Carving the body at its joints: Does the way we speak about the body shape the way we think about it?

Simon Devylder,Misuzu Shimotori,Christoph Bracks,Poppy Siahaan

doi:10.1017/langcog.2020.13

Simon Devylder, Misuzu Shimotori + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2020.13

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Abstract

ABSTRACTLooking at the way different linguistic communities speak about a universally shared domain of experience raises questions that are central to the language sciences. How can we compare meaning across languages? What is the interaction between language, thought, and perception? Does linguistic diversity entail linguistic relativism? The literature on the naming systems of the body across languages have addressed these questions with little consensus. In the present study, we contribute to this debate with a comparison of body part terms in French, Indonesian, and Japanese. Using an updated version of the body coloring task, we observed both diversity and cross-linguistically shared patterns. Importantly, we also observed that speakers of languages which violate the wrist/ankle joint boundary rule do not collapse the distinction in thought. This key finding goes against the conflation of language and thought and leads us to conclude that linguistic diversity does not entail linguistic relativism. Methodologically, we advocate for the use of a culturally neutral etic space as a necessary tool in semantic typology. Theoretically, we propose that language is a multilevel phenomenon, which results from the interaction of non-linguistic and cross-culturally shared embodied motivations, context-specific situated language use, and culturally specific sedimented linguistic conventions.

Highlights

Concepts must carve nature at its joints, Socrates preached (Plato, 265e)
We address RQ2 by asking our dataset if there are body part terms that collapse the wrist/ankle boundaries and terms that mark the distinction without being hierarchically dependent of one another in French (FRE), Indonesian (IND), and Japanese (JPN)
We first report the semantic extensions of this list of body part terms within language groups (3.1) before comparing them across languages (3.2)

Summary

Introduction

Concepts must carve nature at its joints, Socrates preached (Plato, 265e). Does the maxim apply for the categorization of the body in perception, thought, and language? The sensorial reality of perceptual boundaries in the segmentation of the body at its joints has been evidenced by studies in cognitive neuroscience (Shen, Smyk, Meltzoff, & Marshall, 2018) and in behavioral psychology (e.g., de Vignemont, Majid, Jola, & Haggard, 2009; Knight, Cowie, & Bremner, 2017; Knight, Longo, & Bremner, 2014), which show that joints, such as the wrist, have a category boundary effect on the perception of the body. Brown (1976) and Andersen (1978) notoriously claimed that the segmentation of the body lexicon is motivated by universal principles like shape, size, or visual discontinuities, and that body part terms are the linguistic labels of the perceptually predetermined conceptual parts. Brown (1976) and Andersen (1978) notoriously claimed that the segmentation of the body lexicon is motivated by universal principles like shape, size, or visual discontinuities, and that body part terms are the linguistic labels of the perceptually predetermined conceptual parts. ‘From perception to language via conceptual thought’ sounds like a path upon which many psychologists, linguists, and anthropologists would be ready to embark. That path would naturally take us to the following syllogism: the same type of perceptual system is shared by all human beings, semantic boundaries come from perceptual and conceptual boundaries, all languages segment the body according to the same universal rules.

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