The Chinese Language and The Chinese Way of

The Chinese Language &
The Chinese Way of Thinking
http://teaching.ust.hk/~huma104
HUMA 104
Division of Humanities
Introduction
Do We Lack the Ability to Hypothesize?
Introduction

Alfred Bloom’s Questions
– “If your government were to pass a law
requiring that all citizens born outside of Hong
Kong make weekly reports of their activities
to the police, how would you react?”
– “If your government had passed such a law,
how would you have reacted?”
– “subjunctive mode” (虛擬語氣)
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 3
Introduction

Present or future counterfactuals in English
– “If he could run, he would.”
– “If I were you, I’d go jump in a lake.”
– “If John were to go to the library, he would
see Mary.”
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 4
Introduction

Past counterfactuals in English
– “If John had gone to the library, he would
have met Mary.”
– “If this paper had been written in Chinese, you
might have understood it better.”
– “If she had completed it earlier, she wouldn’t
have suffered for so long.”
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 5
Introduction

More on the structure and function of
counterfactuals in English
– Counterfactuals posit a situation that has not, does not,
will not, or cannot exist.
– conditional statement expressing a hypothetical state
of affairs that is “impossible,” and it is used for
rhetorical or otherwise communicative purposes.
– “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not
have died.” (John 11:21)
– “主阿，你若早在這裏，我兄弟必不死。”
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 6
Introduction

The cognitive function of the counterfactual
structure in English Counterfactuals
– “signal entry into the counterfactual realm – to invite
the reader or listener explicitly to shunt aside reality
considerations in order to consider a state of affairs
known to be false, not for the purpose of simply
pretending, but for the express purpose of drawing
implications as to what might be or might have been
the case if that state of affairs were in fact true”
(Bloom 1981, p.14).
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 7
Introduction

The “tenseless” Chinese
– “去年我是一年級學生，今年我是二年級學生，明
年我是三年級學生。”
– “I was a freshman last year. I am a sophomore this
year. I will be a senior next year.”
– Chinese has no “distinct lexical, grammatical, or
intonational device to signal entry into the
counterfactual realm, to indicate explicitly that the
events referred to have definitely not occurred and are
being discussed for the purpose only of exploring the
might-have-been or the might-be” (Bloom 1981, p.
16).
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 8
Introduction
– “There was some rather compelling evidence
to suggest that such a lack of a distinct
linguistic device to signal counterfactual
thinking might have cognitive consequences”
(Bloom 1981:16).
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 9
Introduction

The significant cognitive consequences:
– (1) would typically do so [think
counterfactually] less directly, with a greater
investment of cognitive effort and hence less
naturally than their English-speaking
counterparts;
– (2) would not typically perceive the
distinction between counterfactual and
implicational as one of the divisions into
which their cognitive world is divided;
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 10
Introduction
– (3) might be expected typically to encounter
difficulty in extending the use of
counterfactual speech outside of concrete
situational contexts;
– (4) might be expected typically to encounter
difficulty in maintaining a counterfactual
perspective as an active point of orientation
for guiding their cognitive activities. (Bloom
1981: 22)
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 11
Introduction

Bloom’s empirical studies
– “If all circles were large and this small triangle
 were a circle, would it be large?” (115 US
students)
– “假如所有的圓圈都很大，如果這個小三角
形是一個圓圈，那麼這個三角形是不是
很大？” (173 Chinese students)
– US students: 95(83%) “Yes”
– Chinese students: 44 (25%) “Yes”
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 12
Introduction

Bloom’s empirical studies
– Bier Story
– “To what extent Chinese subjects will impose
a counterfactual interpretation on a paragraph
which express a complex abstract
counterfactual argument in the way that such
an argument is expressed when it is expressed
in Chinese” (Bloom 1981:23)
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 13
Introduction

Bloom’s empirical studies
– Subjects:




(1) English-speaking U.S. students at Swarthmore College
(the “control” group);
(2) Taiwanese college students at National Taiwan
University;
(3) Taiwanese non-students who were mostly university
graduates; and
(4) college students at Hong Kong University.
– not to show “the kind of automatic, reflexive,
virtually exceptionless counterfactual response
characteristic of Western subjects.”
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 14
Introduction

Bloom’s empirical studies
– The results:



(1)
98%
(54/55)
(2)
7%
(2/28)
(3)
6%
(5/75)
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
(4)
6%
(1/17)
Page 15
Introduction

Bloom (1981)
– The Linguistic Shaping of Thought: A Study in the
Impact of Language on Thinking in China and the
West.
– “Languages act to insure the maintenance ...of the
most complex cognitive attainments of its individual
cultures. But, ironically, these same cognitive
contributions act to separate their speakers cognitively
from speakers of other languages to create and
perpetuate significant cognitive barriers to crosslinguistic communication and understanding. (Bloom
1981, p. 86)”.
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 16
Introduction
– Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis)
– Bloom’s empirical findings have been
seriously challenged by many others (Au,
1983, 1984; Liu, 1985; Takano, 1989; Vorster
& Schuring, 1989, Kowal 1998)
– Is there any difference in counterfactual
reasoning between Chinese and English
speakers?
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 17
Introduction

Cultural Thought Patterns (Robert Kaplan)
– “Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-Cultural
Education,” in Language Learning (Kaplan
1966)
– Kaplan 1987. “Cultural thought patterns
revisited.” In U. Connor & R. B. Kaplan eds.
Writing across Languages: Analysis of L2
Texts. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 18
Introduction

Cultural Thought Patterns (Robert Kaplan)
– 5 culturo-linguist groups





“English”,
“Semitic”,
“Oriental”,
“Romance”,
“Russian”
– 5 Cultural Thought Patterns
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 19
Introduction

Cultural Thought Patterns (Robert Kaplan)
– (1) non-native writing of English violates the
native speaker’s expectations, and
– (2) each culturo-linguistic group has its own
unique paragraph order.
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 20
Introduction

Cultural Thought Patterns (Robert Kaplan)
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 21
Introduction

Cultural Thought Patterns (Robert Kaplan)
– “Every language offers to its speakers a readymade interpretation of the world.”

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
– “the different grammatical categories of
different languages invite, or even compel,
their speakers to see the world in distinctive
ways.”
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 22
Introduction

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
– “We dissect (that means, cut up) nature along lines
laid down by our native languages... We cut nature up,
organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as
we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement
to organize it in this way -- an agreement that holds
throughout our speech community and is codified in
the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of
course, an implicit and unstated one, BUT ITS
TERMS ARE ABSOLUTELY OBLIGATORY; we
cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the
organization and classification of data which
agreement decrees. (Whorf 1956: 213-214)”
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 23
Introduction

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Two Forms
– (1) The strong form (Linguistic Determinism):
The particular language people speak shapes
their cognition, namely, the way in which they
think and perceive the world.
– (2) The weak form (Linguistic Relativity):
Different languages facilitate different types of
reasoning and problem solving.
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 24
Introduction

Universalism
– Human thought is significantly similar across
all cultures.
Huma104 Chinese Lang & Way of Thinking
Page 25

Download Report