Lera Boroditsky, How the Languages We Speak Shape the Ways We Think

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Humans communicate with one another using 7,000 or so different languages, and each language differs from the next in innumerable ways. Do people who speak different languages think differently? Do languages merely express thoughts, or do they secretly shape the very thoughts we wish to express? Are some thoughts unthinkable without language? The question of whether the languages we speak shape the ways we think has been at the center of controversy for centuries, and with good reason. At stake are basic questions all of us have about ourselves, human nature, and reality. Why do we think the way we do? Why does the world appear to us the way it does? Lera Boroditsky discusses research conducted around the world and focus on how language shapes the way we think about color, space, time, causality, and agency.

Affiliation: UC San Diego

Sponsored by: La Fonda on the Plaza

Series Sponsored by: Adobo Catering, Betty & Luke Vortman Endowment Fund, PSC, Flora Crichton Lecture Fund, Thornburg Investment Management, Shiprock Santa Fe

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