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Do Chinese and English speakers think differently? While the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis the idea that language determines thought has long been discredited, this book offers a more nuanced perspective on whether linguistic differences between Chinese and English influence how native speakers perceive the world. Bringing together a multidisciplinary collection of papers from fields such as philosophy, translation studies, language acquisition, and psycholinguistics, this volume explores the complex interplay between language and thought in these two languages. It will serve as a valuable reference for sinologists, linguists, and scholars of Asian studies alike.
List of contents
The Process of Writing in English and Chinese Reflections on Writing Thinking in Two Languages.- Writing about Feelings Metaphorically in English and Chinese.- The Semantics of Abstraction in Chinese and English: Evidence for Cognitive Universals.- Counterfactual Thinking in Chinese and English: On the False Dichotomy of Relativity and Universality.- Chinese as a Verb-Oriented Language: Evidence from the Emergence of Verb-Oriented Children.- Path vs Law Metaphors in Thinking About Thought.- Are there Untranslatable Syntactic Constructions Implications for Thinking in Chinese vs Thinking in English.- You See the Peak, I See the Mountain: Chinese Resultative Verb Complements and Corresponding Expressions in English.- Syntactic Complexity and Dependency in Translational Thinking.- Re-examining the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis with Regards to Chinese.- Chinese Perfective Special Function in a Language without Tense.
About the author
David Moser holds a Master’s and a Ph.D. in Chinese Studies from the University of Michigan, with a major in Chinese Linguistics and Philosophy. He has been based in Beijing for over 35 years and has been active in academic and media circles. Moser was a visiting scholar at Peking University from 1987-89, and a visiting professor for five years at the Beijing Foreign Studies University (北京外国语大学), where he taught courses in Translation Theory, Psycholinguistics, and Cross-Cultural Communication. For ten years he was Academic Director at Beijing CET Chinese Studies, an overseas study program for U.S. college students, where he also taught courses in Chinese history and politics. From 2017-2019 he was the Associate Dean of the Yenching Academy at Peking University, a two-year Master’s program. He is currently a professor at the College of International Culture at Beijing Capital Normal University, where he teaches linguistics. Moser is author of the book A Billion Voices: China's Search for a Common Language, published by Penguin.
Summary
Do Chinese and English speakers think differently? While the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis — the idea that language determines thought — has long been discredited, this book offers a more nuanced perspective on whether linguistic differences between Chinese and English influence how native speakers perceive the world. Bringing together a multidisciplinary collection of papers from fields such as philosophy, translation studies, language acquisition, and psycholinguistics, this volume explores the complex interplay between language and thought in these two languages. It will serve as a valuable reference for sinologists, linguists, and scholars of Asian studies alike.
