I blogged on a recent Lera Boroditsky article a couple of days ago, which considered the question 'does language shape thought and culture?'. The Johnson blog in The Economist discusses the article (here) and urges caution over some of the 'conclusions' that newspaper articles have seized upon.
As I mentioned in my last post on the article, research showed that Spanish and Japanese speakers were less likely to remember who caused a particular mishap than English speakers because of the structure of their languages, but The Economist blog reminds us that the difference in memory was only slight -- 82% of English speakers correctly remembered who had caused an accident, compared to 74% of Spanish speakers. As the Johnson blogger says, the structure of one language might make its speakers pay less attention to who caused something, but the general common sense and ability of most people to notice who broke a vase usually trumps the language structure.
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