BornCurious

Language and Thought around the World, Part 1

Nov 8, 2023

Asifa Majid, a cognitive science professor at Oxford, explores the fascinating relationship between language, culture, and cognition. She discusses the urgent need to preserve linguistic diversity, emphasizing that losing a language can be as severe as losing a species. The conversation dives into how language shapes our thoughts and perceptions, particularly regarding color categorization in infants. Majid also touches on how multilingualism enhances cultural identities while monolingualism poses threats to communication practices. It's a thought-provoking dialogue on the essence of language in shaping our minds.

25:58

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Episode guests

Asifa Majid

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Quick takeaways

Language not only serves as a communication tool but also actively shapes how we perceive and interpret our thoughts and experiences.

The urgent need to document and preserve the world's 7,000 languages highlights their role in maintaining cultural diversity and ecological knowledge.

Deep dives

The Intersection of Language and Cognition

The relationship between language and cognition is a complex and intriguing area of study. Bilingual experiences often expose individuals to unique conceptual understandings, demonstrating that certain ideas may be difficult to articulate across languages. For instance, some concepts might be translatable but lose their original nuances in translation, highlighting the influence of language on thought. By examining cognitive patterns through different linguistic frameworks, researchers can better understand how language shapes our perceptions and experiences.

Intro

2min

Preserving Language Diversity

11min

Exploring the Connection Between Language and Thought

3min

Exploring Language's Influence on Color Perception in Infants

3min

Exploring Language, Culture, and Cognitive Science

6min

We think of language as a way to express what we think, but language can actually shape how we think. An estimated 7,000 distinct languages are spoken around the world, and many of them are unstudied or undescribed. It is estimated that there are already over 500 extinct languages. The loss of a language is no less worrisome than the loss of a species. In the first of two episodes, our hosts talk to the cognitive psychologist Asifa Majid about linguistic diversity and why we must preserve it.

This episode was recorded on June 2, 2023.

Published on November 8, 2023.

Episode Transcript

Guest

Asifa Majid is a professor of cognitive science at the University of Oxford who studies the relationship among language, culture, and mind. At Radcliffe, she worked on a book that will synthesize her wide-ranging empirical work to elucidate which aspects of cognition are fundamentally shared and which are language- or culture-specific.

Credits

Ivelisse Estrada is your cohost and the editorial lead at Harvard Radcliffe Institute (HRI), where she edits Radcliffe Magazine.

Alan Catello Grazioso is the executive producer of BornCurious and the senior multimedia manager at HRI.

Jeff Hayash is a freelance sound engineer and recordist.

Marcus Knoke is a multimedia intern at HRI, a Harvard College student, and the general manager of Harvard Radio Broadcasting.

Heather Min is your cohost and the senior manager of digital strategy at HRI.

Anna Soong is the production assistant at HRI.

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BornCurious

Language and Thought around the World, Part 1

Episode guests

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Deep dives

The Intersection of Language and Cognition

Documentation and Language Preservation

Cultural Diversity and Multilingualism

Guest

Related Content

Credits

Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts