The relation between the language and our basic senses
Have you ever thought about how the language we speak interferes with our basic senses and influences the way we experience the world around us? A growing number of studies show that language does indeed influence our perception of the information we receive, including our perception of time. Let us take a closer look.
We did not always measure time in the way that we do now. Before the industrial revolution, people mostly worked on farms, where we had fewer deadlines, meetings, and events than we have today. Because we did not measure time with a clock, we would speak about events relative to other events. For example, in the Malay language, there is a phrase pisan zapra, which roughly translates to “about the time it takes to eat a banana” [1].
Although today most cultures share the same rules of time measurement, the way we tell time is not always the same in different languages. For example, in English and some other languages, people ask – “What time is it?”, but in German and in Dutch, you would ask “How late is it?” On the other hand, in Swedish, you often hear people asking – “What’s the clock?” And the answer to the question would be, logically, “The clock is …”
In fact, there are not only differences in how we ask the time, but the language we speak also influences how we express it and how we estimate the passage of time.
Professor Panos Athanasopoulos from Lancaster University works in the field of experimental psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics and bilingual cognition [2].Together with Professor Emanuel Bylund, a linguist from Stellenbosch University and Stockholm University, he undertook research on how bilinguals perceive time depending on the linguistic context [3].
Athanasopoulos and Bylund found that, in most cases, bilinguals switch between their languages rapidly and unconsciously. However, when switching between languages, speakers tend to change the way they perceive the world around them – and hence time as well – as different languages also embody different worldviews [3].
For example, in Germanic languages, there is a tendency to talk about duration as a distance (a short break, a long wedding, etc). In English you would hear “It’s been a long time since we last saw each other”, “We’ll be in touch shortly” [4]. On the other hand, in Greek and Spanish, the passage of time is expressed as a volume or quantity; therefore, Greek and Spanish speakers perceive the passage of time as a growing volume [3]. In contrast to English, Spanish speakers would say “Hace mucho tiempo que no nos vemos” (“It’s been a lot of time since we last saw each other”) and Greek speakers would say: “θα μιλήσουμε σε λίγο” (“We’ll talk in a bit”).
In their study, Bylund and Athanasopoulos concentrated on Spanish-Swedish bilinguals. Specifically, they asked the participants to estimate how much time had passed while they were watching either a line growing longer across a screen, or a container being filled up with liquid. While watching, participants were prompted by the word for duration in their native language (duración in Spanish or tid in Swedish) [3].
The result was that the bilinguals estimated the passage of time differently depending on the language of the prompts [4]. In particular, the researchers observed that when participants received Spanish prompts, they estimated time depending on how full the containers were, therefore perceiving time as a volume. However, when prompted by the Swedish word, their time estimates were influenced by the distance the line had travelled. The participants redirected their attention from the containers to the line [3].
It leads us to the conclusion that bilingual individuals might indeed switch between temporal representations depending on language context. Athanasopoulos suggests that by learning a new language, you “suddenly become attuned to perceptual dimensions that you were not aware of before” [3]. When we start learning another language, it gradually starts to meddle with our basic senses, including our emotions and our visual perception as well as our sense of time [3]. Moreover, the more proficient we become in our second language, the more likely it is that we start behaving like native monolingual speakers [4].
Mastering more than one language and switching between different language contexts is also proven to be beneficial for our mental health, according to Athanasopoulos. After years of research, he concluded that bilinguals are more flexible thinkers. Moreover, he suggested that mentally going back and forth between different languages on a daily basis has a beneficial effect on the ability to learn and multi-task, and even has long-term benefits for mental well-being [3].
Sources:
- Chris Bailey (2016). The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy. Crown Business.
- Lancaster University. Professor Panos Athanasopoulos: Panos Athanasopoulos | Lancaster University
- Lancaster University. “Language shapes how the brain perceives time.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 2 May 2017. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170502112607.htm
- Lancaster University. Panos Athanasopoulos, Emanuel Bylund “Cognitive restructuring: Psychophysical measurement of time perception in bilinguals”: Bilingual_time_perception_manuscript.pdf (lancs.ac.uk) (p.5, 8, 11, 12)