9780241626023

The Power of Languag

e Multilingualism, Self and Society

Viorica Marian

‘Sparkles

with insight’

‘An absorbing account of how language wires the brain. Full of delightful insights, this book is thoroughly researched and compulsively readable’ Kirkus Reviews

‘After reading this book, you will see and hear words differently – and feel a deeper appreciation for the sheer majesty of the human mind. (Bonus: It will also make you want to learn Swedish, Spanish, or Swahili!) Viorica Marian takes her place alongside Steven Pinker and George Lakoff as the author of an essential work about the science of language’ Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive, When and The Power of Regret

‘A uniquely original, fresh, and powerful perspective that promises to shape the scientific study of language and mind well into the future. The focus is not so much on how the mind does language as on what language does for the mind and its user, and crucially, on what the consequences are, for individuals and entire societies, of having more than one language in that mind’

Gerry Altmann, author of The Ascent of Babel

‘A highly engaging and personal journey into the superpower you didn’t know you had!’ Morten H. Christiansen, author of The Language Game

‘Whether or not you have reflected on language, whether or not you speak or think in several languages, you will learn a lot from this well-researched and well written book’ Howard Gardner, author of Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences

‘Beautifully shows all the ways that learning a second language can do so much more than simply add another way of talking; it can fortify your brain to make you sharper, wiser, more creative, and more openminded’ Michael J. Spivey, author of Who You Are ‘Viorica Marian marshals her extensive research experience, broad knowledge of science, and a personal and engaging style in telling the story of the one arguably most human cognitive faculty: language. Read it, and you’ll be better for it!’ Shimon Edelman, author of The Happiness of Pursuit

The Power of Language

Multilingualism, Self and Society

A PELICAN BOOK

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First published in the United States of America by Dutton Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 2023

First published in Great Britain by Pelican Books 2023

Published in paperback 2024 001

Text copyright © Viorica Marian, 2022

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To Aimee, Nadia and Grace, and to lovers of languages everywhere

5.2

times graph for the Flanker task: Dr Ashley Chung-Fat-Yim based on data from Yang, Yang and Lust, 2011, ‘Early Childhood Bilingualism Leads to Advances in Executive Attention: Dissociating Culture and Language’,” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 14, no. 3 (2011): 412–422, https://doi. org/10.1017/S1366728910000611.

8.1 Map of students learning three or more languages in Europe: Dr Ashley Chung-Fat-Yim and Dr Viorica Marian, based on ‘Pupils by Education Level and Number of Foreign Languages Studied,” Eurostat, 2019, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/ view/ EDUC UOE LANG 02__custom_1291971/ bookmark/table?lang=en&bookmarkId=cd6aa89824d5-476c-92d6-3e14047c93c8.

9.1

9.2

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Press, 2014).

letters shared by Greek, Latin and Cyrillic alphabets: Tilman Piesk.

‘To have another language is to possess another soul.’

Attributed to Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor

The Power of Language

Introduction – or Welcome!

Legend has it that in the ancient city of Babylon stood a tower so tall we might think of it as humanity’s first skyscraper. Historical texts confirm the tower’s existence in what is now Iraq. Biblical literature pinpoints the origin of the many languages of the world to this exact tower, the Tower of Babel, which people were building to ‘reach unto heaven’. When God came down and saw that humans were trying to reach heaven, in Genesis 11:6, God said, ‘Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.’ To stop people from reaching heaven, God scattered them around the world and created many languages for them to speak so they could not communicate with one another and could not advance in their work.

Language as the key to reaching heaven certainly asserts its power. The story of the Tower of Babel illustrates the way language can be used both to include and to exclude, to communicate and to hinder communication. Other religions, too, recognize that we must look to language to reach heights that are as great as heaven is in religious belief. The Qu’ran 14:4 reveals that religious concepts can only be conveyed to humanity when we have the language to do so: ‘And We

never sent a messenger except in the language of his people to make clear for them.’

In his essay ‘A Tranquil Star’,1 Italian writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi writes beautifully about the limits of language and how we think about the world, here in translation:

For a discussion of stars our language is inadequate and seems laughable, as if someone were trying to plow with a feather. It’s a language . . . born with us, suitable for describing objects more or less as large and as long-lasting as we are; it has our dimensions, it’s human.

He notes that new words were coined over time for sizes smaller and larger than what could be perceived with the naked eye, temperatures hotter than fire and numbers like millions and billions – concepts we previously did not know existed. Does language follow along our latest, most improved understanding of the world, or does our understanding of the world follow along our language? For confirmation that language–thought constraints exist, we can turn to modern machine-learning research. When neuroscientists at Stanford University used large sets of behavioural data to study how the brain divides the labour associated with performing cognitive tasks (like reading or decision-making),2 the computational algorithms clustered patterns of neural activity in ways that did not follow expected patterns of classification based on human language. Much like early efforts to ‘locate’ different languages in the brain revealed largely overlapping networks, the boundaries between seemingly distinct mental processes were not reflected in the brain itself. Instead, the classifications made by computational algorithms suggest the

existence of constructs for which we do not have labels (yet), a universe of stars that we are trying to plough with a feather. Even our mental constructs for words like memory and perception were not accurate descriptions of the constructs that emerged from machine learning.3 Instead, memory and perception overlapped, indicating that the vocabulary we use to refer to them and the way we think about them is still very imprecise. Memory and perception are not categorically distinct from each other in either human or artificial intelligence, despite the labels we use to differentiate them. It may well be that we do not yet have the tools to more precisely study and label both our mental states and the categories that exist in the world. The very notion that there are precise categories that exist outside of our interpretation of reality (whether they are mental states, colours or types of people) may itself be an illusion perpetuated by language. Regardless of whether there are ‘real’ categories that exist out in the world, the linguistic and mental categories we create matter. They have consequences for areas as distinct as perception, science and bigotry.

Psycholinguistics is a field that focuses on the relationship between mind and language. When I first started graduate school thirty years ago, I wanted to understand not only how multilinguals like me process language but also human cognitive and neural capacities and limits more generally. This book synthesizes my own and others’ original research on language and the mind as seen through the prism of multilingualism. I wrote this book in English, my third language, while also drawing on my knowledge of Romanian and Russian, my native and second languages, as well as on

the languages whose speakers I studied in my research, including American Sign Language, Cantonese, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Spanish, Thai Ukrainian and many others.

As a child, I would notice curious things about the languages around me, as many people who have studied another language do. Why do Russians refer to bridges as ‘he’ and see them as having masculine gender, whereas Germans refer to bridges as ‘she’ and see them as having feminine gender, while the English refer to bridges as ‘it’ with no gender whatsoever? And then there’s Romanian, my native language, with this trippy property: a bridge is masculine if there’s only one, but is feminine if there are two or more –  what does this do to people’s minds and to how they think about bridges, especially if they know multiple languages with contrasting grammatical genders for the same object?

Recent cognitive science experiments show that German speakers are more likely to perceive and describe a bridge4 as beautiful, elegant, fragile, peaceful, pretty and slender. Spanish speakers are more likely to perceive and describe the same bridge as big , dangerous , long , strong , sturdy and towering. The difference? Bridge has different grammatical gender in German and Spanish. Can you guess which is which from the adjectives used? Yes, bridge is masculine in Spanish. The jury is still out about the gender-shifting Romanian bridges. (In Romanian, many nouns that are masculine in singular form become feminine in plural form.) The extent to which the grammatical gender of inanimate objects5 influences how we think about objects bears relevance to modern debates about the use of gender pronouns and gender language more

broadly, precisely because gender pronouns are so effective at generating implicit associations that influence people’s perception of themselves and others.

The labels we use matter. Something as simple as changing the labels we use to refer to someone –  for example, instead of slaves , saying enslaved people or people who were enslaved – makes an immediate difference in how we mentally represent those we are speaking about.

Engaging with a variety of languages gives us crucial abilities that the human race will need to heal burgeoning social discord and to formulate solutions to looming global problems. If you can appreciate firsthand the utility and beauty of another language and worldview, it is not hard to imagine you are less prone to bigotry, to demonizing things or people who are different from you.

Understanding the power of language also makes you more aware when you are being manipulated by others through words, whether those others are politicians, advertisers, lawyers, co-workers or family members. People are paid a great deal of money to manipulate language in a way that makes one buy specific products, vote a particular way or render certain verdicts. When you know multiple languages, you are more attuned to how words make you feel, because you already have experience with subtle linguistic variations.

Failure to account for the differences between languages can lead to devastating results. In 1945, when Allied leaders met in Germany at the end of the Second World War, Truman, Churchill, Stalin, and Chiang Kai- shek sent the Japanese premier, Kantarō Suzuki, a declaration of surrender terms, asking that Japan surrender unconditionally. The

declaration also stated that any negative answer would elicit “prompt and utter destruction.” When reporters questioned Premier Suzuki about his reaction, he replied with the usual political fallback that he was withholding comment. The Japanese word he used, mokusatsu, derived from the word for silence, can be translated in multiple ways, from “remaining in wise inactivity” to “taking no notice” to “treating with silent contempt.” In a diplomatic failure of epochal proportions, an ill-chosen translation was interpreted in the West as a hostile response. In now-unclassified documents, the National Security Agency writes:

The word has other meanings quite different from that intended by Suzuki. Alas, international news agencies saw fit to tell the world that in the eyes of the Japanese government the ultimatum was ‘not worthy of comment.’ US officials, angered by the tone of Suzuki’s statement . . . decided on stern measures. Within ten days the decision was made to drop the atomic bomb, the bomb was dropped, and Hiroshima was leveled. 7

In another example, NASA ’s Mars Climate Orbiter burned into pieces, and hundreds of millions of dollars, years of work, and months of space travel were lost, all because someone did not convert the measurement units from the English system to the metric system.

On a lighter note, when I was a graduate student at Emory University in President Carter’s home state of Georgia, he met every year with the international students. To put us at ease, with his signature affability and sense of humour, President Carter shared a story about a speech he gave in Japan. He said

that he opened with a joke, and that immediately after the interpreter translated the joke from English to Japanese, every single person in the audience laughed. Later that day, Carter asked the interpreter why the joke elicited such an enthusiastic response. After some coaxing, the interpreter admitted that he was not sure how to translate the joke into Japanese and instead said, ‘President Carter made a joke. Everyone must laugh.’

I wish I could end my own jokes with ‘Everyone must laugh.’ Learning another language will not suddenly make you funny, or a genius, or the sexiest person alive. You will not grow a full head of hair or become a billionaire as a result – although there is, in fact, a correlation between multilingualism and income.

Here is a sample of findings from laboratories around the world on consequences of learning another language:

• In older adults, multilingualism delays Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia by four to six years and increases cognitive reserve.8

• In children, learning a second language means early understanding that the connection between objects and their names is arbitrary – you can call milk milk or leche or moloko or you can use a made-up word. Understanding that reality and the symbolic system used to denote it are not one and the same leads to more developed metalinguistic skills that lay the foundation for even more advanced metacognitive processes and higherorder reasoning.

• Across the lifespan, speaking more than one language improves performance on executive-function tasks,

making it easier to focus on what matters and ignore what is irrelevant.

• Knowing multiple languages enables people to make connections between things in ways that others do not see and results in higher scores on creativity and divergent-thinking tasks.

• Using a non-native language renders people more likely to make decisions that are more logical and of greater social benefit.

The rapidly growing global online community and the increased accessibility of travel mean that most of us will interact with people who speak other languages at some point in our lives. We will fall in love with them, become their friends, welcome them into our families, go to school with them or work with them in professional settings.

Everyone uses language. But few comprehend its power. It’s like owning something incredibly valuable and not even knowing it. Sometimes I feel like an Antiques Roadshow appraiser who reveals that the old thing you’ve had lying around in the attic for ever is a priceless treasure.

I became a psycholinguist because I love languages and I love figuring out how language and mind interact. I hope this book helps you understand the incredible capabilities you already have, gives you a glimpse into the inner workings of your mind and delivers keys to unlocking your potential in new ways.

PART ONE Self

‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.’

Ludwig Wittgenstein1

Mind Boggling

We live in a world of codes. Some are as strict as software, some as fluid as the mother tongue. Some expand like maths beyond human experience. Some are loaded with bigotry. Some are like poetry. They are all languages. These are the codes of our minds.

While you may not realize it, your mind already uses multiple codes – maths, music, spoken languages, sign languages. The human brain is built to accommodate multiple codes of communication and as we learn them, doors open to new experiences and knowledge. We come to see the world differently, and our brains are transformed as a result.

Many people continue to miss out on the benefits of learning other languages, say Spanish, Mandarin or Hindi, simply because the consequences of multilingualism are misunderstood, minimized or even politicized. But knowing multiple languages can lead to new ways of thinking that are otherwise unattainable. Just as learning maths makes it possible to do things that are otherwise unimaginable –  like building artificial intelligence, descending to the depths of the ocean or ascending to other planets –  and just as learning musical notation enables us to hear the sound of patterns composed thousands of miles away or centuries before,

learning another language opens up another way of coding reality and new ways of thinking.

If you have ever played Boggle, then there is a good chance you have been irritated at another player for turning the grid around while you were writing down words. You may have even been that person yourself, getting yelled at by the other players, all because at some point your brain made a discovery: that turning the grid changed your perspective and made you see the same letters in a different way, extract more words and raise your score.

Like a turn of the Boggle board, every new language that we know makes us extract and interpret information differently, altering how we think and feel, what we perceive and remember, the decisions we make, the ideas and insights we have and the actions we take. Viewing the game board from a new orientation activates a distinct set of neurons in your brain, and different neural networks produce new answers to the question ‘What words do I see?’ Similarly, in everyday life, the brain provides different answers depending on how the incoming input is organized by language.

A single word can convey a complex concept – like gravity, or genome, or love – by encoding large chunks of information into small communicable units, optimizing storage and learning. The concept of language as a symbolic system is a foundational cornerstone in the science of language and the mind.

But one symbolic system can only get you so far. The acquisition and use of multiple symbolic systems changes not only how our mind works but also the structure of the brain itself. The effect is more than additive, it is transformative.

It may be a surprise to learn that the majority of the world’s

population is bilingual or multilingual. More than 7,000 languages are spoken in the world today. The most common languages spoken are English and Mandarin, with over a billion speakers each, and Hindi and Spanish, with over half a billion each, followed by French, Arabic, Bengali, Russian and Portuguese. Speaking more than one language is the norm rather than the exception for the human species. Consider: Indonesian is the most spoken language in Indonesia, used by over 94 per cent of the population, but it is the primary language of only 20 per cent of the population. Javanese is the most common primary language there, but it is spoken by only 30 per cent of the population. In many countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, children grow up with two or more languages from birth and then acquire additional languages in school or as adults. The populations of countries like Luxembourg, Norway and Estonia are more than 90 per cent bilingual or multilingual. Approximately two-thirds of the entire population of Europe speak at least two languages (the European Commission estimates that a quarter speak three or more languages), and more than half of the population of Canada is bilingual. The numbers are even higher for those with an education beyond high school –  more than 80 per cent of those with some tertiary education reported knowing two or more languages in the European Union.

In many countries, multiple official languages are a matter of national policy. Canada, for example, has two official languages. Belgium has three. South Africa has nine. In India, more than twenty languages are recognized as official by the constitution, and multilingualism is the default. Globally, approximately 66 per cent of children are being raised

bilingual and, in many countries, a foreign language requirement is part of the school curriculum.

Even in the United States, where monolingualism has traditionally been the norm, the segment of the US population that knows more than one language is rapidly growing. Over one-fifth of people in the United States report speaking a language other than English at home1 (22 per cent in 2020) –  these numbers have doubled in the past forty years and continue to go up, with the estimate closer to 50 per cent in the bigger cities.

And yet, we are just beginning to understand the multilingual mind. Why? Because science has been playing Boggle without turning the board. Most research has historically focused on monolingual populations and continues to do so today, which means that our understanding of the brain and of human capacity, viewed only through the lens of singlelanguage speakers, is not only limited and incomplete but in many cases incorrect.

To focus only on monolinguals when studying the human mind is akin to how heart disease and diabetes were studied exclusively in white men under the assumption that the findings applied to everyone. We now know that heart disease manifests differently in women than in men and that sugar is metabolized differently in the Indigenous populations of North and South America. People who speak more than one language or dialect have different linguistic, cognitive and neural architectures than people who speak only one language. For too long, these differences have been seen as noise rather than as signal, as problematic rather than as the prototypical complex systems of human nature that they are.

Figure 1.2 US map showing percentage of households in each state speaking a language other than English at home