Alan: As a Spanish language teacher, I have long observed that quality of consciousness -- and human behaviors arising from that consciousness -- depend on the linguistic-semantic gestalt unconsciously constellated by one's native tongue. In the following TED Talk, Keith Chen explores a number of ways that linguistically-predicated consciousness orchestrates behavior.
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Although The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis of linguistic relativity holds less sway than it did when I studied it at the University of Toronto (in the late '60s), I still consider it an apt framework for analyzing the limits and built-in biases of language.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity***
The Money Paradox
Audio File: http://www.npr.org/2014/04/04/295356139/could-your-language-affect-your-ability-to-save-money
More From This Episode
Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode The Money Paradox.
About Keith Chen's TEDTalk
Behavioral economist Keith Chen says languages that don't have a future tense strongly correlate with higher savings.
About Keith Chen
Keith Chen is an associate professor of economics at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. His most recent research explores how people's economic choices are influenced by the language they speak. Some languages refer to the future using verb helpers like "will" and "shall," while others don't have specific verbs to refer to future actions. Chen correlated these two different language types with remarkably different rates of saving for the future. The paper was published in the American Economic Review.
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