We'll begin with police shootings of unarmed Black men. What do you think the implications are - if you buy the idea that languages are a very specific and unique way of seeing the world, of perceiving reality, what are the implications of so many languages disappearing during our time? GEACONE-CRUZ: It describes this feeling so perfectly in such a wonderfully packaged, encapsulated way, and you can just - it rolls off the tongue, and you can just throw it. In a lot of languages, there isn't. This week, a story about a con with a twist. In the final episode of our "Mind Reading 2.0" series, we bring back one of our favorite conversations, with linguist Deborah Tannen. MCWHORTER: Yeah, I really do. MCWHORTER: It's a matter of fashion, pure and simple. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. Decoding Emotions - Transcripts Let's start with the word literally. Who Do You Want To Be? - Hidden Brain (pdcast) | Listen Notes Later things are on the right. You would give a different description to mark that it was not intentional. Reframing Your Reality: Part 1 | Hidden Brain Media But what I am thinking is, you should realize that even if you don't like it, there's nothing wrong with it in the long run because, for example, Jonathan Swift didn't like it that people were saying kissed instead of kiss-ed (ph) and rebuked instead of rebuk-ed (ph). Athletic Scholarships are Negatively Associated with Intrinsic Motivation for Sports, Even Decades Later: Evidence for Long-Term Undermining, by Kennon M. Sheldon and Arlen C. Moller, Motivation Science, 2020. And one day, I was walking along, and I was just staring at the ground. Mistakes and errors are what turned Latin into French. So for example, English speakers, because they're very likely to say, he did it or someone did it, they are very good at remembering who did it, even if it's an accident. BORODITSKY: And Russian is a language that has grammatical gender, and different days of the week have different genders for some reason. So act like Monday. So for example, you might not imagine the color shirt that he's wearing or the kinds of shoes that he's wearing. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. We're speaking today with cognitive science professor Lera Boroditsky about language. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. Whats going on here? But we have plenty of words like that in English where it doesn't bother us at all. What do you do for christmas with your family? Hidden Brain : NPR And then he would take a Polaroid of the kid and say, well, this is you. Read the episode transcript. This week, in the second installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Todd Kashdan looks at the relationship between distress and happiness, and how to keep difficult emotions from sabotaging our wellbeing. We couldnt survive without the many public radio stations that support our show and they cant survive without you. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking foreign language). Toula and Ian's different backgrounds become apparent on one of their very first dates. Lera said there's still a lot of research to be done on this. BORODITSKY: That's a wonderful question. In The Air We Breathe : NPR It Takes Two: The Interpersonal Nature of Empathic Accuracy, What Do You Do When Things Go Right? Copyright 2023 Steno. In English, actually, quite weirdly, we can even say things like, I broke my arm. Because were a small team, we dont have a publicly-available list of every piece of music that we use. But I find that people now usually use the word to mean very soon, as in we're going to board the plane momentarily. So you can't see time. If you dont see any jobs posted there, feel free to send your resume and cover letter to [emailprotected] and well keep your materials on hand for future openings on the show. This week, in the final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes what happens when we stop to savor the beauty in nature, art, or simply the moral courage of those around us. VEDANTAM: I understand there's been some work looking at children and that children who speak certain languages are actually quicker to identify gender and their own gender than children who are learning other languages in other cultures. BORODITSKY: Well, there may not be a word for left to refer to a left leg. Hidden Brain - You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose - Google Podcasts BORODITSKY: It's certainly possible. But can you imagine someone without imagining their gender? (LAUGHTER) VEDANTAM: In the English-speaking world, she goes by Lera Boroditsky. If you're a monolingual speaker of one of these languages, you're very likely to say that the word chair is masculine because chairs are, in fact, masculine, right? Put this image on your website to promote the show -, Happiness 2.0: The Only Way Out Is Through, Report inappropriate content or request to remove this page. BORODITSKY: And when they were trying to act like Wednesday, they would act like a woman BORODITSKY: Which accords with grammatical gender in Russian. BORODITSKY: I spoke really terrible Indonesian at the time, so I was trying to practice. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. If you missed it, Think back to the last time someone convinced you to do something you didn't want to do, or to spend money you didn't want to spend. But it's exactly like - it was maybe about 20 years ago that somebody - a girlfriend I had told me that if I wore pants that had little vertical pleats up near the waist, then I was conveying that I was kind of past it. It's never going to. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live, Going the Distance on the Pacific Crest Trail: The Vital Role of Identified Motivation, Athletic Scholarships are Negatively Associated with Intrinsic Motivation for Sports, Even Decades Later: Evidence for Long-Term Undermining, Rightly Crossing the Rubicon: Evaluating Goal Self-Concordance Prior to Selection Helps People Choose More Intrinsic Goals, What Makes Lawyers Happy? Goal Striving, Need Satisfaction, and Longitudinal Well-being: The Self-Concordance Model, by Kennon M. Sheldon and Andrew J. Elliot, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999. That was somehow a dad's fashion, and that I should start wearing flat-fronted pants. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Speaking foreign language). VEDANTAM: John McWhorter, thank you so much for joining me on HIDDEN BRAIN today. Well, if you have a word like that and if it's an intensifier of that kind, you can almost guess that literally is going to come to mean something more like just really. But actually, it's something that's not so hard to learn. When we come back, I'm going to ask you about why languages change and whether there are hidden rules that shape why some words are more likely to evolve than others. And maybe the convenience store or the shop is really not that far away. And I thought, wow, first of all, it would be almost impossible to have a conversation like that in English where you hadn't already revealed the gender of the person because you have to use he or she. In the final episode of our Relationships 2.0 series, psychologistHarry Reis says theres another ingredient to successful relationships thats every bit as important as love. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. And we teach them, for example, to say that bridges and apples and all kinds of other things have the same prefix as women. When we come back, we dig further into the way that gender works in different languages and the pervasive effects that words can play in our lives. So when I ask you to, say, imagine a man walking down the street, well, in your imagery, you're going to have some details completed and some will be left out. But might we allow that there's probably a part of all human beings that wants to look down on somebody else. He didn't like that people were shortening the words. But things can be important not just because they're big. Whats going on here? So the question for us has been, how do we build these ideas? VEDANTAM: You make the case that concerns over the misuse of language might actually be one of the last places where people can publicly express prejudice and class differences. (Speaking Japanese). But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? "Most of the laughter we produce is purely . You know, we spend years teaching children about how to use language correctly. This week, in the second installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Todd Kashdan looks at the relationship between distress and happiness, and ho, Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. But they can also steer us in directions that leave us deeply unsatisfied. If a transcript is available, youll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. And they said, well, of course. It takes, GEACONE-CRUZ: It's this phrase that describes something between I can't be, bothered or I don't want to do it or I recognize the incredible effort that goes into. VEDANTAM: So this begs the question, if you were to put languages on something of a spectrum, where you have, you know, languages like Spanish or Hindi where nouns are gendered and languages like English where many nouns are not gendered but pronouns are gendered, and on the other end of the spectrum, you have languages like Finnish or Persian where you can have a conversation about someone without actually mentioning their gender, it would seem surprising if this did not translate, at some level, into the way people thought about gender in their daily activities, in terms of thinking about maybe even who can do what in the workplace. Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. Rightly Crossing the Rubicon: Evaluating Goal Self-Concordance Prior to Selection Helps People Choose More Intrinsic Goals, by Kennon M. Sheldon, Mike Prentice, and Evgeny Osin, Journal of Research in Personality, 2019. ROB LOWE: (As Chris Traeger) Dr. Harris, you are literally the meanest person I have ever met. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking foreign language). MCWHORTER: Those are called contronyms, and literally has become a new contronym. BORODITSKY: Yeah. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #16: Not figuratively, it's literally MCWHORTER: Yeah. Language as it evolved was just talking to an extent that can be very hard for we literate people to imagine. And this is NPR. Lera is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. I had this cool experience when I was there. And you can even teach people to have a little bit of fun with the artifice. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: (Speaking foreign language). We post open positions (including internships) on our jobs page. It is a great, free way to engage the podcast community and increase the visibility of your podcasts. Something new will have started by then, just like if we listen to people in 1971, they sound odd in that they don't say like as much as we do. How do you balance the imperative of teaching correct usage? But it's a lovely example of how language can guide you to discover something about the world that might take you longer to discover if you didn't have that information in language. It goes in this pile. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? GEACONE-CRUZ: And I ended up living there for 10 years. That's because change is hard. Languages are not just tools. BORODITSKY: So quite literally, to get past hello, you have to know which way you're heading. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. If you still cant find the episode, try looking through our most recent shows on our homepage. And it ended up becoming less a direct reflection of hearty laughter than an indication of the kind of almost subconscious laughter that we do in any kind of conversation that's meant as friendly. If you prefer to listen through a podcast app, here are links to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher. Hidden Brain Feb 23, 2023 Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? VEDANTAM: I understand that if you're in a picnic with someone from this community and you notice an ant climbing up someone's left leg, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to tell that person, look, there's an ant on your left leg. Just go to the magnifying glass in the top right corner, click on it, and use the search function at the top of the page. Are the spoken origins of language one reason that words so often seem to be on the move? How to Foster Perceived Partner Responsiveness: High-Quality LIstening is Key, Perceived Partner Responsiveness Scale (PPRS), Toward Understanding Understanding:The Importance of Feeling Understood in Relationships, Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts are Influenced by Self-Esteem and Relationship Threat, Perceived Partner Responsiveness Minimizes Defensive Reactions to Failure, Assessing the Seeds of Relationship Decay: Using Implicit Evaluations to Detect the Early Stages of Disillusionment. I've always found that a very grating way to ask for something at a store. Yes! VEDANTAM: Would it be possible to use what we have learned about how words and languages evolve to potentially write what a dictionary might look like in 50 years or a hundred years? There was no such thing as looking up what it originally meant. That's how much cultural heritage is lost. FAQ | Hidden Brain Media And, of course, you always have to wonder, well, could it be that speakers of these different languages are actually seeing different kinds of bridges? And why do some social movements take off and spread, while others fizzle? Transcript The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. They're more likely to see through this little game that language has played on them. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. So some languages don't have number words. But if you seed a watermelon, nobody assumes that you're taking seeds and putting them in the watermelon, you're taking them out. Hidden Brain Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam Science 4.6 36K Ratings; Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. According to neuroscientists who study laughter, it turns out that chuckles and giggles often aren't a response to humorthey're a response to people. And after listening to you, I realize I might have to finally give in. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) I'm willing to get involved. And I would really guess that in a few decades men will be doing it, too. VEDANTAM: How the languages we speak shape the way we think and why the words we use are always in flux. by Harry T. Reis, Annie Regan, and Sonja Lyubomirsky, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2021. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? Flight attendant Steven Slater slides from a plane after quitting. But if they were sitting facing north, they would lay out the story from right to left. : A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success, by Lawrence S. Krieger and Kennon M. Sheldon, George Washington Law Review, 2015. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. In this favorite episode from 2021, Cornell University psychologist Anthony Burrow explains why purpose isnt something to be found its something we can develop from within. We lobby a neighbor to vote for our favored political candidate. And it irritates people, but there's a different way of seeing literally. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where. al, Group Decision and Negotiation, 2008. You can find the transcript for most episodes of Hidden Brain on our website. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. And MIT linguist Ken Hale, who's a renowned linguist, said that every time a language dies, it's the equivalent of a bomb being dropped on the Louvre. Perceived Partner Responsiveness as an Organizing Construct in the Study of Intimacy and Closeness, by Harry T. Reis, et. It has to do with the word momentarily. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. So new words are as likely to evolve as old ones. For example, if you take seeds and put them in the ground, that's one thing. That kind of detail may not appear. And you say that dictionaries in some ways paint an unrealistic portrait of a language. You also see huge differences in other domains like number. VEDANTAM: The word chair is feminine in Italian. But I understand that in Spanish, this would come out quite differently. And what he noticed was that when people were trying to act like Monday, they would act like a man. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. In many languages, nouns are gendered. The fact is that language change can always go in one of many directions, there's a chance element to it. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. And they have correlated this with gender features in the language, just like the ones you were talking about. podcast pages. Of course, if you can't keep track of exactly seven, you can't count. Everyone wants to be loved and appreciated. Dictionaries are wonderful things, but they create an illusion that there's such thing as a language that stands still, when really it's the nature of human language to change. Think back to the last time someone convinced you to do something you didn't want to do, or to spend money you didn't want to spend. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? Could this affect the way, you know, sexism, conscious or unconscious, operates in our world? The best Podcast API to search all podcasts and episodes. People who breathe too much put their bodies in a hypoxic state, with not enough oxygen to the brain How breath moves in the body: air comes in through the nose and mouth; the larynx (rigid tube to avoid closing) brings air from the nose and mouth to the lungs Lungs can expand and contract to bring in or expel air You're not going to do trigonometry. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. But time doesn't have to flow with respect to the body. And then when I turned, this little window stayed locked on the landscape, but it turned in my mind's eye. If a transcript is available, you'll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. BORODITSKY: One thing that we've noticed is this idea of time, of course, is very highly constructed by our minds and our brains. Hidden Brain Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam Subscribe Visit website Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our. In this favorite 2021 episode, psychologist Adam Grant pushes back against the benefits of certainty, and describes the magic that unfolds when we challenge our own deeply-held beliefs. BORODITSKY: Yeah. He's also the author of the book, "Words On The Move: Why English Won't - And Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally).". But what we should teach is not that the good way is logical and the way that you're comfortable doing it is illogical. Hidden Brain Claim By Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam Podcasts RSS Web PODCAST SEARCH EPISODES COMMUNITY PODCASTER EDIT SHARE Listen Score LS 84 Global Rank TOP 0.01% ABOUT THIS PODCAST Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe, watching Netflix or something. There's a lowlier part of our nature that grammar allows us to vent in the absence of other ways to do it that have not been available for some decades for a lot of us. I think that the tone that many people use when they're complaining that somebody says Billy and me went to the store is a little bit incommensurate with the significance of the issue. So there are some differences that are as big as you can possibly measure. I'm shankar Vedantam in the 2002 rom com. So I just think that it's something we need to check ourselves for. So maybe they're saying bridges are beautiful and elegant, not because they're grammatically feminine in the language, but because the bridges they have are, in fact, more beautiful and elegant. Follow on Apple, Google or Spotify. The dictionary says both uses are correct. al (Eds. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking foreign language). He's a defender of language on the move, but I wanted to know if there were things that irritated even him. VEDANTAM: I love this analogy you have in the book where you mention how, you know, thinking that a word has only one meaning is like looking at a snapshot taken at one point in a person's life and saying this photograph represents the entirety of what this person looks like. What turns out to be the case is that it's something in between - that bilinguals don't really turn off the languages they're not using when they're not using them. VEDANTAM: Languages seem to have different ways of communicating agency. The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. out. In The Air We Breathe . VEDANTAM: I understand that there's also been studies looking at how artists who speak different languages might paint differently depending on how their languages categorize, you know, concepts like a mountain or death. Growing up, I understood this word to mean for a very short time, as in John McWhorter was momentarily surprised. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways w, Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. They are ways of seeing the world. Imagine you meet somebody, they're 39 and you take their picture. We use a lot of music on the show! Whats going on here? Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. And if that is true, then the educated person can look down on people who say Billy and me went to the store or who are using literally, quote, unquote, "wrong" and condemn them in the kinds of terms that once were ordinary for condemning black people or women or what have you. It's never happened. But, in fact, they were reflecting this little quirk of grammar, this little quirk of their language and in some cases, you know, carving those quirks of grammar into stone because when you look at statues that we have around - of liberty and justice and things like this - they have gender. So that's a measurement difference of 100 percent of performance. Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, by Amy Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly, 1999. And then if you are going to be that elliptical, why use the casual word get? All of these are very subjective things. Each generation hears things and interprets things slightly differently from the previous one. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. That's the way words are, too. Each language comprises the ideas that have been worked out in a culture over thousands of generations, and that is an incredible amount of cultural heritage and complexity of thought that disappears whenever a language dies. And very competent adults of our culture can't do that. I just don't want to do it. : A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success, Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? Does a speaker of a language, like Spanish, who has to assign gender to so many things, end up seeing the world as more gendered? Transcript - How language shapes the way we think by Lera Boroditsky.docx, The Singapore Quality Award requires organisations to show outstanding results, The following lots of Commodity Z were available for sale during the year, b The authors identify 5 types of misinformation in the abstract but discuss 7, 17 Chow N Asian value and aged care Geriatr Gerontol Int 20044521 5 18 Chow NWS, Writing Results and Discussion Example.docx, A 6 month old infant weighing 15 lb is admitted with a diagnosis of dehydration, ng_Question_-_Assessment_1_-_Proposing_Evidence-Based_Change.doc, The Social Security checks the Government sends to grandmothers are considered A, 03 If a covered member participates on the clients attest engagement or is an, AURETR143 Student Assessment - Theory v1.1.docx. This is NPR. Many people have this intuition that, oh, I could never learn that; I could never survive in a community like this. They're supposed to be painting something very personal. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Hidden Brain explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world. And as you point out, it's not just that people feel that a word is being misused. But if you ask bilinguals, who have learned two languages and now they know that some genders disagree across the two languages, they're much less likely to say that it's because chairs are intrinsically masculine. And you can just - it rolls off the tongue, and you can just throw it out. What Makes Lawyers Happy? So LOL starts out as meaning hardy-har-har (ph), but then it becomes something more abstract.