Who dunnit? The not-so-insignificant quirks of language

by Lena Groeger

When it comes to cognitive processes like memory, judgment and decision-making, humans are subject to all sorts of biases and seemingly trivial influences. Now, add one more to that list: peculiar habits of language.

Several studies in the past year have hinted at the many subtle ways in which the language you speak can play a role in how you remember events, make judgments of blame and responsibility, and dole out punishment. Specifically, psychologists and linguists have looked at how different languages construct agency, and the implications that follow.

First, let’s take a look at how speakers of different languages actually describe actions and outcomes in which an “agent” is involved. English speakers typically use agentive expressions to describe accidents: “I broke the vase.” Non-agentive expressions, like “mistakes were made” often sound evasive. Spanish speakers, on the other hand, typically describe those same accidents as passive occurrences: “se me rompió el florero,” or translated literally: “the vase broke itself to me.” Spanish or English speakers are clearly not locked into only one way of saying things, but these general patterns of language often make certain expressions sound more natural.

To demonstrate these patterns, psychologists Lera Boroditsky and Caitlin Fausey had English and Spanish speakers watch videos of various events in which a man interacts with an object. In some cases, the event is clearly intentional — he picks up a pencil, deliberately snaps it in half, and then smiles contentedly. In other cases, it is clearly an accident — he is in the midst of writing when the pencil breaks and he throws his hands up in surprise. After watching these videos, subjects were asked to describe what had just happened.

When describing intentional events, English and Spanish speakers used agentive expressions like “he broke the pencil” equally. But when describing accidental events, English speakers used agentive expressions much more often than Spanish speakers. So an accidental event would be described in English as “he popped the balloon,” but in Spanish as “the balloon popped.” Same event, different description, based entirely on the language of the subject.

Mere description is one thing — memory is quite another. To test whether language would play a role in how well subjects could remember agents, Boroditsky conducted a second study. She had subjects watch videos of events featuring an actor in a blue shirt or a different actor in a yellow shirt. Later, they saw the same event performed by a third actor, and had to recall who (blue or yellow) had performed the original. English and Spanish speakers remembered who performed the intentional events equally well, but not so with the accidental events. In those cases, Spanish speakers had a much harder time remembering who did it. Spanish speakers didn’t have worse memory overall — the discrepancy only showed up with accidental events. In other words, memories about who did what seem to be influenced by how much emphasis a language places on the who.

In both the previous examples, subjects produced their own descriptions of events. But what happens, as it often does in the real world, when those descriptions are provided by others? A few studies suggest that descriptions can have a profound influence on another cognitive process in which agency is of utmost importance: judgments of guilt or blame.

Remember the Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” of 2004? In an amusing study, subjects (all English speakers this time) read one of two versions of a description of the event, containing either the phrase “he tore the bodice” or “the bodice tore.” People who read the first version blamed Timberlake more and fined him 53% more heavily than those who read the second version. This was true even when, in addition to reading a written description, subjects watched a video of the incident. In other words, even after witnessing the tearing with their own eyes, subjects’ judgments of blame and punishment were dependent on the phrasing used to describe it.

Which raises an interesting question. Could it be that speakers of different languages dole out more or less severe punishments depending on the frequency of agentive expressions in their language? The research isn’t there yet, but it remains an intriguing possibility.

All of these findings are not just entertaining factoids about language use. They suggest that patterns in language might actually shape how people construe and reason about events. And that has real world consequences, particularly in legal contexts. The specific language used in police reports, legal statements, court testimony, and public discourse is full of descriptions that influence not only verdicts of guilt or innocence but also the sentencing process.

Regardless of how the nuances of language shape our judgments and memory, there is one very practical instance in which description of agency makes a huge difference: in translation. Linguist Luna Filipovic describes a case in California in which a Spanish-speaking suspect was accused of manslaughter. He told the interrogator: “se me cayó,” which translates literally: “to me it happened that she fell.” It was translated for the court as "I dropped her." Do these two phrases really mean the same thing? Would they mean the same thing to a juror? Not so clear.

What is clear is how susceptible we are to habits of expression or twists of translation. And we’re only just beginning to understand the consequences.