Linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, purports that language shapes thoughts; that the language one uses can have an effect on one’s habitual thinking (Boroditsky,2001). In her article “Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English Speakers’ Conception of Time (2001), Boroditsky’s set out to ascertain the influence of language on thinking research. Her study focussed on the aspect of time in English and Mandarin speakers; investigating if the differences in talking about time results in how these two groups of speakers think about time by using an implicit measure of reaction time (RT). She argued that because English speakers typically used horizontal-oriented spatial metaphors such as ‘forward’ or ‘back’ for temporal relations, they might grow to think about time horizontally. Conversely, because Mandarin speakers commonly used vertical terms such as 上 (shang) and 下 (xia), which means ‘up’ and ‘down’ in English; this mapping may also become habits of thoughts.
From her experiments, Boroditsky noted that Mandarin speakers relied on a ‘Mandarin’ way of thinking even when responding to English sentences. The subjects’ RT mirrored their perceived habit of thinking about time with Mandarin speakers demonstrating vertical biases even when thinking in English. Her investigations also suggested that earlier exposure to English decreases this semantic biases. Finally, her findings with English speakers briefly trained in vertical spatiotemporal metaphors indicated that it was language and not cultural differences that directs one’s way of thinking as they produced results similar to the Mandarin speakers (Boroditsky, 2001). Thus, according to Boroditsky, her findings suggest that language does have a strong influence in shaping habitual thoughts (2001), thereby supporting the linguistic relativity claim.
J Y Chen (2006) countered