Thinking and seeing for speaking : The viewpoint preference in Swedish/Japanese monolinguals and bilinguals

Abstract: “Linguistic relativity” has been studied for a long time. Many empirical studies have been conducted on cross-linguistic differences to find support for the influence of language on thought. This study proposes viewpoint (defined as the point from which the conceptualizer sees and construes the event) as a cross-linguistic difference, and explores whether the linguistic constraint and preference of subjective/objective construal can affect one’s cognitive activity as viewpoint. As Japanese is a subjectivity-prominent language whereas Swedish is not, data elicited from monolingual adolescences (aged 12-16) in Japan and Sweden were compared. A set of tasks which consisted of non-verbal tasks (scene-visualisation) and verbal tasks (narrative of comic strips) was performed in order to elicit the participants’ viewpoints. The same set of tasks was assigned to simultaneous Swedish-Japanese bilingual adolescences in Sweden. The bilinguals took the set of non-verbal and verbal tasks twice, once in Swedish and once in Japanese. The results demonstrated a clear difference between the monolingual groups both in the non-verbal and verbal tasks. The Japanese monolinguals showed a higher preference for subjective viewpoint. The bilinguals’ viewpoint preference had a tendency to fall between that of monolinguals of both languages. This finding indicates that the bilinguals’ viewpoint preference may be influenced by both languages. This study demonstrates for the first time that the speaker’s viewpoint can be affected not only in verbal tasks but also in non-verbal tasks. The findings suggest that a language may influence the speaker’s way of construing events. It is also implied that the influences from different languages in bilinguals can be bidirectional. However, the influence does not seem to be all or nothing. Regardless of the language, one’s event construal is more or less the same. Nevertheless, the findings indicate that the linguistic subjectivity in a language tends to counteract the universal construal.