Through The Language Glass
Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages
by Guy Deutscher
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Through The Language Glass
Can different languages lead their speakers to different thoughts and conceptions? Does language reflect the culture of a society in any profound sense, beyond such trivia as the number of words it has for snow? For most serious scholars today, the answer to both questions is a resounding no. But in Through the Language Glass, Guy Deutscher suggests otherwise.
According to Deutscher, the dominant view among contemporary linguists is that language is primarily an instinct, i.e., that the fundamentals of language are coded in our genes and are the same across the human race. Deep down, so runs theory, all languages share the same universal grammar, the same underlying concepts, the same degree of systemic complexity. Deutscher, however, claims that cultural differences are reflected in language in profound ways and that a growing body of scientific research provides solid evidence that our mother tongue can affect how we think and how we perceive the world.
Ethnolinguists have proved, for example, that certain peoples around the globe, such as the Ovaherero of Namibia, fail to give separate names to colors that are kept distinct in other tongues, while brain studies reveal that Russian and English speakers process the border between blue and green differently. Native speakers of the language Guugu Yimithirr refer the relative positions of objects to points on the compass rather than in relation to their own bodies, rendering expressions such as “to your right” ambiguous. Meanwhile, the assigning of gender to inanimate objects in many languages other than English makes translation between them a tortuous affair.
Through the Language Glass argues that language does in fact reflect culture in ways that are anything but trivial.
Hardcover : 320 pages
Publisher: Metropolitan Books ( September 01, 2010 )
Item #: 13-168506
ISBN: 9780805081954
Product Dimensions: 6.125 x 9.25 inches
Product Weight: 20.0 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
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