English and Mandarin Chinese speakers conceive of time differently

One of the greatest questions of psycholinguistics is whether the language that one speaks determines the thoughts one can have -- this idea is known as linguistic determinism. Perhaps the most famous proponent of linguistic determinism was Benjamin Lee Whorf. In 1940, Whorf published an article entitled "Science and Linguistics." In this article, he discussed many examples of language determining thought, stating that "we dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages." Many of these examples are still taught today in introductory linguistics classes. For example, Whorf argued that Eskimos have seven words for snow, while English only has one, and therefore, Eskimos could perceive more types of snow. This has since shown to be wrong -- if you're interested in reading more on this topic, check out Geoffrey Pullum's book "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax" (see full citation below).

Linguistic determinism has largely been discredited. The few examples that were proposed were found to be invalid. For example, it was suggested that individuals from cultures with fewer color terms than English could not distinguish between other colors. (If you only have words for black, white, and red, then you can't distinguish between blue and green). This was shown to not be the case -- color labels don't determine the colors you can perceive. What remains today of Whorf's linguistic determinism is a watered-down version called linguistic relativity. According to linguistic relativity, language doesn't determine thought, but it does affect it in more subtle ways. This brings us to the actual topic of today's post: Boroditsky, Fuhrman, and McCormick's article, "Do English and Mandarin speakers think about time differently?" In this article, the authors provide evidence for linguistic relativity by showing that manipulating linguistic context can actually affect an individual's behavior.

In English, metaphors about time involve front/back spatial terms. For example, we might say "the future is in front of us" or "the past is behind us." In Mandarin Chinese, time metaphors are both horizontal and vertical. For example, Mandarin uses the word "qian" (in front of) to describe time. One might say "qian yi tian" to mean before today (literally "in front one day"). Mandarin also uses the words "xia" (down) and "shang" (up) to describe time. For example, one might say "xia ge yue" to mean next month (literally, "down month") or "shang ge yue" to mean last month (literally, "up month").

The question that the authors wondered is whether these different linguistic metaphors for time might affect how English-speakers and Mandarin-speakers think about time. To study this, Boroditsky, Fuhrman, and McCormick manipulated participants' linguistic context. They gave English and Mandarin speakers keyboards with labels for earlier and later and had them judge whether a picture occurred earlier or later than another. For example, they showed a picture of a mug filled with coffee and a picture of coffee being poured into a mug.

The participants were always given a keyboard with two keys that, they were told, signified earlier and later. What was different is that some subjects used a keyboard where the earlier and later keys were next to each other ("horizontal setup"), and some used a keyboard where the keys were above and below each other ("vertical setup"). In the vertical setup, the keyboard was perpendicular to the desktop, so that the keys were literally vertically related to one another. Furthermore, in the horizontal setup, sometimes earlier was to the left of later, and sometimes to the right. In the vertical setup, sometimes earlier was above later, and sometimes it was below.

If it is the case that language affects thought, then for English speakers, the horizontal setup in which earlier is to the right of later would be more difficult than the condition with earlier to the left of later. This is because it contradicts the typical English time metaphors. However, for the vertical setup, there would be no effect of condition because English doesn't use vertical time metaphors.

For Mandarin speakers, both the horizontal and vertical setups should show different levels of difficulty. Like the English speakers, for the horizontal setup, the condition in which earlier was to the right of later would be more difficult than the condition with earlier to the left of later. For the vertical setup, Mandarin speakers would find the condition with earlier above later easier than the opposite condition.


The graph above shows that the authors' predictions regarding the English speakers were confirmed. In the study, the authors used reaction times as measurements of how easy or difficult a task was. The faster one reacts, the easier the task is. You can see from the graph that the reaction times for the vertical setup (red) were about the same in each condition. However, participants were much slower to respond when earlier was to the right than when earlier was to the left (blue), indicating that the former was more difficult than the latter.


The above graph shows that the authors' predictions regarding the Mandarin speakers were also confirmed. You can see from the graph that, like the English speakers, Mandarin-speaking participants were much slower to respond when earlier was to the right than when earlier was to the left (blue), indicating that the former was more difficult than the latter. But in addition, in the vertical setup, participants were also much slower to respond when earlier was down, than when it was up (red).

Together, these results show that time metaphors actually influence the way people conceive of time. They provide support for linguistic relativism, though not full-fledged linguistic determinism.

Boroditsky, L., Fuhrman, O., & McCormick, K. (2010). Do English and Mandarin speakers think about time differently? Cognition, doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.09.010.

Pullum, G.K. (1991). The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax and other irreverent essays on the study of language. University of Chicago Press.

Whorf, B. L. (1940). Science and linguistics. Technology Review, 42(6), 229-31, 247-8.