Turning the Tables: Language and Spatial Reasoning
Author(s)
Li, Peggy; Gleitman, Lila
Abstract
This paper investigates possible influences of the lexical resources of individual languages on the spatial organization and reasoning styles of their users. That there are such powerful and pervasive influences of language on thought is the thesis of the Whorf-Sapir linguistic relativity hypothesis which, after a lengthy period in intellectual limbo, has recently returned to prominence in the anthropological, linguistic, and psycholinguistic literatures. Our point of departure is an influential group of cross-linguistic studies that appear to show that spatial reasoning is strongly affected by the spatial lexicon in everyday use in a community. Specifically, certain groups customarily use an externally referenced spatial-coordinate system to refer to nearby directions and positions (“to the north”) whereas English speakers usually employ a viewer-perspective system (“to the left”). The results are discussed in terms of the current debate on the relation of language to thought, with particular emphasis on the question of why different cultural communities favor different perspectives in talking about space.
