[1] Few ideas in the study of language have proved as alluring, or as contentious, as the claim that the language one speaks shapes the way one thinks. [2] In its boldest formulation, associated with the linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, the thesis held that the categories of a language determine the categories of thought, so that speakers of different languages inhabit, in effect, different conceptual worlds. [3] This strong version fell into disrepute in the mid-twentieth century, as critics observed that speakers routinely entertain distinctions their language does not encode, and that translation between languages, though imperfect, is manifestly possible. [4] To concede that a language lacks a word for some concept, they argued, is not to show that its speakers cannot grasp that concept.
[5] Yet the idea has proved resilient in a chastened form. [6] Rather than asking whether language determines thought, recent investigators have asked whether it influences habitual patterns of attention and memory. [7] Studies of how speakers of different languages describe spatial relations, sort colors, or track the grammatical gender of nouns have reported small but measurable effects on nonlinguistic tasks. [8] The findings do not resurrect the strong thesis; a speaker whose language marks a distinction is not thereby imprisoned by it. [9] What they suggest, more modestly, is that habitual linguistic choices may nudge cognition in detectable ways—a conclusion that neither camp in the original debate had quite anticipated.
