Humans speak to each other with an abundance of different languages, but does hearing something said in a different language change the way we view the situation? If a friend is using your computer and the computer breaks as he is using it, would you say "You broke my computer", or would you say "My computer was broken". The answer to this is depended on the language spoken by the person being asked. Most English speakers named the friend the responsible party whether or not it was actually their fault. People from Japan or Spain usually just said something like "It broke".
More videos were shown to the people where a person intentionally and accidentally broke eggs. Every time the person intentionally broke the egg people of every language remembered the person's name and described him as the egg breaker. When the eggs were broken accidentally most English speaking subjects set blame on the man anyway. Subjects speaking other languages would just say the egg broke, because it was an accident so they had no reason to remember the details of the person who broke it.
When people are told about a situation, the wording of that situation shapes the way we look at it. A study was done using the Super Bowl with the Janet Jackson flashing. Subjects were given a report on what happened and told to come up with a punishment. One of the reports said Justin Timberlake ripped the costume, but the other said the costume was ripped. It didn't matter that they had all the details and had all seen the video, the people who got the first report levied fines 50 percent higher.
Boroditsky, By Lera. "Does Language Influence Culture? - WSJ.com." Business News & Financial News -
The Wall Street Journal - WSJ.com. Web. .
I read an article about this and they gave the example that when the team we are rooting for wins we often say "we won", but when the team losses we say, "they lost". It's interesting how just changing the phrasing slightly can really change a persons enitre thought, or someone else's reaction to the statement.
ReplyDeleteThis has a lot to do with recall as well.
ReplyDeleteFor instance I completely forgot that Justin was involved with this incident.
As you mentioned, the non-English speakers would probably have a similar experience to what I've just referenced. Moving on and not caring about the trivial incidents of the past.
I think this has a lot to do with situations. When something positive happens we like to take credit for it and attach it to us, suchs as if the baseball team I chear for wins a game, I would say, "we won". If that team lost I would not want any thing to do with the team, maybe for bases of pride, or the idea that failure is not accepted in our culture, and I would say "they lost".
ReplyDeleteHumans love to blame other humans, it's just how we work. Personally I don't see this as a language problem. It's more of an ego problem. The rules of English and other languages are set and finite, however, it's how we use them that causes dilemma's such as this.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very common action for Americans. They take credit when they accomplish something but will always deny any fault. When its just an action that happen to occur when someone used it you cannot blame it breaking on them it was simply an accident. Just another thing wrong with America.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Michael, humans love to blame other humans. It is very situational with ways in which things happen, but its much easier to say "he did it" or "she broke it" I would like to see more information about this..
ReplyDeleteAs a future English teacher I find this post super interesting. I think that it may be part of the English speaking culture to lay blame on someone, while other languages leave the blame open.
ReplyDeleteCulturally America is very individualistic, we tend to work towards our own goals rather than the goals of out community, it's just a different set of priorities which i think lead to wanting to take credit for good things or place the blame on others.
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