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Rationality and second languages | ||
Tags: Scientific Research | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5317 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes  Speaks: German*, English | Message 9 of 11 17 May 2014 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||
In recent years there has been a flurry of Neo-Whorfian research by non-linguists. For example, economist Keith Chen claimed that the presence or absence of dedicated future verb forms affects spending (PDF link). Psycholinguist Monique Flecken claimed that speakers of languages with continuous verb forms perceive objects in motion differently (PDF and HTML). The problem with most of these studies is that they usually hardly provide any linguistic data that would allow linguists to properly evaluate them. For example, Monique Flecken and her colleagues provide lots of data on eye movements, however, they didn't list a single utterance by the German and Arab study participants.
IMHO, the study doesn't prove anything. The trolley problem is a thought experiment in ethics. Since there's no guarantee that study participants will actually do as the say, the trolley experiment is ultimately of little value, no matter the language it's conducted in. (The only thing that it has consistently shown is that participants usually prefer an indirect unpleasant action over a direct one, which is hardly surprising.) Since Costa's study apparently did not control for cultural biases, it's also quite possible that non-native speakers with poorer language skills answered differently in their non-native languages, because they either thought they were somehow expected to behave like rational model citizens or erroneously assumed that the citizens of the country that they were living in were more rational or irrational than themselves and they wanted to better fit in. For example, Israelis have a reputation for being frank and direct. This perceived reputation might explain the huge differences in the answers of the English and Spanish speaking test participants in Israel with poorer Hebrew language skills. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4366 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 10 of 11 17 May 2014 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know that thought experiments ever really prove much. The question that seems to get thrown to me most frequently (yes I do have friends who like to ask these questions at parties) is the choosing between saving a dog or saving a baby one. I've heard so many variations on that one now that I doubt I would answer differently regardless of the language used. With this question I still don't think I would answer differently in a foreign language. But I'm not sure thought experiments are the best to establish rationality, as they present scenarios which wouldn't allow for much time to rationally make a decision.
What would be interesting to see would be if answers are given differently in different cultural contexts. Going back to the dog/baby one, my answer tends to get a particular reaction in the US, but I wonder if the reaction would be different somewhere else. I could see participants deliberately giving a different answer because they believe it's more acceptable according to the culture they associate with the second language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| camus Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5231 days ago 10 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Mandarin* Studies: English, German | Message 11 of 11 17 May 2014 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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interesting study but the result is far from convincing. First off, the sample is fairly small and the key information, each individual's language proficency, is missing. Second, there is no direct evidence for the relationship between languages and rationality. When not able to make out what a yes/no question means in a foreign language, most people probably tend to answer 'yes' out of politeness or simply want to end the conversation. The researchers need to design a control experiment with the questions asked the other way round: "would you rather let the accident happen the way it will?" or something like that. I won't be supprised if most people still answer 'yes' to this question lol.
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