Authors
William Langston, Richard Tillman, Max Louwerse
Publication date
2013
Journal
Revista signos
Volume
46
Issue
83
Pages
408-422
Publisher
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso
Description
The relationship between language and thought has received a great deal of attention in linguistics. An increasing amount of empirical literature now suggests that our native language can affect how we think about the world around us. The present study asked two groups of participants to read the same story and to judge the attribution of the responsibility of a character in the story who may have caused an accident. One group of participants consisted of native Spanish speakers reading a Spanish version of the text; the other group consisted of native English speakers reading an English version of the text. The results showed that the native language of the participant yielded a subtle, but significant, indicator of attribution of responsibility. This finding supports the linguistic relativity hypothesis, which states that one’s native language affects the way one conceptualizes the world.
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