Lingthusiasm Episode 102: The science and fiction of Sapir-Whorf
It's a fun science fiction trope: learn a mysterious alien language and acquire superpowers, just like if you'd been zapped by a cosmic ray or bitten by a radioactive spider. But what's the linguistics behind this idea found in books like Babel-17, Embassytown, or the movie Arrival?
In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about the science and fiction of linguistic relativity, popularly known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. We talk about a range of different things that people mean when they refer to this hypothesis: a sciencey-sounding way to introduce obviously fictional concepts like time travel or mind control, a reflection that we add new words all the time as convenient handles to talk about new concepts, a note that grammatical categories can encourage us to pay attention to specific areas in the world (but aren't the only way of doing so), a social reflection that we feel like different people in different environments (which can sometimes align with different languages, though not always). We also talk about several genuine areas of human difference that linguistic relativity misses: different perceptive experiences like synesthesia and aphantasia, as well as how we lump sounds into categories based on what's relevant to a given language.
Finally, we talk about the history of where the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis comes from, why Benjamin Lee Whorf would have been great on TikTok, and why versions of this idea keep bouncing back in different guises as a form of curiosity about the human condition no matter how many specific instances get disproven.
Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.
Announcements:
In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about two sets of updates! We talk about the results from the 2024 listener survey (we learned which one of us you think is more kiki and more bouba!), and our years in review (book related news for both Lauren and Gretchen), plus exciting news for the coming year.
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Here are the links mentioned in the episode:
Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany on Goodreads
Lingthusiasm episode on the linguistics of the movie Arrival
History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences podcast episode 31: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
Lingthusiasm episode 'Colour words around the world and inside your brain'
Wikipedia entry for 'Edward Sapir'
‘The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’ by Harry Hoijer (1954) (archive.org)
Wikipedia entry for 'Ekkehart Malotki'
Wikipedia entry for 'Hopi time controversy'
'Key is a llave is a Schlüssel: A failure to replicate an experiment from Boroditsky et al. 2003' by Anne Mickan, Maren Schiefke, and Anatol Stefanowitsch
'Do Chinese and English speakers think about time differently? Failure of replicating Boroditsky (2001)' by Jenn-Yeu Chen
'Does grammatical gender affect object concepts? Registered replication of Phillips and Boroditsky (2003)' by Nan Elpers, Greg Jensen, and Kevin J. Holmes
'Future tense and saving money: no correlation when controlling for cultural evolution' by Seán G. Roberts, James Winters, and Keith Chen
Lingthusiasm bonus episode ‘North, left, or towards the sea? Interview with Alice Gaby’
'Samuel R. Delany, The Art of Fiction No. 210' Interview by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah for The Paris Review (unpaywalled photos here)
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Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com
Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.
Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.
This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).
[Running Commentary] Zombies are Zombies: Cultural Relativism, Folklore, and Foreign Perspectives
She obviously started getting into media in Japan, and (from my research into Japanese media and culture), Japan’s movies about zombies are mostly comedic, since due to traditional funerary practices the idea of zombies bringing down society is ridiculous to a lot of Japanese people.
Rina: OP, this you? https://www.tofugu.com/japan/japanese-zombies/
Marika: Counterpoint: Parasite Eve. Resident Evil. The Evil Within.
Rina: Literally all the grody horror game franchises that people forget were developed and written by Japanese people because the characters have names like “Leon Kennedy” and “Sebastian Castellanos”
~ ~ ~
Based on the reception we received the last time we did one of these, the Japanese moderator team returns with another running commentary. (They’re easier to answer this way) (Several of Marika’s answers may be troll answers)
Our question today pertains to foreign perspectives on folklore—that is, how people view folklore and stories that aren’t a part of their culture. CW: for anything you’d associate with zombies and a zombie apocalypse, really.
Keep reading for necromancy, horror games, debunking the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Hong Kong jiangshi films, Japanese disaster prep videos, and Vietnamese idol pop...
Essentially, in my story there’s an organization who wants to end the world. They think this one woman in particular, a woman of mixed Vietnamese (irreligious, Kinh) and Japanese descent who spent her formative years in Japan, is the person to do it because she’s (for lack of a better term) a necromancer; powers are semi-normal in this world. She prefers not to use her powers overall, but when she does she mostly talks to ghosts and spirits that are giving people issues. She could technically reanimate a corpse but she wouldn’t because she feels that would be morally wrong, not to mention she couldn’t start a zombie apocalypse in the traditional sense (plague, virus, etc.) in the first place.
(Marika (M): Your local public health officials would like to assure necromancers that reviving the dead will not provoke a zombie apocalypse. This is because necromancy is a reanimation technique, and not a pathogenic vector. Assuming that the technique does not release spores, airborne viruses, gasses, or other related physical matter that can affect neighboring corpses in a similar way, there should be no issue. However, necromancers should comply with local regulations w/r to permitting and only raise the dead with the approval of the local municipality and surviving family.)
M: I think it makes sense for most people of E. Asian descent, including Japanese and Vietnamese people, to find it culturally reprehensible to reanimate the dead. I imagine the religious background of your character matters as well. What religion(s) are her family members from? How do they each regard death and the treatment of human remains? Depending on where she grew up, I’m curious on how she got opportunities to practice outside specialized settings like morgues.
M: It’s true, space in Japan is at a premium, even for the dead. You note that most of Japan cremates, but, surely, it must have occurred to you that if there aren’t that many bodies in Japan to raise…she doesn’t exactly have much opportunity to practice with her powers, does she? I yield to our Vietnamese followers on funerary customs in Vietnam, but you may want to better flesh out your world-building logic on how necromancy operates in your story (And maybe distinguish between necromancy v. channeling v. summoning v. exorcisms).
She obviously started getting into media in Japan, and (from my research into Japanese media and culture), Japan’s movies about zombies are mostly comedic, since due to traditional funerary practices the idea of zombies bringing down society is ridiculous to a lot of Japanese people.
Rina (R): OP, this you? https://www.tofugu.com/japan/japanese-zombies/
M: Counterpoint: Parasite Eve. Resident Evil. The Evil Within.
R: Literally all the grody horror game franchises that people forget were developed and written by Japanese people because the characters have names like “Leon Kennedy” and “Sebastian Castellanos”
R: And yes, the Tofugu article uses Resident Evil and those games to support its theory, with the reason that they are set in the West. But that only suggests that Japanese people consider zombies a Western thing, not that Japanese people consider zombies nonthreatening if they were to exist.
M: Same with vampires - series like Castlevania also use Western/ European settings and not “Vampires in Japan '' because vampires just aren't part of our folklore.
(M: Also, realistically, these series deal with individuals who quickly perish after their bodies are used as hosts for the pathogen in question, rather than the pathogen reanimating a corpse. Although the victims are initially alive, they soon succumb to the pathogen/ parasite and their organic matter then becomes an infectious vector for the disease. It should be noted, infecting ordinary, living humans with viruses to grant them elevated powers, is not only a major violation of consent and defies all recommendations made by the Belmont Report (in addition to a number of articles in the Hague Convention w/r to the use of WMDs) and is unlikely to be approved by any reputable university’s IRB committee. This is why the Umbrella Corporation are naughty, naughty little children, and honestly, someone should have assassinated Wesker for the grant money.)
R: wwww
From what I know Vietnam didn’t have a zombie movie until 2022.
R: Do you mean a domestically produced zombie movie? Because Vietnamese people have most certainly had access to zombie movies for a long time. The Hong Kong film Mr. Vampire (1985) was a gigantic hit in Southeast Asia; you can find a gazillion copies of this movie online with Viet subs, with people commenting on how nostalgic this movie is or how they loved it as a kid.
M: “Didn’t have a [domestic] zombie movie” is not necessarily the same thing as “Would not have made one if the opportunity had arisen.” None of us here are personifications of the Vietnamese film industry, I think it’s safe to say we couldn’t know. Correlation is not causation. It’s important to do your research thoroughly, and not use minor facts to craft a narrative based on your own assumptions.
(R: …Also, I did find a 2017 music video for “Game Over” by the Vietnamese idol Thanh Duy which features… a zombie apocalypse.)
(R: The MV has a very campy horror aesthetic and zombie backup dancers (which I love, everyone please watch this lol). But the scenes at the beginning and end where people are biting their fingers watching a threatening news report clearly establish that the zombies are considered a threat.)
So at one point, she laughs about the idea and remarks how ridiculous it is to think zombies could end the world. What I’m struggling with are other ways to show her attitude on the issue because I’d assume most non-Japanese readers wouldn’t get why she thinks like that. Are there any other ways to show why she thinks this way, especially ones that might resonate more with a Japanese reader?
R: The problem is this does not resonate in the first place. Your line of thinking is too Sapir-Whorf-adjacent. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, otherwise known as linguistic relativity theory, claims that language shapes cognition—that you can’t conceive of something if you can’t express it in your language. This is a very weak theory that you can easily bring evidence against: think of the last time you felt an emotion you had a hard time putting into words; just because you didn’t have the language for it doesn’t mean that you didn’t feel it, nor does it mean that you won’t be able to understand or recognize it if you feel it again. Similarly, it’s not a sound assumption to say that if some kind of subject matter does not exist in a culture, then people of that culture couldn't possibly conceive of it. This excerpt from linguist Laura Bailey sums it up quite well.
M: Just because ghosts may be more culturally relevant doesn’t mean that zombies (or vampires, or whatever) are nonexistent in a Japanese or Vietnamese person’s imagination when it comes to horror and disaster.
R: Really, if anything, Japanese people are much more attuned to how easily a society’s infrastructure can be destroyed by a disruptive force without adequate preparation. Japan is natural disaster central. A Japanese person would know better than anyone that if you aren’t prepared for a zombie epidemic—yeah it’s gonna be bad.
M: Earthquakes, tsunami, typhoon, floods: Japan has robust disaster infrastructure out of necessity. 防災 or bousai, meaning disaster preparedness is a common part of daily life, including drills at workplaces, schools, and community organizations. Local government and community agencies are always looking for ways to make disaster and pandemic preparedness relevant to the public.
M: Might “zombie apocalypse prep as a proxy for disaster prep” be humorous in an ironic, self-deprecating way? Sure, but it’s not like Japanese people are innately different from non-Japanese people. Rather, by being a relatively well-off country practiced at disaster preparation with more experience than most parts of the world with many different types of disasters (and the accompanying infrastructure), it likely would seem more odd to most Japanese people within Japan to not handle a zombie apocalypse rather like might one handle a combination of a WMD/ chemical disaster+pandemic+civil unrest (all of which at least some part of Japan has experienced). Enjoy this very long, slightly dry video on COVID-19 safety procedures and preparedness using the framing device of surviving a zombie apocalypse.
M: Living in Los Angeles, I’ve often experienced similar tactics. We do a fair amount of advance and rehearsed disaster prep here as well. In elementary school, the first and last days of class were always for packing and unpacking home-made disaster packs, and “zombie apocalypse” simulations have been around since I was in middle school for all kinds of drills, including active shooter drills, like the one shown in this LAT article. The line between “prepper” and “well prepared” really comes down to degree of anxiety and zeal. So, it wouldn’t be just Japanese people who might not be able to resonate with your scene. The same could be said for anyone who lives somewhere with a robust disaster prevention culture.
M: A zombie apocalypse is not “real” in the sense of being a tangible threat that the majority of the world lives in fear of waking up to (At least, for the mental health of most people, I hope so). Rather, zombie apocalypse narratives are compelling to people because of the feelings of vague, existential dread they provoke: of isolation, paranoia, dwindling resources, and a definite end to everything familiar. I encourage you to stop thinking of the way Japanese people and non-Japanese people think about vague, existential dread as incomprehensible to each other. What would you think about zombies if they actually had a chance of existing in your world? That’s probably how most Japanese people would feel about them, too.
its great how second generation irish learners think speaking irish gives them a worldview that english doesn't because 1. they dont use the adjective "to be"; they say, for example, "sadness is on me" (rather than "i am sad") or "shame is on him"; 2. they dont use the adjective "to have"; they say, for example, "that shop is with her" (rather than "she owns that shop"); and 3. they conceive of their place names differently and thus the landscape has a hidden layer of meaning that the english place names have corrupted.
the perceived different worldview is exclusive to second language irish learned and the native irish learners do not perceive of their language to be granting them a peephole into a wonderful and magical world
Zenker, Olaf. 2014. Linguistic Relativity and Dialectal Idiomatization: Language Acquisition in the Irish Language Revival of Northern Ireland. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 24(1):63-83.
Inuit languages really do have many words for snow, linguists found—and other languages have conceptual specialties, too, potentially revealing what a culture values
The way this article bills itself is a bit of red herring/straw man. Nobody ever denied that cultures could have specialized areas of interest that were reflected in their vocabularies. Of course they do. The hoax was that “Eskimo” had a such a preposterous number of words for snow, because it doesn’t.
The philosophy of natural language is a branch of philosophy that explores the nature, origins, and use of language as it is naturally spoken and understood by human beings. It involves the study of how language functions in communication, the relationship between language and thought, the structure and meaning of linguistic expressions, and the role of context in understanding meaning. This field intersects with linguistics, cognitive science, logic, and semiotics, aiming to understand both the abstract properties of language and its practical use in everyday life.
Key Concepts in the Philosophy of Natural Language:
Meaning and Reference:
Semantics: One of the central concerns of the philosophy of natural language is the study of meaning, known as semantics. Philosophers explore how words and sentences convey meaning, how meaning is structured, and how language relates to the world.
Reference: Reference is the relationship between linguistic expressions and the objects or entities they refer to in the world. Philosophers like Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam have contributed to understanding how names, descriptions, and other expressions refer to things in the world.
Pragmatics:
Context and Meaning: Pragmatics deals with how context influences the interpretation of language. It examines how speakers use language in different contexts and how listeners infer meaning based on context, intentions, and social norms.
Speech Acts: Philosophers such as J.L. Austin and John Searle have explored how utterances can do more than convey information—they can perform actions, such as making promises, giving orders, or asking questions.
Syntax and Grammar:
Structure of Language: Syntax is the study of the rules and principles that govern the structure of sentences in natural languages. Philosophers and linguists investigate how words are combined to form meaningful sentences and how these structures relate to meaning.
Universal Grammar: The concept of universal grammar, proposed by Noam Chomsky, suggests that the ability to acquire language is innate to humans and that there are underlying grammatical principles common to all languages.
Language and Thought:
Linguistic Relativity: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis suggests that the structure of a language influences how its speakers perceive and think about the world. Philosophers debate the extent to which language shapes thought and whether different languages lead to different cognitive processes.
Conceptual Frameworks: Language is often seen as providing the conceptual framework through which we interpret the world. Philosophers examine how language structures our understanding of reality and whether it limits or expands our cognitive abilities.
Philosophy of Meaning:
Theories of Meaning: Various theories of meaning have been proposed in the philosophy of language, including:
Descriptivist Theories: These suggest that the meaning of a word or phrase is equivalent to a description associated with it.
Causal Theories: These argue that meaning is determined by a causal relationship between words and the things they refer to.
Use Theories: Inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein, these theories claim that the meaning of a word is determined by its use in the language.
Language and Reality:
Metaphysical Implications: Philosophers explore how language relates to reality, including how linguistic structures might reflect or distort our understanding of the world. This involves questions about whether language mirrors reality or if it plays a role in constructing our experience of reality.
Ontology of Language: This concerns the nature of the entities that linguistic expressions refer to, such as whether abstract objects (like numbers or properties) exist independently of language.
Communication and Interpretation:
Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, particularly of texts. Philosophers in this tradition, such as Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, explore how understanding is achieved in communication and how meaning is negotiated between speakers and listeners.
Ambiguity and Vagueness: Natural language often contains ambiguity and vagueness, where words or sentences can have multiple interpretations. Philosophers study how these features affect communication and understanding.
Language and Social Interaction:
Language as a Social Phenomenon: Language is inherently social, and its use is governed by social norms and conventions. Philosophers study how language functions in social contexts, how power dynamics influence language, and how language can both reflect and shape social structures.
Language Games: Wittgenstein introduced the concept of "language games" to describe how the meaning of words is tied to their use in specific forms of life or social practices. This concept emphasizes the diversity of language use and the idea that meaning is context-dependent.
Evolution of Language:
Origins of Language: Philosophers and cognitive scientists explore how language evolved in humans, the relationship between language and other forms of communication in animals, and the cognitive capacities required for language.
Language Change: Natural languages are dynamic and constantly evolving. Philosophers study how languages change over time and what this reveals about the nature of meaning and communication.
Critique of Language:
Deconstruction: Philosophers like Jacques Derrida have critiqued traditional notions of language and meaning, arguing that language is inherently unstable and that meaning is always deferred, never fully present or fixed.
Critical Theory: In the tradition of critical theory, philosophers analyze how language can perpetuate power structures, ideologies, and social inequalities, and how it can be used to resist and challenge these forces.
The philosophy of natural language offers a rich and complex exploration of how language functions, how it relates to thought and reality, and how it shapes human interaction and understanding. By examining the nature of meaning, reference, context, and the social dimensions of language, philosophers aim to uncover the fundamental principles that govern linguistic communication and the role of language in human life.
Recently, I’ve noticed that while watching Japanese comedy in Japanese, I’ve started laughing at the ツッコミ, when before I would just laugh at the ボケ, or not laugh at all. I used to complain to my Japanese partner that I thought ツッコミ was unnecessary. So what changed? Why have I started laughing at it?
On QI, when asked if he came to a theory about the nature of jokes while writing his book The Naked Jape, Jimmy Carr said,
“There’s all these different theories from around the world, and they’re all pretty much nonsense. They all work in exactly the same way though. All jokes are sort of two stories. So the first story makes you make an assumption, and the second story makes you realise that the assumption was wrong” — Link to video
This is backed up by other research into theories of humour and is called the Incongruous juxtaposition theory.
ツッコミ, like all jokes, works like this. The first “story” (aka the setup) is the ボケ, usually something weird or absurd. The second “story” (aka the punchline) is the ツッコミ, which points out that the weird thing is weird.
When I first saw ツッコミ on a tv show, I didn’t think it was very funny. Why not just say the absurd thing and leave it at that - the weird part is the funny part, right? I don’t need to be told it’s absurd. However, I now think it’s more complicated than that.
In the english speaking world, usually our setups are pretty normal sounding, and then the punchline is absurd. So we begin to conflate “absurd” with “punchline: laugh now”, because when you hear something absurd, that’s when you’re supposed to laugh - that’s when the laugh track plays on the sitcom; that’s the point in the anecdote when your friends start laughing; that’s when the people around you are laughing and you’re expected to laugh too. In contrast, the opposite is true for japanese jokes: the setup is absurd and the punchline is the status quo.
(I realise this is a gross oversimplification of how comedy works but bear with me)
Japanese people experience the opposite: they conflate “status quo” with “punchline: laugh now”, because that’s when they're supposed to laugh. What is “funny” is such a social question that it’s entirely dependent on culture. Funniness is a self-fulfilling prophecy - if something is considered funny, then it’s funny. Japanese people have been conditioned to find their ツッコミ punchlines funny, just like we have been conditioned to find our punchlines funny.
So, the “laugh now” signpost looks different for english speakers vs japanese speakers. Why does that make me laugh at a ツッコミ joke in Japanese but not in English? I believe it comes from where my brain starts recognising “a joke has begun”. (Side note: I think in English, we’re more likely to retroactively recognise something as a setup to a joke)
For example, let’s take the scene from Ranking of Kings I already partially discussed in my Why Are Anime Translations So Bad post.
In this scene, we’re given a setup. These orcs are harassing Despa's apprentice Bojji in a tavern, but Despa doesn’t seem like he’ll be provoked. He’s controlling himself - acting very mature. Then one of the orcs makes fun of Despa’s face, and Despa immediately punches him through a table and exclaims “You can insult my apprentice, but I won’t let you insult me!” Classic English-style punchline.
But then, Kage comes in and says “逆でしょ！” which doesn’t have a great translation but it’s something like “You've got it backwards!” As an English speaking audience, this feels unnecessary. We already laughed! Kage’s overexplaining the joke!
But when I was watching this in Japanese, I recognised Despa’s line as the setup, and unintentionally waited before laughing, because I knew the real punchline was coming after it. It was only until I was doing research for that anime translations post that I realised Kage’s punchline wasn’t funny in English at all.
All of this to say, laughter is a social and cultural behaviour and (I believe) we laugh to show others that we understood some sort of juxtaposition. That’s why people tend to laugh more at stand up comedy when they’re in the audience as opposed to watching it alone on their phone. Even when we’re alone, because those social and cultural influences are imprinted on our brains, we laugh. And language is the ultimate cultural compartmentalisation tool. When I speak Japanese, I need to be aware of cultural constructs (such as respect hierarchy) that simply do not exist in my native language (Australian English). Which means when I’m watching something in Japanese, the social and cultural influences that I subconsciously let affect my brain at that moment will be different, which leads to me finding different things funny at different times. This idea is known as linguistic relativity, or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, made famous by the fantastic film Arrival (it's also apparently quite hotly debated and misunderstood, but that's a post for another day).
To get back to my original question - What changed? Well, I think I finally managed to soak in enough subconscious cultural understanding of what to expect in a Japanese joke that now I end up laughing along with everyone else! Being in “Japanese mode” makes me subconsciously aware of different cultural norms (including comedy norms now), which means I might find a joke hilarious in Japanese, and not funny at all in English, even if it was somehow perfectly translated without losing or gaining any extra meaning. I think this is probably true for all multilingual people.
