This blog has presented research findings based on the semiotic theory of imagery processes by Strømnes originally presented in 1973. All writings concerning the theory are collected in his book: The fall of the word and the rise of the mental model. A reinterpretation of the research on spatial cognition and language (2006). The three basic elements of the theory are: 1) words do not carry meaning – the information is in our mental images, 2) the structures of any given language steer the formation our mental images and these structures can be very different in different languages, and 3) the behaviors resulting from the different mental imagery structures can be observed in everyday life.
According to the theory words only serve as signals that retrieve material accumulated in the memory. The material collected in memory is the result of our observations. By sight we collect the most information about the world around us. This research shows that language guides perceptions to the extent that it also affects our way of perceiving visual communication. This is shown, among other things, as structural differences in visual productions between language groups.
Is our brain an analog device which is programmed by the language we speak – our native tongue?
The most innovative part of Strømnes’ theory is to pay attention to spatial references used by languages. The two main findings were that certain parts of the language form a system for describing spatial relationships. Language groups differ fundamentally in this respect.
The theory sets the relationship between language and thinking into new light. According to the theory, thinking is primarily manipulation of spatial relationships (see also Arnheim, 1969, 251). It is not about the existence of thinking without language, but about the relationship between language and thinking and the mechanisms of the influence. The importance of language in thinking is that it guides perception to certain types of relations [1] and language allows us to break away from the immediate sensory perception. We cannot deny that the monkey would think in deciding how to get the bananas it does not reach without aids. Monkeys have no language, at least in the sense humans have. However, they are able to solve problems without language (Brown, 1958).
The significance of Strømnes’ theory is that it draws attention to new, previously unexplored relationships between language and perception. It highlights the relationship between language and imagery in a way that allows clear and precise hypotheses about the mental models of different languages. In this sense, Strømnes’ theory is much more advanced than the current sketches of mental models, which map out the links between linguistic and visual presentations. The theory gives a new interpretation to the “critical period” of language learning (Krashen, Long & Scarella, 1982). The critical period is passed at a stage where the mother tongue has been learned so well that its way to refer to spatial relationships is fully automated in the mind of the language user. Thereafter, automated mental models dominate and prevent, or at least hinder, the adoption of new language models. This is important, among other things, in language teaching, especially when the language taught belongs to a language group other than the pupil’s mother tongue. This difficulty could perhaps be overcome with new teaching methods. When the mental models of the new language are first mapped, then appropriate teaching materials presenting the spatial relationships expressed by the language could be construed.
The meaning and usefulness of words as a substitute for experience is based on the fact that they convey information that is integrated into the mental model of that language. So, the words themselves do not contain information. In Strømnes’ theory, words are defined as randomly selected characters whose reference to the subject / object in question is arbitrary. That is easy to see when comparing several languages. The word öl in Swedish means beer, in German oil. The Italian word for oil, olio, means creature or being in Finnish. One word in one language can be translated with several words in another. E.g. the Finnish word sattuma has nine (9) translations in an on-line dictionary, among them coincidence, fortune, adventure and accident.
When studying the linguistic relativity hypothesis (e.g. Whorf, 1956), attention has been paid to most diverse language differences (Hunt & Agnoli, 1991; Lucy, 1992). In spite of their many merits, these studies have overlooked the potential systematic differences in language structures that could cause differences in perceiving the spatial and time dimensions. In psychological mental model studies, less attention has been paid to prepositions in the English language than, for example, pronouns in the construction of imaginary spatial relationships (Glenberg, Meyer & Lindem, 1987).
Psychological studies in the Indo-European language area assume that all humans perceive the three spatial dimensions of the world and the continuous, steady flow of time in the same way (Kant, 1968, 21-22, original 1768; cited in Bryant & Tversky, 1992). According to the results of the series of studies by Strømnes and his associates, this is not the case with people speaking languages belonging to language groups other than the Indo-European.
Strømnes’s theory has been tested in experiments spanning from the early 1970s till the late 1990s (Strømnes, 1974a, 1974b, 1974c; Strømnes et al, 1982; Strømnes and Iivonen, 1985). The experiments cover a variety of behaviors from written and spoken language use to language teaching and analyses of film productions. The functionality of the language specific model was tested using children speaking three different languages (Strømnes, 1974). In addition to those, this blog presents results concerning the pictorial structures of English and Hungarian TV-productions.
Statistical analyses of occupational accidents among Finnish- and Swedish-speaking workers in Finland revealed large differences between the language groups in favor of the Swedish-speaking minority. Overall the Swedish-speaking had about 30 % less occupational accidents than the Finnish-speaking (Johansson and Salminen, 1999). The situation was worst in the bilingual factories (Salminen and Johansson, 2000a; 2000b) which is a very strong indication of communication problems between language groups.
[1] Slobin’s (1985) thoughts of learning a first language largely follow the same line. According to him, a child learns the linguistic factors of his language from the world around him. The comment by Bowerman (1985) was that this kind of learning distinguishes some of the factors in the outside world as more important than others. The child learns from the many possible relationships of the surrounding world those whom his language pays attention to.
REFERENCES
Arnheim, R. (1969) Visual thinking. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bowerman, M. (1985) What shapes children’s grammars? In: D. I. Slobin (ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition: Vol. 2. Theoretical issues (pp. 1257-1319). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Brown, R. (1958) Words and things. New York: Free Press.
Bryant, D. J. & Tversky, B. (1992) Internal and external spatial frameworks for representing described scenes. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 74-98.
Glenberg, A. M., Meyer, M. & Lindem, K. (1987) Mental models contribute to foregrounding during text comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 26, 69-83.
Hunt, E. & Agnoli, F. (1991) The Whorfian hypothesis: A cognitive psychology perspective. Psychological Review, 98, 377-389.
Johansson, A. Salminen, S. (1999) A minority with few occupational accidents: The case of Swedish-speaking Finns. American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Supplement 1, 37-38.
Kant, I. (1768, translation 1968) Selective pre-critical writings and correspondence with Beck. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
Krashen, S., Long, M. & Scarcella, R. (1982) Accounting for child-adult differences in second language rate and attainment. In: S.D. Krashen & R. C. Scarcella (eds.), Child-adult differences in second language acquisition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publications.
Lucy, J.A. (1992) Language diversity and thought. A reformulation of the linguistic relativity hypothesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Salminen, S. & Johansson, A. (2000a) Työturvallisuus ja tiedonkulku suomen- ja ruotsinkielisissä yrityksissä (Safety and flow of information in Finnish- and Swedish-speaking companies). Työ ja ihminen 14, 458-467.
Salminen, S. & Johansson, A. (2000b) Occupational Accidents of Finnish and Swedish-Speaking Workers in Finland: A Mental Model View.International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics 6, 293-306.
Slobin, D. I. (1985) Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity. In: D. I. Slobin (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition: Vol. 2. Theoretical issues (pgs. 1157-1256). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Strømnes, F.J. (1973) A semiotic theory of imagery processes with experiments on an Indo-European and a Ural-Altaic language: Do speakers of different languages experience different cognitive worlds? Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 14, 291-304.
Strømnes, F.J. (1974a) Memory models and language comprehension. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 15, 26-32.
Strømnes, F.J. (1974b) No universality of cognitive structures? Two experiments with almost perfect one-trial learning of translatable operators in a Ural-Altaic and an Indo-European language. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 15, 300-309.
Strømnes, F.J. (1974c) To be is not always to be. The hypothesis of cognitive universality in the light of studies on elliptic language behaviour. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 15, 89-98.
Strømnes, F.J. (1979) The problem of the image: can there be information in propositions. Communication, 4, 259-275.
Strømnes, F.J., Johansson, A. & Hiltunen, E. (1982) The externalised image. A study showing differences correlating with language structure between pictorial structure in Ural-Altaic and Indo-European filmed versions of the same plays. Helsinki: The Finnish Broadcasting Corporation, Report No. 21.
Strømnes, F.J. and livonen, L. (1985) The teaching of the syntax of written language to deaf children knowing no syntax. Human Learning, 4, 251-265.
Strømnes, F.J. (2006) The fall of the word and the rise of the mental model. A reinterpretation of the research on spatial cognition and language. Frankfurt am Main, New York, Berlin: Peter Lang.
Whorf, B.L. (1956) Language, thought, and reality. Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Edited and introduced by J.B. Carroll. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.