The Importance of Language in Conversation

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The way that we use language affects how we think about things. How much do you either feel or need to resist the urge to say well it would be better if we spoke this way? Well, in English, time doesn't move left to right to right, left in the language itself. There is a structured particular way of using left and right in their metaphors that have come from this artifact of this perpetual left-right stream calendar. For every rule we try to invent, there's going to be exceptions, and so we keep pointing that out.

What direction does time point in? None, really, although some people might subconsciously put the past on the left and the future on the right, or the past behind themselves and the future in front, or many other possible orientations. What feels natural to you depends in large degree on the native language you speak, and how it talks about time. This is a clue to a more general phenomenon, how language shapes the way we think. Lera Boroditsky is one of the world’s experts on this phenomenon. She uses how different languages construe time and space (as well as other things) to help tease out the way our brains make sense of the world.

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Lera Boroditsky received her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Stanford University. She is currently associate professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego. She serves as Editor in Chief of the journal Frontiers in Cultural Psychology. She has been named one of 25 Visionaries changing the world by the Utne Reader, and is also a Searle Scholar, a McDonnell scholar, recipient of an NSF Career award, and an APA Distinguished Scientist lecturer.

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