by Natalie Akins
There are so many influences into how a person thinks and distinguishes the world around them. In many ways, one’s language teaches them to categorize subjects in a manner that can shift the way people perceive things. For example, the grammatical gender of a noun often affects how they perceive that object, or the differentiation their language has for things like color shifts how they group things together. But how much does this actually influence the thought process of an individual? This topic poses an interesting question surrounding perception and categorization within the art world. Has language affected the way art is made among different language speaking individuals? The first section of this paper consists of a literature review in which I debrief the topics of creativity and language and how much or little they impact the way art is made. The second portion consists of two personal interviews conducted in attempts to gain insight into the opinions of individuals speaking different languages, and how, if at all, they feel language works to achieve and influence creativity and perception. Lastly, I will include a conclusion in which I will present my overall findings regarding the correspondence between language and art, and how accrediting art entirely to things like language take away from artist’s creative process.
Has language affected the way art is made among different language speaking individuals?
Literature Review
What is creativity? The first step in delving into the topic of how language influences art, we must first understand the concept of creativity. In a blog for 99Designs, Kelly Morr gives us a broad overview of the notion. Right off the bat, Morr gives her definition of the term, saying that “Creativity is the ability to transcend traditional ways of thinking or acting, and to develop new and original ideas, methods or objects.” She categorizes creativity as a pattern of thinking and engaging different parts of the brain that allow individuals to draw and connect new understandings of their surroundings. Furthermore, Morr isn’t the only one defining creativity in this manner; in his book Human Motivation Robert E. Franken, a professor Emeritus at the University of Calgary, with a research focus on better understanding curiosity and exploratory behavior defines creativity as: “the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others” (page 396). Despite the roots of creativity and its definition varying slightly due to surroundings and culture, this definition of creativity as a means of problem solving and generating ideas is relatively universal and is the definition that I will be structuring my research around.
But how does this concept of creativity and thought relate to language? Well, many scientists and psychologists have pondered this question, and “In the past decade, cognitive scientists have begun to measure not just how people talk, but also how they think, asking whether our understanding of even such fundamental domains of experience as space, time and causality could be constructed by language” (Boroditsky). Lera Boroditsky, a professor of Cognitive science at UCSD, has especially dedicated a significant amount of time to this topic. In a 2010 article for The Wall Street Journal, Boroditsky discusses the many different domains in which language shapes thought. Throughout this article, it becomes visible that, in many ways, language has a tight hold on what certain individuals know and how they perceive the world around them; for example, “Russian speakers, who make an extra distinction between light and dark blues in their language, are better able to visually discriminate shades of blue” (Boroditsky). Russian speakers can make these distinctions due to their language and grow up knowing these multiple shades of blue, but what about speakers of languages where these distinctions aren’t in place? Due to language, they will ultimately perceive and translate things differently.
The questions and research surrounding this topic is almost endless. In a 2011 research article for Frontiers in Psychology, Lera Boroditsky continues to investigate this topic in collaboration with Edward Segel. Throughout their research, they argue that there is, in fact, a relationship between language and thought, and work to relate this phenomenon to art, showing “how the grammatical gender of nouns in an artist’s native language indeed predict the gender of personifications in art” (Segal). Through the process of analyzing images within a digital art library database, Segal and Boroditsky were able to measure the correspondence of how language affects personification in art. When looking at different images within this database, they considered patterns in language such as grammatical structure, and 75% of the time, their analysis was able to correctly predict the gender of an artist’s personification of an object or idea (Segal). Through this data, Segal and Boroditsky are able to make a statement on the relationship between language and the process of making art, saying that, “It appears that patterns in language may not only be reflected in our private mental lives, but may also become reified in the material world we create around us.”
But what are the limitations to this relationship? In his book “The Language Hoax,” linguistic John McWhorter brings up another point of view surrounding this Whorfian idea that language influences the way people think and perceive the world. Throughout his writing, he attempts to show the danger in overanalyzing this kind of data to a point of seeing people as “different” and putting them into boxes based entirely on the foundation of language. McWhorter describes language as a lens within this book, acknowledging that, as Boroditsky states, language can affect how we perceive and categorize attributes such as color. However, McWhorter states that, “Language is a lens indeed—but upon humanity much more than upon humanities” (McWhorter 19). He states that we shouldn’t use this information to stereotype and categorize select groups of individuals, and the same goes for the relationship of art and language. By categorizing artists based on their language, are we just placing them into chains, crediting their artwork to the phenomenon of language and expecting it to look a certain way?
By categorizing artists based on their language, are we just placing them into chains, crediting their artwork to the phenomenon of language and expecting it to look a certain way?
Interviews
In attempt to find the answer to this question, I conducted interviews of individuals from two different linguistic backgrounds to ask about the extent to which language plays a role in their art making and creativity processes. My first interviewee was Mathilda Martin, a sixteen-year-old native German speaker who is also well-versed in the languages of English, French, and Italian. When asked how she would portray the sun as a person, Mathilda responded that despite not knowing the exact reason why, she would most likely show this character as a female; however, she soon discovered a possible reason for this characterization, and upon hearing about Boroditsky’s research, she was shocked to find out that female is in fact, the grammatical language of the sun in her native language of German. This influence of language in her art making process runs further for Mathilda; when asked about how she has seen language influence her creativity process, she responds that: “English is a softer language that German” and that when making images, she tends to “paint things softer looking when thinking of a word in English as opposed to when I am thinking of the word in German.” But, while it is obvious that her language has influenced the way she perceives and translates the world around her, Mathilda voices her opinion that there should be a certain level of hesitancy when categorizing people based off language and explains that she agrees with McWhorter’s views on the dangers of using this type of data to make assumptions about groups of people.
…while it is obvious that her language has influenced the way she perceives and translates the world around her, Mathilda voices her opinion that there should be a certain level of hesitancy when categorizing people based off language and explains that she agrees with McWhorter’s views on the dangers of using this type of data to make assumptions about groups of people.
Additionally, I also conducted an interview with Abbigail Kirkman, a nineteen-year-old English-speaking college student at UNC Ashville. Like Mathilda, when asked about characterizing the sun, Abbigail also made a choice to gender this character aligned to the language she spoke; only this time, the character was classified as non-gendered, thus representing the lack of grammatical gender within English. When asked about her choice regarding this, she says, “it isn’t a living being, it doesn’t have a gender.” But, while she thinks the research and analyses done by Segal and Boroditsky are interesting, Abbigail disagrees, saying that she doesn’t feel language has had a big effect on her art making process. She says that “language isn’t the only thing playing a role in the way people make art” and explains that there are many other factors to consider when analyzing images in this sense and that despite speaking the same language, she still may depict something differently another artist.
She says that “language isn’t the only thing playing a role in the way people make art” and explains that there are many other factors to consider when analyzing images in this sense and that despite speaking the same language, she still may depict something differently another artist.
I learned from these interviews that, even though language has influenced people’s ability to perceive and translate and idea into art, it is not the only thing playing a role in how art is made. The concerns voiced throughout the work of the linguist John McWhorter are extremely relevant to this theory and must be considered when thinking about the relationship between language and thought.
Conclusion
Language is an extremely powerful influence in the way someone thinks and associate’s objects. In many languages, from the time a person is young, they are taught that certain things should be grouped together in certain ways, thus often leaving them with an impression of that item as being gendered male or female. However, by accrediting creative processes entirely to things like language, not only are we placing both people and art into boxes of what they can and can’t be, but to some extent, we are discrediting artists; we are telling them that their work and creativity is solely attributed to the language they speak, leaving no room to think about their personal expression or narrative within their art.
Works Cited
Boroditsky, Lera. “Lost in Translation.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 23 July 2010, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703467304575383131592767868.
Franken, Robert E. Human Motivation. Thomson/Wadsworth, 2007.
Kirkman, Abbigail. Personal Interview. 26 February 2023.
McWhorter, John H. The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language. Oxford University Press, 2016.
Martin, Mathilda. Personal Interview. 26 February 2023.
Morr, Kelly. “What Is Creativity?” 99designs, 2019,
https://99designs.com/blog/creative-thinking/what-is-creativity/.
Segel, Edward, and Lera Boroditsky. “Grammar in Art.” Frontiers, Frontiers, 24 Dec. 2010,
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00244/full.
created for LANG 120 with Ayelet Even-Nur
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