According to neuroscientists who study laughter, it turns out that chuckles and giggles often aren't a response to humorthey're a response to people. It's not necessarily may I please have, but may I have, I'll have, but not can I get a. I find it just vulgar for reasons that as you can see I can't even do what I would call defending. Imagine how we would sound to them if they could hear us. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. So LOL starts out as meaning hardy-har-har (ph), but then it becomes something more abstract. BORODITSKY: And Russian is a language that has grammatical gender, and different days of the week have different genders for some reason. VEDANTAM: One of the things I found really interesting is that the evolution of words and language is constant. I'm Shankar Vedantam. We call this language Gumbuzi. edit transcripts, Improve the presence of your podcasts, e.g., self-service, If you share your Listen Notes page and at-mention. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. Growing up, I understood this word to mean for a very short time, as in John McWhorter was momentarily surprised. If you are a podcaster, the best way to manage your podcasts on Listen Notes is by claiming your Listen Notes How to Foster Perceived Partner Responsiveness: High-Quality LIstening is Key, by Guy Itzchakov, Harry Reis, and Netta Weinstein, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2021. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking foreign language). We lobby a neighbor to vote for our favored political candidate. And as you point out, it's not just that people feel that a word is being misused. They are ways of seeing the world. VEDANTAM: As someone who spends a lot of his time listening to language evolve, John hears a lot of slang. GEACONE-CRUZ: It's a Sunday afternoon, and it's raining outside. Additional Resources Book: al, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2004. And if you teach them that forks go with women, they start to think that forks are more feminine. So these speakers have internalized this idea from their language, and they believe that it's right. BORODITSKY: Well, there may not be a word for left to refer to a left leg. But if you ask bilinguals, who have learned two languages and now they know that some genders disagree across the two languages, they're much less likely to say that it's because chairs are intrinsically masculine. How big are the differences that we're talking about, and how big do you think the implications are for the way we see the world? Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. As you're going about your day, you likely interact with family, friends and coworkers. So you might say, there's an ant on your northwest leg. VEDANTAM: This episode of HIDDEN BRAIN was produced by Rhaina Cohen, Maggie Penman and Thomas Lu with help from Renee Klahr, Jenny Schmidt, Parth Shah and Chloe Connelly. Parents and peers influence our major life choices. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. And you've conducted experiments that explore how different conceptions of time in different languages shape the way we think about the world and shape the way we think about stories. So you can't see time. in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. For example, he might take a bunch of pictures of boys and girls and sort them and say, OK, this is a boy. VEDANTAM: If you're bilingual or you're learning a new language, you get what Jennifer experienced - the joy of discovering a phrase that helps you perfectly encapsulate a feeling or an experience. Now, in a lot of languages, you can't say that because unless you were crazy, and you went out looking to break your arm, and you succeeded - right? We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. Imagine this. If you still cant find the episode, try looking through our most recent shows on our homepage. So - but if I understand correctly, I would be completely at sea if I visited this aboriginal community in Australia because I have often absolutely no idea where I am or where I'm going. Read the episode transcript. If the language stayed the way it was, it would be like a pressed flower in a book or, as I say, I think it would be like some inflatable doll rather than a person. And we looked at every personification and allegory in Artstor and asked, does the language that you speak matter for how you paint death, depending on whether the word death is masculine or feminine in your language? Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Dont Know, Refusing to Apologize can have Psychological Benefits, The Effects of Conflict Types, Dimensions, and Emergent States on Group Outcomes, Social Functionalist Frameworks for Judgment and Choice: Intuitive Politicians, Theologians, and Prosecutors, Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, The Effective Negotiator Part 1: The Behavior of Successful Negotiators, The Effective Negotiator Part 2: Planning for Negotiations, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. We talk with psychologist Iris Mauss, who explains why happiness can seem more el, When we want something very badly, it can be hard to see warning signs that might be obvious to other people. As soon as you move the leg, it becomes a different leg. al, Group Decision and Negotiation, 2008. Course Hero is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe, watching Netflix or something. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. This week, in the final . Each language comprises the ideas that have been worked out in a culture over thousands of generations, and that is an incredible amount of cultural heritage and complexity of thought that disappears whenever a language dies. They often feel angry about it, and you think this anger is actually telling. We post open positions (including internships) on our jobs page. What do you think the implications are - if you buy the idea that languages are a very specific and unique way of seeing the world, of perceiving reality, what are the implications of so many languages disappearing during our time? Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. Maybe they like the same kinds of food, or enjoy the same hobbies. GEACONE-CRUZ: It describes this feeling so perfectly in such a wonderfully packaged, encapsulated way, and you can just - it rolls off the tongue, and you can just throw it. A free podcast app for iPhone and Android, Download episodes while on WiFi to listen without using mobile data, Stream podcast episodes without waiting for a download, Queue episodes to create a personal continuous playlist, Web embed players designed to convert visitors to listeners in the RadioPublic apps for iPhone and Android, Capture listener activity with affinity scores, Measure your promotional campaigns and integrate with Google and Facebook analytics, Deliver timely Calls To Action, including email acquistion for your mailing list, Share exactly the right moment in an episode via text, email, and social media, Tip and transfer funds directly to podcastsers, Earn money for qualified plays in the RadioPublic apps with Paid Listens. And they have correlated this with gender features in the language, just like the ones you were talking about. How come you aren't exactly the way you were 10 years ago? Whats going on here? All rights reserved. Podcasters use the RadioPublic listener relationship platform to build lasting connections with fans. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Right. We convince a colleague to take a different tactic at work. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: (Speaking foreign language). If a transcript is available, youll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. But things can be important not just because they're big. Dictionaries are wonderful things, but they create an illusion that there's such thing as a language that stands still, when really it's the nature of human language to change. 00:51:58 - We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. VEDANTAM: Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. MCWHORTER: Exactly. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? So there are some differences that are as big as you can possibly measure. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where. And some people would say it's a lot more because it's, you know, irrecoverable and not reduplicated elsewhere. I'm shankar Vedantam in the 2002 rom com. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. VEDANTAM: Would it be possible to use what we have learned about how words and languages evolve to potentially write what a dictionary might look like in 50 years or a hundred years? But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? That was somehow a dad's fashion, and that I should start wearing flat-fronted pants. * Data source: directly measured on Listen Notes. Of course, if you can't keep track of exactly seven, you can't count. And if it was feminine, then you're likely to paint death as a woman. It has to do with the word momentarily. Just go to the magnifying glass in the top right corner, click on it, and use the search function at the top of the page. But it's exactly like - it was maybe about 20 years ago that somebody - a girlfriend I had told me that if I wore pants that had little vertical pleats up near the waist, then I was conveying that I was kind of past it. People do need to be taught what the socially acceptable forms are. And if you can enjoy it as a parade instead of wondering why people keep walking instead of just sitting on chairs and blowing on their tubas and not moving, then you have more fun. What a cynical thing to say, but that doesn't mean that it might not be true. But it's so hard to feel that partly because our brains are on writing, as I say in the book. VEDANTAM: One of the ultimate messages I took from your work is that, you know, we can choose to have languages that are alive or languages that are dead. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PARKS AND RECREATION"). Today, we explore the many facets of this idea. They know which way is which. So that's an example of how languages and cultures construct how we use space to organize time, to organize this very abstract thing that's otherwise kind of hard to get our hands on and think about. BORODITSKY: So quite literally, to get past hello, you have to know which way you're heading. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of figuring out what you want. So some languages don't have number words. Follow on Apple, Google or Spotify. by Harry T. Reis, Annie Regan, and Sonja Lyubomirsky, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2021. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. VEDANTAM: The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized mendokusai was incredibly useful. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, direct support to Hidden Brain by making a gift on our Patreon page, sponsorship opportunities on Hidden Brain. Not without written permission. We talk with psychologist Iris Mauss, who explains why happiness Why do some companies become household names, while others flame out? But it's a lovely example of how language can guide you to discover something about the world that might take you longer to discover if you didn't have that information in language. Rightly Crossing the Rubicon: Evaluating Goal Self-Concordance Prior to Selection Helps People Choose More Intrinsic Goals, by Kennon M. Sheldon, Mike Prentice, and Evgeny Osin, Journal of Research in Personality, 2019. If you're just joining us, I'm talking to John McWhorter. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. ROB LOWE: (As Chris Traeger) Dr. Harris, you are literally the meanest person I have ever met. That hadn't started then. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. You would give a different description to mark that it was not intentional. What we think of today as a word undergoing some odd development or people using some new construction is exactly how Latin turned into French. If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not. But the reason that it seems so elusive is because we don't really think about the, quote, unquote, "meaning" of things like our conversation-easing laughter. You're also not going to do algebra. to describe the world. This week, we revisit a favorite episode from 2021, bringing you two stories about how easy it can be to believe in a false reality even when the facts dont back us up. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. out. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, HOST:This is HIDDEN BRAIN. It seems kind of elliptical, like, would it be possible that I obtained? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking foreign language). Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live, by Kennon M. Sheldon, 2022. For example, when we started talking about navigation, that's an example where a 5-year-old in a culture that uses words like north, south, east and west can point southeast without hesitation. Parents and peers influence our major life choices, but they can also steer us in directions that leave us deeply unsatisfied. But what if there's a whole category of people in your life whose impact is overlooked? And that is an example of a simple feature of language - number words - acting as a transformative stepping stone to a whole domain of knowledge. - so one skull but two different minds, and you shift from one to the other. After claiming your Listen Notes podcast pages, you will be able to: Respond to listener comments on Listen Notes, Use speech-to-text techniques to transcribe your show and When we come back, I'm going to ask you about why languages change and whether there are hidden rules that shape why some words are more likely to evolve than others. That said, if you hear one or two pieces of music that you really love, feel free to email us at [emailprotected] and well do our best to respond to your request. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. I decided it was very important for me to learn English because I had always been a very verbal kid, and I'd - was always the person who recited poems in front of the school and, you know, led assemblies and things like that. We love the idea of Hidden Brain helping to spark discussions in your community. VEDANTAM: I love this analogy you have in the book where you mention how, you know, thinking that a word has only one meaning is like looking at a snapshot taken at one point in a person's life and saying this photograph represents the entirety of what this person looks like. And in fact, speakers of languages like this have been shown to orient extremely well - much better than we used to think humans could. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. BORODITSKY: The way to say my name properly in Russian is (speaking foreign language), so I don't make people say that. The size of this effect really quite surprised me because I would have thought at the outset that, you know, artists are these iconoclasts. GEACONE-CRUZ: It's this phrase that describes something between I can't be bothered or I don't want to do it or I recognize the incredible effort that goes into something, even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort. He's a defender of language on the move, but I wanted to know if there were things that irritated even him. This week on Hidden Brain, we revisit a favorite episode exploring what this culture means Jesse always wanted to fall in love. What Makes Lawyers Happy? We'd say, oh, well, we don't have magnets in our beaks or in our scales or whatever. JERRY SEINFELD: (As Jerry Seinfeld) The second button literally makes or breaks the shirt. Mistakes and errors are what turned Latin into French. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live, Going the Distance on the Pacific Crest Trail: The Vital Role of Identified Motivation, Athletic Scholarships are Negatively Associated with Intrinsic Motivation for Sports, Even Decades Later: Evidence for Long-Term Undermining, Rightly Crossing the Rubicon: Evaluating Goal Self-Concordance Prior to Selection Helps People Choose More Intrinsic Goals, What Makes Lawyers Happy? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking foreign language). I'm Shankar Vedantam. You may link to our content and copy and paste episode descriptions and Additional Resources into your invitations. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. That's how much cultural heritage is lost. podcast pages. This is HIDDEN BRAIN. VEDANTAM: For more HIDDEN BRAIN, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter. I know-uh (ph) is there, or something along the lines of babe-uh (ph). You can't touch time. VEDANTAM: It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important new term. When we come back, we dig further into the way that gender works in different languages and the pervasive effects that words can play in our lives. And then question 21 was, is this person a man or a woman? And so what that means is if someone was sitting facing south, they would lay out the story from left to right. GEACONE-CRUZ: It describes this feeling so perfectly in such a wonderfully packaged, encapsulated way. If you liked . We also look at how. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking foreign language). Perceived Partner Responsiveness as an Organizing Construct in the Study of Intimacy and Closeness, by Harry T. Reis, et. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. GEACONE-CRUZ: And I ended up living there for 10 years. So it's mendokusai.