Relativity 4-5 page essay

Ling 80c

Color, Political Correctness, and Linguistic Relativity (II)

Announcements

● Dialects quiz today and tomorrow! ● Relativity quiz Thursday and Friday! ● Grosjean reading for Wednesday! ● Papers!

Color and Language: Universalist perspective

● Some famous studies:

– Kay, P. and L. Maffi. (1999). Color appearance and the emergence and evolution of basic color lexicons. American Anthropologist, 101, 743-760.

– Berlin & Kay 1969. Basic color terms: their universality and evolution.

– Many others!

● Visible light waves come in a continuous spectrum of wavelengths/frequencies.

● But if Kay and colleagues are right, we do not divide that continuum up in arbitrary ways.

● First, there are focal colors – versions of some colors that people across different cultures choose as the ‘prototype’ of that color. – E.g., “fire-engine” red

● Second is the intriguing claim that there is a lawful relationship between the number of basic color terms a language has and which colors they denote.

● Recall from slides last time: – 2 terms: black, white (or dark and light)

– 3 terms: black, white, red

– 4 terms: black, white, red, and either green or yellow

– 5 terms: black, white, red, green, yellow

– 6 terms: black, white, red, green, yellow, blue

● Later studies find it a bit more complicated, but still patterned. Kay and Maffi (1999) claim that languages will add color terms in orders conforming with this chart:

● 83% of languages in the World Color Survey are claimed to be on this path:

● All this looks good for a universalist position. Do you see why?

Color and Language: Relativist perspective

● OK, there may be universal color foci and a universal order in which color terms are added.

● But we still know from the above that some languages distinguish basic color terms that others do not.

● Could this still on perception?

● English has basic terms for green and blue. ● Tarahumara (Mexico) has one term for both of

these. ● English speakers rate objects on opposite sides of

the blue-green divide as less similar than Tarahumara speakers.

● (Kay, P., & Kempton, W. (1984). What is the Sapir- Whorf hypothesis? American Anthropologist, 86, 65–79.)

● How did this work? ● First, we need some idea of what the “real”

distances are between similar colors. ● Kay & Kempton used results of discrimination

experiments to establish this.

● Discrimination experiment: ● Create a continuum of colors from clearly blue

to clearly green. ● Participant sees a pair of colors and responds

(normally as quickly as possible) whether they’re the same or different.

● More wrong answers for different pairs, or slower reaction time more similar colors.

● Why does this give us “real” distances between colors?

● Such discrimination experiments are thought to tap “low-level” perception, unaffected by our language’s color terms.

● Results tend to be similar whatever language you speak.

● In the next experiment, the task was for the English speakers and Tarahumara speakers to pick the “odd color out” (most different) in groups of three colors.

● There were 8 kinds of chip on a blue-green continuum: – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8

● Participants got all 56 combinations of 3.

● If a color is subjectively more different, participants will choose it as the odd one out more often.

● This is not as “low-level” a perception task. Instead of just asking whether colors are the same or different, you have to group two together.

● This is a kind of categorization.

● With this measure of difference, the Tarahumara speakers basically reproduced the distances from English speakers’ discrimination results.

● But the English speakers had a subjectively exaggerated distance between categories on either side of the blue-green divide.

●  Seems like a linguistically determined category difference comes into play when the task requires subjects to categorize.

● Another experiment:

– Siok et al. (2009). Language regions of brain are operative in color perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106.20, 8140-5.

● Subjects look at a color circle and decide whether the odd color out is on the right or on the left.

● Reaction times were measured. Note: more like a discrimination experiment.

● Participants were faster when the odd color out was from the opposite category (green vs. blue).

● Even better, this effect is greater when the stimuli are presented to the right visual field!

● Why did that happen?

● Right visual field connects to left brain hemisphere.

● Language is in the left hemisphere.

● They got similar results with an experiment using the categories “dog” and “cat”.

● In the same color study, authors got fMRI data. ● (Measures blood flow in the brain, showing

regions of brain activity.) ● When the odd color out was from the opposite

category (blue vs. green), there was a faster, stronger response in language portion of brain.

● Especially when in right visual field.

● More amazingly, this coincided with stronger effects in a part of the brain exclusively devoted to color perception.

● Evidence for language affecting even somewhat low-level perception!

● Relativist

“Political Correctness”

● “a term used to describe language, actions, or policies intended not to offend or disadvantage any particular group of people in society, and to ensure those people are adequately represented and reflected in all walks of life.” – Wikipedia, “Political Correcteness”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness (Retrieved 10/25/15)

● One way in which PC is often used is in avoiding terms viewed to be derogatory against a historically disadvantaged group

Reappropriation

● Some disadvantaged groups have attempted to reclaim these words

● The use of these terms by the group itself is hoped to remove them as a disparaging term

Linguistic Relativity

● How does linguistic relativity play a role here? ● What do you think?

A relativist argument

● Language guides our thoughts ● Because associate words like {retarded, fag,

aspie} with negative stereotypes and hateful attitudes

● Therefore using such words just reminds us of these stereotypes and attitudes

● Substituting neutral or even positive terms would avoid these connections

The anti-relativist side

● The words we use for these groups are negative because society has negative attitudes towards them

● Changing the words will not change people's ways of thought since language and thought are not connected like this

● Reappropriation: when a stigmatized group deliberately uses language that is used derogatorily against that group – Example: LGBTQ people using the words fag and

dyke to refer to each other.

● What view of linguistic relativity does this assume?

● Remember, we have some evidence for weak relativity in language

● However, some words have been dropped but have only been replaced with other terms that became stigmatized, too

● Then there's many words that have / had derogatory connotations, but people are unaware of them – Dumb

– Gyp

– Spazz

More on Gender

● Forms of address for men: – Mr.

● Forms of address for women: – Miss, Ms., Mrs.

● Many terms applied to women acquire negative connotations compared to those applied to men – Bachelor / Spinster

– Boy / Girl (consider the age range for these terms)