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孔子学院
总第13期
2011
年
3
月 第
2
期
56
W
illiam Shakespeare
said that a rose by any
other name would smell
as sweet. But Dr. Lera Boroditsky,
of Stanford University, said that
Shakespeare was wrong about
roses: Roses by many other names
do not smell as sweet.
It is usually believed that language is
used to express thought. But re-
search shows that the language
one speaks can shape the way
one thinks. This question goes
back centuries; Charlemagne
proclaimed that "to have a second
language is to have a second soul."
Dr. Lera Boroditsky visited Porm-
puraaw, a remote Aboriginal communi-
ty in Australia, to study how languages af-
fect thinking. He found the indigenous languages
don't use terms like "left" and "right." Instead, you may
hear people saying: "There's an ant on your southwest
leg." About a third of the world's languages rely on
absolute directions relative to spatial consideration. In
an experiment, Dr. Boroditsky gave participants sets of
pictures that showed temporal progressions. Their job
was to arrange the shuffled photos to show the correct
莎士比亚有句名言
：“
名字本来没有意义
，
就像玫瑰
花一样
，
换个名字也照样芬芳
。”
但是
，
美国斯坦福大
学雷拉
•
波洛狄特斯基提出
，
莎士比亚对玫瑰的理解也
有偏差
：
给玫瑰花换上别的名字后
，
在人们心中它可能
不再芬芳
。
人们通常认为
，
语言是用来表达思想的
，
但是
，
研
究表明语言会对思维产生反作用
。
关于此
，
可以追溯到
几百年前
。
查理曼大帝宣称
：“
学会了第二种语言
，
就拥
有了第二个灵魂
。”
为了研究语言如何塑造思维
，
波洛狄特斯基教授对
澳大利亚土著部落
Pormpuraaw
进行探访
。
在当地土语
中
，
不使用
“
左
”
和
“
右
”，
这意味着你可能听到这样的话
：
“
你西南方的腿上有一只蚂蚁
。”
世界上约有三
分之一的语言是依靠这样的方式表述空间
的
。
波洛狄特斯基做了这样一个实验
：
让
参与者把一堆无序的照片按照时间顺序
整理好
。
结果讲英语的人会从左往右摆
好
，
讲希伯来语的人则会从右往左摆
（
希
伯来语的书写方式是从右往左
），
而
Pormpuraawa
人会
从东往西排列
。
他们表现出了超出人类能力的方向辨别
本领
。
这一巨大差异是由于语言训练形成的完全不同的
空间定义方式
。
研究表明
，
语言学习会促使新的思考方式产生
。
如果
人们学会了另外一种语言
，
那么他们也会不经意地学会一
种看待世界的新方法
。
而且
，
如果你在人们执行一种简单
的非语言性任务时去掉他们使用语言的能力
，
他们的表现
会发生戏剧性的变化
。
例如
，
在最近的研究中
，
麻省理工
学院的学生被要求数出一块儿屏幕上有多少个点
，
如果同
时完成一项非语言性的任务──比如击打乐器
，
他们表现
不错
，
但是如果让他们同时执行一项语言类任务──比如
重复新闻报导中提到的词汇
，
那么他们的表现就
会是一团糟了
。
换句话说
，
他们需要语言技能
来数数
。
语言的结构深刻地塑造了我们构建
现实世界的方式
，
并帮助我们变得头脑聪明
、
思维缜密
，
激发创新思维的产生
。
（据华尔街日报网站2011年1月4日报道）
U.S. SCIENTIST: LANGUAGE INFLUENCESTHEWAY PEOPLE SEETHEWORLD
美科学家：
语言活动激发人类思维创新
域外传真
FAX FROM OVERSEAS
temporal order. As a result, English speakers
arrange time from left to right. Hebrew speakers
do it from right to left (because Hebrew is written
from right to left). Pormpuraawans arranged time
from east to west. They perform navigational feats
scientists once thought were beyond human capa-
bilities. This is a big difference, a fundamentally dif-
ferent way of conceptualizing space, trained by language.
All this new research shows that the languages we
speak also shape the very thoughts we wish to express. If
people learn another language, they inadvertently also
learn a new way of looking at the world. And if you take
away people's ability to use language in what should
be a simple nonlinguistic task, their performance can
change dramatically. For example, in recent studies,
MIT students were shown dots on a screen and asked to
say how many there were. If they were allowed to count
normally, they did great. If they simultaneously did a
nonlinguistic task — like banging out rhythms — they
still did great. But if they did a verbal task when shown
the dots — like repeating the words spoken in a news
report — their counting fell apart. In other words, they
needed their language skills to count. The structures
that exist in our languages profoundly shape how we
construct reality, and help make us as smart and sophis-
ticated as we are.
(Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2011)