Does the language you speak change how you think? @TomScottGo
Does the language you speak change how you think?  @TomScottGo
Uploaded November 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
No. Mostly. •
Written with Molly Ruhl and Gretchen McCulloch. Gretchen's podcast has an episode all about Arrival: lingthusiasm.com/post/157167562811/transcript-lingthusiasm-episode-3-arrival-of-the •
More Language Files: youtube.com/playlist?list=PL96C35uN7xGLDEnHuhD7CTZES3KXFnwm0

Gretchen's book BECAUSE INTERNET, all about the evolution of internet language, is available:
🇺🇸 US: amzn.to/30tLpjT
🇨🇦 CA: amzn.to/2JsTYWH
🇬🇧 UK: amzn.to/31K8eRD

(Those are affiliate links that give a commission to me or Gretchen, depending on country!)

Graphics by Willow Marler: wmad.co.uk
Audio mix by Graham Haerther and Manuel Simon at Standard Studios: haerther.net

REFERENCES:
Levinson, S.C. (2012). Forward. In Whorf, B. L. Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (J. B. Carroll, S. C. Levinson, & P. Lee, Eds.). (2nd ed.) The MIT Press.
Chiang, T. (2016). Story Of Your Life. In Stories of your life and others. essay, New York: Vintage Books.
Parry, A. (1969). There Is No Russian Word for Privacy. The Georgia Review, 23(2), 196–205. jstor.org/stable/41396556
Groskop, V. (2017). Personal distance: Why russian life has no room for privacy. The Guardian.
Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does language shape thought?: Mandarin and English speakers’ conceptions of Time. Cognitive Psychology, 43(1), 1–22. doi:10.1006/cogp.2001.0748
Chen J. Y. (2007). Do Chinese and English speakers think about time differently? Failure of replicating Boroditsky (2001). Cognition, 104(2), 427–436. doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2006.09.012
Samuel, S., Cole, G., & Eacott, M. J. (2019). Grammatical gender and linguistic relativity: A systematic review. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 26(6), 1767–1786. doi.org/10.3758/s13423-019-01652-3
Haertlé, I. (2017). Does grammatical gender influence perception? A study of Polish and French speakers. Psychology of Language and Communication, 21(1) 386-407. doi.org/10.1515/plc-2017-0019
Mickan, A., Schiefke, M. & Stefanowitsch, A. (2014). Key is a llave is a Schlüssel: A failure to replicate an experiment from Boroditsky et al. 2003. Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association, 2(1), 39-50. doi.org/10.1515/gcla-2014-0004
Deutscher, G. (2010). Through the language glass: Why the world looks different in other languages. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company
J. C. Jackson et al. (2019) Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure, Science, vol. 366, no. 6472, pp. 1517-1522

🟥 MORE FROM TOM: tomscott.com
(you can find contact details and social links there too)
❓ LATERAL, free weekly podcast: lateralcast.com youtube.com/lateralcast
👥 THE TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES: youtube.com/techdif
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Tom Scott |

Does the language you speak change how you think?

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