Language, the Ultimate Psychedelic: How It Rewires Your Mind

Magic mushrooms, mescaline, ibogaine, salvia, DMT, MDA, LSD, and MDMA are to languages what a rowboat is to a Boeing 777.

Look, I don’t mind rowboats. They're great fun, but the 777 ensures trips that shape our world. Whereas rowboats function best with a small number of close friends, 777s give you a chance to communicate with people across the—

I'm dropping this analogy before I start writing about planes. The point is language changes the way we think. And I can already see the culture war-obsessed swooping in and arguing about whether or not using words like "banned" vs "blacklisted" or "manhole" vs "utility hole" can change anything.

(BTW, this entire time I thought manhole referred to a male anus, but anyway, I digress.) This article is not about whether PC language can change how people think and behave. I started this newsletter with pieces like How to Understand Culture and WEIRD People, Japanese Food for Thought, and The Quick Culture Guide for Global Business, but lately, I've gotten hung up on politics. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to create a better future, but for the rest of the article, I'm keeping politics out of it.

The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis: Beyond Wordplay

The Whorfian (or linguistic relativity) hypothesis has two versions. The strongest version is that we are unable to do much thinking on a topic if we don't have the relevant words available to us. This hypothesis has been almost universally rejected. For example, pre-linguistic infants and toddlers show evidence for quite complex thinking in the absence of language (Heine, 2020). They can notice breaks in patterns, put colours and shapes in groups, and figure out when someone needs help.

The other version is that language affects how we think, and although it's debated when it comes to woke— No, no, shut up, Nolan. You promised you wouldn't.

*Although debated, there's evidence that languages affect how we see, smell, perceive time, and assert ourselves.

How Language Shapes Our Senses and Perception

Colour Perception Across Cultures

We can see the influence of language on colour perception in an experiment conducted with English-speaking participants and Berinmo speakers from Papua New Guinea (Winawer et al., 2007). Participants were asked to differentiate between various shades of blue and green. They had all these chips with different hues of blues and greens, and when asked what was more green or blue compared to the target chip, English speakers had different answers than the Berinmo, even though the chips were equally distant in colour.

The results showed that English speakers grouped colours differently than Berinmo speakers due to the differences in colour terminology between the languages. This finding suggests that culture-specific linguistic categories can significantly impact an individual's colour perception.

If you're interested in the debate on how language influences cultural perception, search Why The Ancient Greeks Couldn't See Blue. But I recommend finishing the article first.

Smell Perception and Language

Another aspect of sensory perception impacted by language is how smells are described. I know a richer vocabulary allows you to detect smells better. For instance, frequent gym-goers who fall for Joe Rogan's supplement advertisements (like myself) can distinguish between a whey protein isolate fart, hemp protein toots, rice protein air biscuits, soy protein gas, and pea protein isolate butt trumpets. The hardcore can even tell who is a vegetarian, vegan, lactose intolerant, or gluten intolerant. However, this is simply observational data, and I have yet to receive funding to conduct double-blind procedures.

However, there is proof that language affects how well you can smell. Jahai speakers from northern Peninsular Malaysia and southernmost Thailand had much more consensus amongst each other when describing smells than American English speakers. Americans couldn't agree at all. But Americans did agree more when describing colours (Majid & Burenhult, 2014). This superiority in odour description may be attributed to the specific terms used in their language that cover a broader range of scents than their English-speaking counterparts.

This got me thinking. Since smells are one of the primary triggers for our early memories, would we benefit from spending more time describing smells? Would it help us to remember past events and deal with trauma tucked away in our subconscious?

Time Perception Across Cultures

Boroditsky et al. (2011) found significant differences in time representation between English speakers who perceive time as going from left to right and Australian Indigenous peoples who perceive time as going from east to west. The same study also investigated people's responses to rescheduling a meeting. The question of how we see time moving through us or us moving through time is influenced by linguistic factors, with some thinking more in a time-moving perspective while others adopt an ego-moving perspective.

However, English speakers are split down the middle. If I ask you, "Wednesday's noon meeting has been moved forward by two hours. What time do you think it is?"

Some say 10 AM, and some say 2 PM. 10 AM equals the time-moving perspective, and 2 PM means the ego-moving perspective. In other words, do you see time moving through you, or are you moving through time?

People also switch their perspectives depending on the event. If we're looking forward to something, we might use the ego-moving perspective, but if we are dreading something, it might be the time-moving perspective.

So, if you replace "meeting" with "wedding" or "anniversary," you might discover your partner's subconscious feelings. Full disclosure: I am not a marriage counsellor.

Alright, back to info that won't cause any separations.

People who think differently about space are also likely to think differently about time. For example, Boroditsky and her colleague Alice Gaby gave Kuuk Thaayorre speakers sets of pictures that showed temporal progressions—a man aging, a crocodile growing, a banana being eaten. They then asked them to arrange the shuffled photographs on the ground to indicate the correct temporal order (Boroditsky, n.d.).

They tested each person twice, and each time they faced different cardinal directions. English speakers given this task arranged the cards so that time proceeded from left to right, whereas Hebrew speakers tended to lay out the cards from right to left. This shows that writing direction in a language influences how we organize time.

The Kuuk Thaayorre, however, rarely arranged the cards from left to right or right to left. They placed them from east to west. That is when they were seated facing south, the cards went left to right. When they faced north, the cards went from right to left. When they met east, the cards came toward the body, and so on. The crazy thing is that the experimenters never told anyone which direction they were facing—the Kuuk Thaayorre already knew and spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time.

Boroditsky (2001) also investigated the differences in the conceptions of time between Mandarin and English speakers. The study found that Mandarin speakers think about time vertically, associating earlier events with being "up" and later events with being "down." In contrast, English speakers conceptualize time horizontally, associating events in the past as being "behind" them and those in the future as being "ahead."

If any bilingual people are reading this, I'd love to know if you conceptualize time differently depending on your language. I haven’t noticed a difference in Flemish, English, or Spanish.

Linguistic Relativity and Perceptions of Agency

The concept of linguistic relativity also extends to perceptions of agency and responsibility. As anyone who ever took a writing or ESL class knows, active voice is typically preferred over passive voice, which often puts blame on the subject (Boroditsky, 2011). However, the passive voice is frequently used in Spanish without the same negative connotation. This difference between languages can lead to different perceptions of agency among their speakers.

Boroditsky and her student Caitlin M. Fausey found that such linguistic differences influence how people construe what happened and have consequences for eyewitness memory. In their studies published in 2010, English, Spanish and Japanese speakers watched videos of two guys popping balloons, breaking eggs and spilling drinks intentionally or accidentally (Boroditsky, n.d.). Later they gave them a surprise memory test. For each event they had witnessed, they had to say which guy did it to replicate a police line-up.

Another group of English, Spanish and Japanese speakers described the same events. When the experimenters looked at the memory data, they found the exact differences in eyewitness memory predicted by patterns in language. Speakers of all three languages described intentional events in active voice, saying things such as "He broke the eggs," and all three groups remembered who did these deliberate actions equally well.

However, when it came to accidents, Spanish and Japanese speakers were less likely to describe the accidents in active voice than English speakers. They correspondingly remembered who did it less well than English speakers did. This was not because they had poorer memory overall—they remembered the agents of intentional events (for which their languages would naturally mention the agent) just as well as English speakers did.

I’ve also noticed this lack of agency in the common use of the subjunctive.

Translation: Why do Spanish transport companies always use the subjunctive?

Translation: The delivery day. "Where is my package?" "We will send it to you as soon as it arrives in the warehouse."

Translation: ... 5 days later. "Why isn't my package here yet?" "As soon as we have an available truck, we will send it to you."

Translation: ... 2 weeks later. "You said that my package would arrive last week! But it's still not here." "We will send you the package as soon as we find it."

Translation: Why do Spanish transport companies always use the subjunctive? Because the package's arrival is never certain!]

Okay, that was a geeky language joke, but if you enjoy learning about the Spanish language and culture this way, check out my Errores de un Guiri page right here on Substack.

Language and Implicit Biases: A Deeper Dive

Alright, I know I said I wouldn't get political, but I can't ignore the following research about language and implicit biases.

A study by Oludamini Ogunnaike and his colleagues at Harvard and another by Shai Danziger and his colleagues at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel looked at Arabic-French bilinguals in Morocco, Spanish-English bilinguals in the U.S. and Arabic-Hebrew bilinguals in Israel to test participants' implicit biases. For example, experimenters asked Arabic Hebrew bilinguals to quickly press buttons in response to words under various conditions.

On one condition, if they saw a Jewish name like "Yair" or a positive trait like "good" or "strong," they were instructed to press "M." If they saw an Arab name like "Ahmed" or a negative trait like "mean" or "weak," they were told to press "X." In another condition, the pairing was reversed so that Jewish names and negative traits shared a response key, and Arab names and positive traits shared a response key. The researchers measured how quickly subjects responded under the two conditions.

Surprisingly, the investigators found significant shifts in these involuntary automatic biases in bilinguals depending on the language in which they were tested. For example, the Arabic Hebrew bilinguals showed more positive implicit attitudes toward Jews when tested in Hebrew than when tested in Arabic.

Why Language is the Ultimate Psychedelic

This is all interesting, but why is language the ultimate psychedelic?

The word "psychedelic" comes from the Greek words "psyche," meaning mind or soul, and "delic," meaning to manifest or reveal. Therefore, we can interpret it as "mind-revealing" or "soul-manifesting." Psychedelics alter or enhance your perception, give you new insights, and expand your consciousness. What else does that?

Language. I've also noticed that learning more languages and enriching your vocabulary dissolves the ego. When I arrived in Spain, I thought, give me a year, and I'll speak fluently. I’ve been here for three years, and after two hours of talking in Spanish, my self-esteem and any sense of self-importance vanish. My brain's so worn out from trying to connect with people that all I can do to keep from feeling down is sense my unity with the universe and connect with nature. Again, language is the ultimate psychedelic.

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Works Cited

• Boroditsky, L. (2001, August). Does Language Shape Thought?: Mandarin and English Speakers' Conceptions of Time. Cognitive Psychology, 43(1), 1–22.https://doi.org/10.1006/cogp.2001.0748
• Boroditsky, L. (n.d.). How Language Shapes Thought. Scientific American.https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0211-62
• Boroditsky, L., Fuhrman, O., & McCormick, K. (2011, January). Do English and Mandarin speakers think about time differently? Cognition, 118(1), 123–129.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2010.09.010
• Winawer, J., Witthoft, N., Frank, M. C., Wu, L., Wade, A. R., & Boroditsky, L. (2007, May 8). Russian blues reveal the effects of language on colour discrimination. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(19), 7780–7785.https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0701644104
• Boroditsky, L. (2011, February). How Language Shapes Thought. Scientific American, 304(2), 62–65.https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0211-62
• Heine, S. J. (2020). Cultural Psychology: Fourth International Student Edition. W.W. Norton & Company.
• Majid, A., Gaby, A., & Boroditsky, L. (2013). Time in terms of space. Frontiers in Psychology, 4.https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00554