From the perspective of cognitive science, Boroditsky's research is fine, but it means a lot less than it purports to. Basically, if you practice making a distinction a lot, you get good at making that distinction. The constant practice can be driven by anything. It can be that your language requires you to make that distinction, or it can be something else (unrelated to language). What's actually interesting here, ironically, is that given humans talk a lot, and most people think in language, these effects just aren't that large. If you were constantly practicing making a distinction in some way other than language, we'd expect the effects to be bigger. The fact that this happens via language seems to buffer these effects from influencing you in other ways. It's the exact opposite of the Sapir-Worf hypothesis!
That said, practicing making a distinction (even if it's only because your language requires it) makes you better at making that distinction. So there is a case to be made that saying 'firemen' instead of 'fire fighters' makes you associate this job with being male. It would also be disrespectful to refer to female fire fighters as 'firemen'. Having said *that*, this all really just isn't that big of a deal and won't make much difference in promoting a more equitable world. People on both sides should calm down about it, because it really doesn't matter that much.
The only reason language has any meaning at all is because we can connect it to something our senses have perceived. The reality, as seen by our senses, comes first; the language to describe it comes second. Trying to manipulate language to change how people see things doesn't work. They saw the thing first, and they will know that you are trying to manipulate them, and will either laugh at you or get mad at you for trying to pull one over on them.
If you want people to agree with you, make a sound argument that can persuade them on the merits.
I also find "the Jews" to be cringe-inducing. As a politically-correct-person<sup>tm</sup> in good standing, I prefer to use "people experiencing chosenness".
Can someone tell me which of the squares in the all green wheel is different (1 is highest on the right, clockwise to 12 being highest on the left). I'm a curious color-blind person... or I guess I should say "person experiencing color-blindness".
I hosted some visitors from Japan at the financial firm I worked for and when we were looking at stock market numbers on a screen they were confused because the negative numbers were shown in red (positive were white; background was black). They thought red meant up, not down. It occurred to me that their flag is the red "land of the rising sun" -- red is headed upwards. But in America we talk about "red ink" and companies being "in the red" as all downward in negative territory -- and to "see red" is of course a negative term. To them, red had nothing but positive associations.
When we went to the elevators, the big red light came on and I said "red, down." They laughed. They just couldn't view red as anything other than rising, upward, and positive.
the best example of the limits of language I can think of is the english term 'marriage' has both a religious and political meaning. For much of history the couples that could be legally married could also be religiously married in a western church. One of the challenges IMO of the gay rights movement was the limit of language. As the two types of unions stopped having the (mostly) same groups, there was no easy way to change language without one side feeling like it lost. "Civil unions" seemed like a separate but equal solution. Married hetero couples would not want to distinguish between their religious marriage and secular civil union. Marriage offended the religious who didn't support same-sex relationships because even though the state would use marriage in a secular sense, it still had implications on what the religious meaning of marriage meant.
Linguistically, how much better would it have been to have two separate terms that were in use leading up to this debate? probably a great deal. But to matt's point, how much sooner do we get gay marriage if we have these 2 terms? probably no sooner.
Generally I can agree, but I'm often contrarian--so--how about "death tax"? It seems to me the labeling, the framing has had an effect on support for estate taxes?
i think we need to differentiate a situation where there is no 'term' for something--blue--and a situation where we have a linguistic framing fight with more than one term for something. I'd imagine they have different effects. the latter primes your thinking 'death' vs 'estate' the former limits your ability to conceptualize something entirely IMO
I don’t know if proving color theory studies have been lied about means that words do not still have a significant effect on color perception. Even if we haven't experimentally probed it yet.
In addition, the logic that there is limited expiranental evidence for words affect on color theory doesnt mean that words dont affect politics
Did anyone catch the John Stewart/Andrew Sullivan conflict? I am biased and like Andrew Sullivan. A few points...can people like Stewart stop having fake “serious” discussions on race where they invite one person they know disagrees and stack the deck 3:1? How is that serious? These are very bad discussions the kind Stewart panned to get rich.
Also, I think people should give Sullivan more credit for the work he did on gay rights. This guy was in the trenches making the case before many todays DEIA peeps were even born. He’s a OG. Show a little respect!
Last point, I did learn (not from the bad cable newsy discussion Stewart led) that 82% of people originally redlined in the 1930s were white? What? Why hasn’t this come up in the NYTs articles I’ve read? I re-read one last night that said most redlined neighborhoods were black. That seems like it isn’t true. What is true is that almost all black majority neighborhoods were redlined. Redlining was about loan risks so poor neighborhoods were redlined. There seems to be some media gaslighting here.
Imagine being an 11th grader in a classroom where a discussion like this comes up. The teacher has similar views and feelings to Stewart. Even raising the questions gets you chastised. For those who say indoctrination isn’t being attempted on these issues...you’re lying to yourselves.
I thought Sullivan's criticisms of Stewart were perfectly valid (I am Dish subscriber so I've read Sullivan's take). However, he did admit that he did not bother looking at the email invite and he did get given the option to withdraw, but chose not to take it. So, it is fair to say that while Sullivan has reason to be disappointed that Stewart went full-lefty-Tucker Carlson, but he did walk himself into it.
The woman on the panel has a business where she does DiAngelo like struggle sessions with white women (no men) over dinner for something like $2,500 a pop? That’s crazy!
Someone needs to take the Effective Altruism principle’s and analysis and apply it to Black Americans. Using this, where should well off White Americans put their money? I can’t imagine it’s giving that woman $2,500 for a confession of their sins. In all seriousness, applying the principles of Effective Altruism to the black community seems like a decent idea. A lot of money is being pissed away!
Yes, the point about redlining also being used against white people is something that's pretty much ignored these days. In Portland, Maine, for example (whose black population was basically a rounding error pre-WW2), Polish, Italian, Jewish, and Irish neighborhoods got redlined: https://www.mainememory.net/artifact/105920
Wow based on their guidelines that included foreign born & lower grade populations(?), most Americans probably have blood ties to someone who met these criteria. We were all redlined. But it is probably fair to say redlining disproportionately affected Black Americans. That seems likely true in most cases.
This becomes another example of the story getting somewhat murky in that poor whites were also impacted. A thread that is a part of many of these historical narratives now often left out.
it’s really fascinating how much colloquial misinformation basically tracks back to podcasts dedicated to informing higher educated public.
My favorite recent example of this involves both Gladwell’s “Revisionist History” episode on the Toyota Sudden Acceleration crisis (which he went out of his way to blame on people accidentally freaking out and stepping on the gas pedal by mistake) and a subsequent Radio Lab episode “Bit Flip” which leaned into the the explanation that stemmed from the lawsuit that ultimately lead to Toyota’s settlement which was “bit flips” (cosmic radiation randomly striking small parts of a transistor causing the gate to open / close randomly) and early programming that for the most part did not include error correcting logic …
As far as i know, Gladwell is still holding to his contrarian take that people collectively freaked out and hit the gas pedal more than they otherwise do to this day…
"Or trace the trajectory of changes over my lifetime of this set of terms: 'bum,' 'tramp,' 'wino,' 'hobo,' 'vagrant,' 'homeless,' 'persons without housing.'”
I've seen this before and I've always found it weird that DiAngelo thinks those are evolutions of a word when the first five have all been around simultaneously for decades if not a century or more at this point and in some cases are synonyms and in other case are not and can be overlapping categories. E.g., bums and winos aren't necessarily homeless; hobos and vagrants are both homeless, but hobos travel to different communities, whereas a vagrant could hang around the same small geographic area for their whole life; etc.
Well I just learned something. I didn't realize that referring to "the Jews" rather than "the Jewish People" was now considered anti-Semitic.
When did that happen? I'll definitely refrain from using it in the future, I am just wondering what brought about the change?
From the perspective of cognitive science, Boroditsky's research is fine, but it means a lot less than it purports to. Basically, if you practice making a distinction a lot, you get good at making that distinction. The constant practice can be driven by anything. It can be that your language requires you to make that distinction, or it can be something else (unrelated to language). What's actually interesting here, ironically, is that given humans talk a lot, and most people think in language, these effects just aren't that large. If you were constantly practicing making a distinction in some way other than language, we'd expect the effects to be bigger. The fact that this happens via language seems to buffer these effects from influencing you in other ways. It's the exact opposite of the Sapir-Worf hypothesis!
That said, practicing making a distinction (even if it's only because your language requires it) makes you better at making that distinction. So there is a case to be made that saying 'firemen' instead of 'fire fighters' makes you associate this job with being male. It would also be disrespectful to refer to female fire fighters as 'firemen'. Having said *that*, this all really just isn't that big of a deal and won't make much difference in promoting a more equitable world. People on both sides should calm down about it, because it really doesn't matter that much.
The only reason language has any meaning at all is because we can connect it to something our senses have perceived. The reality, as seen by our senses, comes first; the language to describe it comes second. Trying to manipulate language to change how people see things doesn't work. They saw the thing first, and they will know that you are trying to manipulate them, and will either laugh at you or get mad at you for trying to pull one over on them.
If you want people to agree with you, make a sound argument that can persuade them on the merits.
I also find "the Jews" to be cringe-inducing. As a politically-correct-person<sup>tm</sup> in good standing, I prefer to use "people experiencing chosenness".
This comment deserved more attention
Thanks!
Can someone tell me which of the squares in the all green wheel is different (1 is highest on the right, clockwise to 12 being highest on the left). I'm a curious color-blind person... or I guess I should say "person experiencing color-blindness".
‘Progressives get very invested in “inclusionary” linguistic concepts that in practice exclude older and less-educated people.’
I think this is the real point of language use for the opposing wings of the culture war. Group formation, rather than change.
Great article - thank you.
I hosted some visitors from Japan at the financial firm I worked for and when we were looking at stock market numbers on a screen they were confused because the negative numbers were shown in red (positive were white; background was black). They thought red meant up, not down. It occurred to me that their flag is the red "land of the rising sun" -- red is headed upwards. But in America we talk about "red ink" and companies being "in the red" as all downward in negative territory -- and to "see red" is of course a negative term. To them, red had nothing but positive associations.
When we went to the elevators, the big red light came on and I said "red, down." They laughed. They just couldn't view red as anything other than rising, upward, and positive.
the best example of the limits of language I can think of is the english term 'marriage' has both a religious and political meaning. For much of history the couples that could be legally married could also be religiously married in a western church. One of the challenges IMO of the gay rights movement was the limit of language. As the two types of unions stopped having the (mostly) same groups, there was no easy way to change language without one side feeling like it lost. "Civil unions" seemed like a separate but equal solution. Married hetero couples would not want to distinguish between their religious marriage and secular civil union. Marriage offended the religious who didn't support same-sex relationships because even though the state would use marriage in a secular sense, it still had implications on what the religious meaning of marriage meant.
Linguistically, how much better would it have been to have two separate terms that were in use leading up to this debate? probably a great deal. But to matt's point, how much sooner do we get gay marriage if we have these 2 terms? probably no sooner.
Generally I can agree, but I'm often contrarian--so--how about "death tax"? It seems to me the labeling, the framing has had an effect on support for estate taxes?
i think we need to differentiate a situation where there is no 'term' for something--blue--and a situation where we have a linguistic framing fight with more than one term for something. I'd imagine they have different effects. the latter primes your thinking 'death' vs 'estate' the former limits your ability to conceptualize something entirely IMO
How prescient! Look at this example of someone making a huge semantic deal out of a real problem.
https://slate.com/technology/2022/04/managed-retreat-climate-change-language.html
Maybe one for the mailbag, but when did SLATE turn into another People magazine with zero interest in economics?
Jordan Peterson & John McWhorter talk about this subject on A podcast just released on YouTube today. It’s about 15 minutes in.
As Vincent Van Gogh wrote in his journal, "To understand blue you must first understand yellow and orange." You're on the right track, Matt.
I don’t know if proving color theory studies have been lied about means that words do not still have a significant effect on color perception. Even if we haven't experimentally probed it yet.
In addition, the logic that there is limited expiranental evidence for words affect on color theory doesnt mean that words dont affect politics
Did anyone catch the John Stewart/Andrew Sullivan conflict? I am biased and like Andrew Sullivan. A few points...can people like Stewart stop having fake “serious” discussions on race where they invite one person they know disagrees and stack the deck 3:1? How is that serious? These are very bad discussions the kind Stewart panned to get rich.
Also, I think people should give Sullivan more credit for the work he did on gay rights. This guy was in the trenches making the case before many todays DEIA peeps were even born. He’s a OG. Show a little respect!
Last point, I did learn (not from the bad cable newsy discussion Stewart led) that 82% of people originally redlined in the 1930s were white? What? Why hasn’t this come up in the NYTs articles I’ve read? I re-read one last night that said most redlined neighborhoods were black. That seems like it isn’t true. What is true is that almost all black majority neighborhoods were redlined. Redlining was about loan risks so poor neighborhoods were redlined. There seems to be some media gaslighting here.
Imagine being an 11th grader in a classroom where a discussion like this comes up. The teacher has similar views and feelings to Stewart. Even raising the questions gets you chastised. For those who say indoctrination isn’t being attempted on these issues...you’re lying to yourselves.
I thought Sullivan's criticisms of Stewart were perfectly valid (I am Dish subscriber so I've read Sullivan's take). However, he did admit that he did not bother looking at the email invite and he did get given the option to withdraw, but chose not to take it. So, it is fair to say that while Sullivan has reason to be disappointed that Stewart went full-lefty-Tucker Carlson, but he did walk himself into it.
The woman on the panel has a business where she does DiAngelo like struggle sessions with white women (no men) over dinner for something like $2,500 a pop? That’s crazy!
Someone needs to take the Effective Altruism principle’s and analysis and apply it to Black Americans. Using this, where should well off White Americans put their money? I can’t imagine it’s giving that woman $2,500 for a confession of their sins. In all seriousness, applying the principles of Effective Altruism to the black community seems like a decent idea. A lot of money is being pissed away!
Yes, the point about redlining also being used against white people is something that's pretty much ignored these days. In Portland, Maine, for example (whose black population was basically a rounding error pre-WW2), Polish, Italian, Jewish, and Irish neighborhoods got redlined: https://www.mainememory.net/artifact/105920
Wow based on their guidelines that included foreign born & lower grade populations(?), most Americans probably have blood ties to someone who met these criteria. We were all redlined. But it is probably fair to say redlining disproportionately affected Black Americans. That seems likely true in most cases.
This becomes another example of the story getting somewhat murky in that poor whites were also impacted. A thread that is a part of many of these historical narratives now often left out.
Oh..I just realized they G in OG is doing more work than I planned when I wrote it. A happy accident.
it’s really fascinating how much colloquial misinformation basically tracks back to podcasts dedicated to informing higher educated public.
My favorite recent example of this involves both Gladwell’s “Revisionist History” episode on the Toyota Sudden Acceleration crisis (which he went out of his way to blame on people accidentally freaking out and stepping on the gas pedal by mistake) and a subsequent Radio Lab episode “Bit Flip” which leaned into the the explanation that stemmed from the lawsuit that ultimately lead to Toyota’s settlement which was “bit flips” (cosmic radiation randomly striking small parts of a transistor causing the gate to open / close randomly) and early programming that for the most part did not include error correcting logic …
As far as i know, Gladwell is still holding to his contrarian take that people collectively freaked out and hit the gas pedal more than they otherwise do to this day…
"Or trace the trajectory of changes over my lifetime of this set of terms: 'bum,' 'tramp,' 'wino,' 'hobo,' 'vagrant,' 'homeless,' 'persons without housing.'”
I've seen this before and I've always found it weird that DiAngelo thinks those are evolutions of a word when the first five have all been around simultaneously for decades if not a century or more at this point and in some cases are synonyms and in other case are not and can be overlapping categories. E.g., bums and winos aren't necessarily homeless; hobos and vagrants are both homeless, but hobos travel to different communities, whereas a vagrant could hang around the same small geographic area for their whole life; etc.