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Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

A supplemental fyi to the article...

Lera Boroditsky (who is mentioned in the SA article) gave a short TED talk about language affecting thinking. In addition to the "Russian blue" anecdote, she also talks about language usage causing heightened perceptions of cardinal directions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKK7wGAYP6k

(It's an interesting talk but I have no idea how other cognitive scientists judge her research findings.)

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Boroditsky should not be trusted. Her research is highly flawed and has many issues. And one of her most 'impactful' studies relies on data that has been 'publication forthcoming' since 2002! I'll edit/add another comment with more detail and links to some linguistic rebuttal when I'm on a computer

Please do. I was also impressed recently by her Ted talk and bookmarked some of her publications to read later.

Sure. First off, note that if you read her 2002 work about gender, it often relies on a(n in) famous "bridge study". In 2002, she mentioned it as "publication forthcoming"; 17 years later, it still hasn't been published.

But a general good overview of her statements regarding to blame, and why they fail, can be found on LanguageLog [1]. I'd also recommend searching LanguageLog, as there's other articles discussing how she often overstates the conclusions, and how the media takes it ever farther. If you're on Reddit (can't access it currently on work WiFi), search in /r/linguistics and /r/badlinguistics to find even more criticisms of it (and other Linguistic Relativity research).

[1] http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2592

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