening.

            She concludes that language DOES shape thought; at least in some aspects. With the Dani and color, color is a physical, observable thing in the world. Children learning to speak pick up object-reference terms first, as opposed to abstract concepts like time, or other not immediately observable things. We use spatial metaphors to allow ourselves to make concrete about of inherently non-concrete concepts. Language shapes our abstract thoughts.

            My personal thoughts: What if they were English speakers learning Mandarin? And as for the Mandarin speakers learning English, do the English habits replace the Mandarin habits? Or are they just doing the mental version of code-switching? I would like to see this re-conducted, but all in Mandarin.