The Psychology of Communication: The Interplay Between Language and Culture Through Time

Abstract

Human behavior is often guided by the development and use of language as a means of communication and as a way to represent thoughts and knowledge. Notions of linguistic relativity and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis indicate that language plays a role in structuring the worldview and perceptions of individuals. The current work will explore how those perceptions are not only guided by language but are also moderated by culture and the beliefs, mores, and ideas that are sanctioned and regulated by a given cultural group. Papers, chapters, and books that have demonstrated the ways in which culture moderates behavior by way of the language that is used to express that culture will be of primary focus. Moreover, a developmental view of language learning will frame this approach in learning how language, culture, and thought have been examined and assessed as a way of describing how, together, they moderate human behavior. Is there truly evidence of linguistic relativity? Does language serve as the primary moderator of thought, or do cultural influences play a more pressing role in cognitive thought processes for a given group? Developments in theory, methods, and data that help explore these concepts through their publication in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology as well as other outlets will be presented and discussed as a framework that can be developed to generate future research questions, testing paradigms, and experimental approaches—both basic and applied.

Keywords

language learning/cognition communication

Introduction

Human behavior is often guided by the development and use of language as a means of communication and as a way to represent thoughts and knowledge. The term “language” typically refers to a representational system that is symbolic and refers to concepts and conceptual understanding. It is indeed quite an abstract symbol system that represents knowledge, thoughts, beliefs, processes, and many other forms of human information processing with, among other aims, the desire to communicate those notions effectively. We know that language is important, as it has the potential to affect decision-making processes, how one processes emotion, and even how cognitions develop. In addition, one’s language has the potential to influence more applied domains, such as how they communicate with others, how advertisements are perceived (Hodel et al., 2017), and social identity development (Kidd et al., 2016).

Just as language shapes our thoughts and perceptions of the world, so too does one’s culture. For the purpose of the current work, culture can be defined as the learned and shared systems of beliefs, values, preferences, and social norms that are spread by shared activities (Arshad & Chung, 2022; Bezin & Moizeau, 2017). Over the past 50 years, the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology (JCCP) has notably published quite a few important pieces on the intersection of language and culture, which have contributed to our understanding of language processes today. It was once said, by German scientist Alexander von Humboldt, that “the most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world.” Unfortunately, many fields of scientific discovery have been plagued by limitations in the level of global engagement and inclusivity of their research endeavors. That said, the founding of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) and the development of JCCP, served a pivotal role in bringing together international scholars with a shared interest in the study of human behavior across cultures. From its inception, the IACCP has really been at the forefront of cross-cultural psychological issues and has historically been one of the most globally inclusive societies to date.

Yet, even for a journal far ahead of its time in terms of diversity in topics and authorship, Best and Everett (2010) reported that within the early part of the current century, the majority of papers appearing in JCCP came from U.S. based researchers and/or from English-speaking countries. Although the IACCP has certainly done a lot to advance cross-cultural psychology through “exclusively featuring culture in their accounts of human behavior” (see Berry et al., 2022), there is still a lot to do in terms of understanding the complexities of culture and its role on behavior. Although we acknowledge there is still work to do, the aim of the current article is to focus on what we have learned in the past 50 years, primarily within the domain of language and culture, and the implications that the two have on human interaction.

The interplay between language and culture extends beyond just cognitive representations of language (i.e., internal processes), but also to how people communicate with each other (e.g., external processes). Therefore, the focus of the current article will be to provide a brief overview of what we have learned about language processing through examining the degree to which language influences individual thought, the role of language in perception and decision-making, translation implications for communication, and applied domains of language influence. In each of these topic areas, the goal will be to illustrate what has been learned in the past 50 years—through both general publications on the topic, as well as through contributions that have appeared in JCCP.

The Role of Language in Individual Thinking: Linguistic Relativity

Individual differences in how linguistic information shapes individual cognition has been of interest for decades. Whorf was first credited with suggesting that one’s language has the potential to shape thought, with this original hypothesis implying that language could determine both thought and actions (Whorf & Carroll, 1956). Decades later, a weaker form of this hypothesis was introduced by Slobin, who referred to the phenomenon as “thinking for speaking,” which suggested that language can shape one’s perceptions due to how information is encoded, but that the process is not quite as absolute as initially proposed (see Slobin, 1996). The distinctions here are important, yet both raise the question concerning whether the language one speaks is capable of altering how they view the world. In turn, other theories of language processing put forth shortly after Whorf, have emphasized the universality of language, focusing on it as an innate human trait, one that is not easily influenced by linguistic differences (Chomsky, 1972; Pinker, 1994).

The concept of linguistic relativity has been examined in various situations, as well as in children and adults. Some of the earliest work focused on this linguistic phenomenon involved the study of linguistic relativity using color perception and terminology (Brown & Lenneberg, 1954). From this research, controversy emerged in terms of whether color naming was more universal, with reported differences being due to different color terminologies (e.g., how many color terms were available in a language), rather than to language terminology that altered actual color perception (Berlin & Kay, 1969). Historically, aspects of this debate were certainly influenced by the work of Chomsky and others, who advocated for universal aspects of language, with less emphasis on cultural factors. As the decades progressed, interest in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis waned, with interest in it resurfacing in the 1990s and early 2000s. Many of these studies took a cognitive approach to studying human processing as a function of one’s language. In line with past interest in how language influences color perception, Winawer et al. (2007) examined how native English and Russian speakers categorize different shades of blue, in a timed color matching task. Of interest was the fact that while all of the color squares represented various shades of “blue” for English speakers, the Russian language has a linguistic differentiation between lighter and darker blues. Interestingly, their results showed that the Russian speakers could differentiate between two colors faster when they fell into the “lighter” versus “darker” language categories as compared to the English speakers. This suggests that color categories that exist within a language are capable of influencing color perception.

Likewise, in work by Athanasopoulos (2009), comparisons between Greek-English bilingual and English monolingual adults in color naming indicated that English ability influenced the ways in which colors were distinguished from each other. The focus in this work was the distinction between light blue and dark blue, as two distinct words exist for these shades in the Greek language. Bilinguals and monolinguals were asked to determine the distance between these two shades of blue. This task was based on the Munsell dimension hue test where 160 color chips of varying hue and lightness were presented on a board to each participant. The distance between colors could be determined based on the difference between the two chips selected. Bilinguals who had lived for two or more years in an English-speaking country reported less perceptual distance between these two shades approximating the responses of English-speaking monolinguals. The linguistic and cultural context in which these speakers lived over time influenced the ways in which they responded to basic perceptual and categorization tasks.

Another domain where linguistic relativity has been of interest, is with bilinguals who know and use languages that have a grammatical gender system (i.e., where nouns are assigned feminine, masculine, or neutral articles). In a widely popularized study, Boroditsky et al. (2003) revealed that individuals tend to assign adjectives to words that are in line with their assigned gender in a specific language. For example, German speakers describing the word “key,” which is denoted as masculine in German, tend to use descriptions that focus on masculine features—heavy, hard, jagged. In contrast, Spanish speakers, a language in which the word “key” is feminine, described the word as having more feminine characteristics—little, lovely, shiny. Expanding on this work to that of a younger age group, Nicoladis and Foursha-Stevenson (2012) examined similar linguistic effects in monolingual and bilingual children. However, in their study they observed that when children processed the gender of objects, both language and societal gender norms determined whether they viewed the objects as “boys” or “girls.” This is interesting, as it suggests that linguistic structure alone is not solely responsible for how these cognitions develop.

As interest in linguistic relativity re-emerged during this time, quite a few studies focused on whether temporal aspects of cognition could be influenced by language (Boroditsky, 2001; Chen, 2007; Tse & Altarriba, 2008). Boroditsky’s work is credited with being one of the first to show that Chinese-English bilinguals can identify temporal targets faster when they are presented vertically as compared to horizontally (i.e., which is thought to occur because the Chinese language uses a vertical presentation that English does not). This occurred even when stimuli were presented in English, suggesting that an individual’s knowledge of a language can shape their perceptual processes even when that language is not in use. However, the robustness of this linguistic influence has been questioned, given several failures to replicate these temporal influences in those who speak multiple languages (Chen, 2007; Tse & Altarriba, 2008). For example, Tse and Altarriba (2008) had English monolinguals and Chinese-English bilinguals complete a spatio-temporal task, similar to that used in the Boroditsky study. In this task, participants pressed one key if a sentence was “true” and another if it was “false.” Items varied based on whether they were spatial primes (e.g., above, below) or temporal distance (e.g., June-April; April-October). Their results indicated that both the bilinguals and monolinguals showed a vertical bias, suggesting that language background did not influence this perceptual process. Importantly, Tse and Altarriba (2008) point out that Boroditsky failed to accurately account for how Chinese speakers talk about time, such that even though they might use vertical spatial metaphors to talk about time, they are implemented differently than horizontal metaphors. For example, the notion of going through a wall calendar 1 month at a time may require vertical moves, while the notion of going through months in a horizontal fashion may be less frequent. Overall, they suggest that Boroditsky’s “incorrect assumptions on the usage of Chinese spatial metaphors” (p. 352) does not allow that earlier work to provide adequate evidence of linguistic relativity.

Finally, explorations of linguistic relativity in nonverbal tasks have often focused on number processing, with children often being the population of interest, given that these studies are specifically concerned with how number representation develops as a function of one’s language. Interestingly, in 2011, the JCCP dedicated an entire issue (Volume 42, Issue 4) to this area of investigation, with many of the publications focusing on this developmental skill and the role of language and culture. For example, one paper reported differences in number line processing for young children, as a function of whether they spoke German or Italian (Helmreich et al., 2011). This specific process was of interest given that the mental number line in children is thought to develop in a universal way, irrespective of one’s language. In this study, researchers questioned whether languages with number inversion, such as German (e.g., 21 being spoken as one and twenty, p. 600), would result in children under or overestimating where numbers belonged in a non-verbal spatial number line estimation task. Their results indicated that German speaking children performed worse when estimating two digit numbers as compared to Italian speaking children, despite the fact that the underlying process of how to integrate tens and units was similar across the two groups. Importantly, other studies published within this earlier JCCP issue, highlighted that both linguistic and cultural factors seemed to influence these cognitive processes. For example, in their review paper on number processing development, Göbel et al. (2011) conclude that the development of spatial mapping for numbers is influenced by both linguistic variables (e.g., reading direction), as well as by cultural factors (e.g. number counting on one’s hand). In other investigations, these cultural factors emerge as a function of curriculum differences, leading Krinzinger et al. (2011) to conclude that “performance differences between countries are only partly attributable to language effects” but that longer standing differences in number recognition, subtraction, and other aspects of numerical development may be more heavily influenced by differences in curriculum. This is an important consideration, as many of the earlier studies on linguistic relativity have not always considered this, and perhaps, have concluded that differences observed were solely a function of language, rather than due to other competing factors.

In summary, whether language can affect thought has been a focus of investigation for many decades, in both verbal and nonverbal tasks. To date, the literature points to mixed results, with some studies indicating that language can greatly impact how one views the world, while others suggest that these previously reported effects are not as robust as initially indicated. Most likely, this is because many studies have focused narrowly on language without accounting for the fact that both language and culture are drivers in shaping how information is consolidated and developed (see also Panayiotou, 2004). For example, Ji et al. (2004) provide a thoughtful explanation on how the two may work together, based on outcomes from participants that differ in both language and cultural background. In their study, Chinese-English bilinguals and English monolinguals categorized objects, in an effort to see whether their reasoning styles differed. The results revealed that the bilinguals categorized items differently (e.g., grouping items based more on relationships than by category), as compared to North American monolinguals. Interestingly, they did so when completing the task in both English and Chinese, suggesting that cultural factors, rather than language were driving this effect. However, language did affect Chinese speakers from certain countries, such that those individuals who learned English earlier showed classification patterns that were different than those from countries where it was learned later. This provides a strong example of how language and culture can be investigated side by side with certain cognitive paradigms. As Imai et al. (2016) so aptly point out in their commentary, many cognitive psychologists have focused on language processing without considering culture, while many cultural psychologists have merged language and culture in their explanations. As they highlight in their review, interdisciplinary approaches will be even more important moving forward, if one is to gain a better understanding of the role of language and culture in shaping thought processes.

Translation Processes: The Influence of Vocabulary, Semantics, and Syntax

When one considers the acquisition of a language, the emphasis is often on vocabulary and syntax learning, with the understanding that semantic or conceptual levels of organization for the new language take more time. For example, the semantic meaning of a word often refers to the meaning of that item at the conceptual level (e.g., a cat is an animal that has four legs, whiskers, etc.), and words are thought to be organized in memory based on how semantically close they are to each other (e.g., “cat” and “dog” are often thought to be semantically related). However, other dimensions of the vocabulary word consist of the spelling (e.g., orthography) and of the sound of the word (e.g., phonology). In research focused on the intersection of language with culture, attention is often given to the semantic or conceptual level of the word meaning, understandably. Yet, this raises the question as to how concepts are acquired and whether they translate across languages, which has important implications for communication with others, as well as for cross-cultural research.

Classic work by Daphne M. Keats and John A. Keats (1974) focused on whether logical concepts acquired by bilingual children (4–7 years of age) in one language can be transferred to a second language. They aimed to explore an important question in language learning, namely, whether concepts could be considered independent of the language in which they were acquired. Children who were bilingual in Polish and English, or, German and English learned about the conservation of weight for the first time, in one of their two languages. They were then post-tested about the concept, in their other language. Their responses indicated that the concept (i.e., conservation of weight) was transferrable across languages lending some support to the notion that information can be learned independently from the language in which it is taught. The authors noted that translation was unlikely, as these children did not necessarily possess the words in the other language that would show that kind of transference—an act based solely on linguistic knowledge. It is also the case that while German and English may bear some similarities, the transfer of knowledge occurred (though to a lesser extent) between Polish and English, languages that do not bear the same level of overlap as do German and English. What was important in this early work by Keats and Keats (see also Keats et al., 1976) is the notion that their findings laid the groundwork for others to explore whether or not conceptual understanding and “thinking” is indeed influenced or directed by language, or can occur at an alinguistic level.

Other researchers, however, have reported results that argue that culture, as well as language, can influence cognition and perception. In fact, it can be argued that linguistic knowledge rarely lives devoid of the cultural context that shapes and molds the ways in which individuals view the world around them and adopt words in order to describe their world. For example, in the work of Imai and Gentner (1997) it was reported that speakers of English as young as 2 years of age were more likely to classify objects based upon common shape rather than common material. However, the reverse was true when the same tasks were completed by speakers of languages such as Japanese and Yucatec. In Japanese, there is no count-mass grammatical distinction, in fact, all inanimate nouns are treated alike. Within the categorization task, the focus tended to be more on grouping by the materials objects were presented in rather than by counting the number of objects that were similar in shape. Interestingly, Japanese-English bilinguals who lived for extended periods of time in English-speaking countries began categorizing objects in ways that were more similar to English monolinguals. These changes in categorization may well be due to cultural immersion in the new country and/or an increase in English proficiency. More importantly to note, is the fact that these cross-linguistic differences occur in early word learning indicating that cultural contexts and the uses of language in those contexts has a direct effect on the completion of cognitive and perceptual tasks.

The Role of Direct and Ambiguous Translations

For anyone who knows and uses two or more languages, they have likely experienced situations where certain words do not translate well across languages. Much of this reporting in the past has often been anecdotal, yet there have been both qualitative and quantitative investigations into translation processing that have allowed us to gain a better understanding of these linguistic challenges. Early work examining the cognitive underpinnings of word translation, suggested that emotion concepts were often those which lacked a direct translation across languages (Altarriba, 2003; Pavlenko, 2005). Altarriba (2003) used the Spanish word cariño as an example, as many Spanish-English bilinguals describe this word as meaning “liking” or “affection” in English, yet neither really convey the full meaning of this Spanish word. Similarly, Schmidt-Atzert and Park (1999) reported that certain Korean emotion concepts appeared to have no translation in German. In their paper, they raised an important question, concerning whether individuals experience those same emotions, even if they do not have the words to accurately describe them. Naturally, challenges exist when a direct translation does not exist, but primarily when that comes to emotion processing, it results in greater difficulty for individuals to accurately express themselves in a particular language.

Given that much of the discussion surrounding emotion translation emphasized anecdotal and qualitative investigations, Basnight-Brown and Altarriba (2014) set out to systematically determine whether emotion translations were quantitatively different as compared to other word types, such as concrete and abstract words. In their study, they presented Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals with several hundred words, each list containing a mix of word types, with participants generating the translation of each word. Their results indicated that emotion words resulted in significantly more distinct translations (in both language directions), as compared to the other word types. This provided empirical support for many of the previously held beliefs and observations surrounding difficulty in word translation for these concepts. In subsequent studies, items with single and multiple translations from this initial study were used to examine word production across similar bilingual populations (see Basnight-Brown & Altarriba, 2016; Basnight-Brown et al., 2020). In both studies, the results revealed that words with multiple translations resulted in longer production times overall, and that for emotion words specifically, translation latencies were impacted by whether the emotion concept was activated in one’s first or second language. Overall, these series of studies stress the importance of direct versus non-direct (or what is sometimes referred to as ambiguous) word translation, as these linguistic processes present limitations for individuals when expressing their own emotions and when communicating with others.

Finally, it is important to also acknowledge that difficulties in translation, in addition to the communication challenges that emerge, can have critical methodological implications for cross-cultural research. Over the years, the JCCP has published several key articles highlighting this issue and drawing attention to why it is important for high quality research. Early on, a seminal paper by Brislin (1970) discussed the importance of back translation, including empirically based steps on how translation quality can be improved in research (e.g., using a criterion based on whether errors exist within the translation, use of a pretest, skilled translators). This paper served as an important guide for researchers across many disciplines, as it allowed them to better prepare their tools when conducting cross-cultural research (see also, Brislin et al., 1973). As the decades progressed, later issues of the JCCP focused on translation and other forms of methodology. For example, Sperber et al. (1994) emphasized that the validity in one’s study can be heavily affected by translation quality, while others provided useful guidelines on how to improve translation quality (see Sireci et al., 2006). In summary, how words translate across languages, or the lack thereof, has important implications for how individuals express themselves, communicate with others, form memory representations of concepts, as well as impact the methodology in cross-cultural research.

Now that we have reviewed the ways in which languages and contexts interact and the notion that culture plays a very important role in moderating language use, attention will turn in the next section to the implications of these findings in applied settings. Knowing what we have learned from the earlier years of published works on issues concerning translation difficulties across languages, the role of language proficiency, and the finding that social, political, and cultural factors determine which languages are used for bilingual or multilingual speakers, how can we best apply this knowledge in more applied settings?

Applied Ways in Which Language Affects Communication

While the relationship between language, culture, and communication has been widely explored across culture and with a focus on basic research, the ways in which these areas interact and inform applied research questions has proven to be interesting, novel, and significant. In this section, the ways in which language use informs the areas of creativity, consumerism, and health are explored against a backdrop of culture and cognitive processing. Works within JCCP that have contributed to these intersections are reviewed along with research that provides a broader context focused on the application of basic research principles to real-world issues and challenges. These works reviewed below should underscore the notion that cross-cultural approaches are indeed necessary in order to solve some basic questions concerning language and communication within the broader areas captured below.

Language Use and Creativity

As discussed earlier, culture, identity, and language are influences that moderate or guide cognition and communication processes. How does language influence or interact with creative thinking and could the use of multiple languages also enhance originality and flexibility in language use? In early work by Carringer (1974), Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking were presented to balanced, Spanish-English bilinguals with equal proficiency in both languages and Spanish monolinguals in high schools in Coehuila, Mexico. While other researchers in the past had examined creativity in other language groups (see e.g., Jacobs & Pierce, 1965), Carringer’s work was seminal in this area of research, as it was the first work to explore creativity in balanced bilingual speakers with a well-controlled comparison group of monolingual speakers. Previous studies reported results that could have been influenced by uneven proficiency in the language abilities of study participants leading to the possibility of alternate explanations for their findings. The tests that were administered in English focused on figural and verbal fluency, flexibility, and fluency of language use. Their results indicated that bilingual participants scored higher than monolingual participants in all measures of creative thinking. The researchers concluded, “. . .an individual who studies two languages develops a learning set for flexibility, . . .Since the bilingual has two terms for one reference, his attention is focused on ideas and not words. . .” (p. 502). These findings can be interpreted as bilingual speakers having a level of mental flexibility due to having an expanded conceptual store of knowledge that incorporates semantics and concepts from two different language systems. This is particularly the case wherein words and translation fail to match completely in terms of their lexical or conceptual components—that is, in cases where words simply “do not translate” across languages. Thus, it can be concluded that some of the mental flexibility that accompanies the ability to problem solve or reason more broadly—indeed, more creatively—in someone with knowledge of multiple languages comes from the notion that these individuals have multiple contexts and concepts that expand their knowledge over and above having a single mental lexicon. In fact, Leung and Chiu (2008) argue that multicultural and multilinguistic experiences greatly enhance creativity, as individuals with multicultural experiences posses a greater, more expansive set of ideas and concepts from which to draw, in problem solving situations. Through these experiences, they have been exposed to a broader range of approaches to problems and possible solutions, and over time, their access to this information can be more automatic and occur in such a manner as to allow for the quick development of novel combinations of solutions or patterns of solutions, in order to more effectively tackle a given problem. Leung and Chiu (2008) reported that extensiveness of multicultural experiences and declared openness to experience were predictors of performance on creative tasks such as generating unusual uses for garbage bags. Thus, the more classic results such as those described above continue to remain valid through time, as indeed, there have been many other instances that have shown greater flexibility in problem solving for those with knowledge of more than one language and more than one culture, as compared with those with knowledge of only a single language or culture (see e.g., Leung & Chiu, 2010).

Fluidity in accessing concepts and carrying those concepts over between languages can play a role in communication, particularly as individuals who are bilingual tend to code-switch or mix languages to engage in more precise communication with other bilingual speakers (Heredia & Altarriba, 2001). Carringer’s (1974) results are also important to the current debate, as mentioned earlier, their research asks whether or not bilingual speakers enjoy greater cognitive control or mental fluency in terms of executive functioning in the brain (See further work on the role of culture and language in brain development in Qu et al., 2021).

Over 30 years later, an article that examined sociocultural contexts and their influence on creative thinking focused on Russian-English bilinguals living in the United States and Farsi-English bilinguals living in the United Arab Emirates, as compared to monolingual speakers of English in the United States and Farsi in Iran (Kharkhurin, 2010). Creativity in this experimental context was described as an ability to produce outcomes that satisfy the following requirements: novelty, appropriateness, and usefulness. Participants completed the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA; Goff & Torrance, 2002) measuring fluency and flexibility of thinking, as well as questionnaires meant to assess their productive vocabulary, picture naming, and language proficiency, in their primary language. Measures reflecting the sociocultural environment for each group of participants focused on collectivist vs. individualistic cultural norms, degree of exposure to multiple languages and cultures in the participants’ home environments, and differing educational systems in which participants were schooled, over time.

Results revealed differences on tests of creativity between bilingual and monolingual speakers in each of the sociocultural groups. Bilinguals in the U.S. outperformed their monolingual counterparts, as well as their bilingual counterparts in Iran, on measures of creativity. It is important to note that while bilingual speakers may have knowledge of more than one language, it may not necessarily follow that they consider themselves “bicultural,” as well. The cultural context in which they learned and used languages, their level of schooling, and educational opportunities contributed to the types of thinking among bilinguals that would enhance their performance in the creativity tasks within the ATTA. However, bilingual speakers in Iran outperformed their monolingual counterparts, as well as bilingual and monolingual speakers in the US on measures that focused on innovative capacity, or the ability to come up with multiple solutions to problems and do so with ease.

The work of Kharkhurin is fundamentally important to the current debate focused on the benefits of bilingual language processing in the development and use of concepts and their expressions within and between languages, as it underscores not only the processes engaged when using more than one language, but also reveals the importance of the context in which those languages are developed, over time—a factor that is quite often overlooked in the more modern explorations of creativity, language, and novelty in communication.

Language Use, Marketing, and Consumerism

An informed understanding regarding the relationship between language, thought, and decision making in applied contexts can lead to enhancing communication in a number of settings including those that focus on clinical and mental health (e.g., Ertl et al., 2019), those that focus on minimizing false memories or perceptions such as in the legal realm (e.g., Marmolejo et al., 2009), and those that focus on marketing and consumer behavior. Research by Keh et al. (2016) addresses this latter area of investigation, examining “culture mixing” as related to evaluations of Western brand names by Chinese consumers. Culture mixing in this domain is defined by the use of cultural symbols in advertising such as in the example offered by the authors of Coca-Cola’s commercial featuring a multilingual rendition of “America the Beautiful.” The authors note that juxtaposing cultures in these kinds of commercial sayings can lead to triggering emotions and thoughts that are associated to different cultural systems and worldviews, some of which might arouse strong feelings among those processing those sayings. For example, the authors noted that negative reactions were reported to the notion of SONY cappuccino machines, as the brand is well-known as Japanese the product itself is highly identified with Italy. In the Keh et al. (2016) study, the authors explored reactions to the presentation of foreign brand names translated into Chinese, and how young Chinese consumers respond to foreign brand names that might be used to communicate about a product or service.

In one experiment, Keh et al. (2016) asked Chinese University students, in Beijing, to generate a value to presented brand name Chinese translations of Western, foreign products in an attempt to understand consumers’ impressions of those products. Using the Schwartz Value Survey (SVS; Schwartz, 1992, 1999) the students were presented with the Chinese translations of 12 foreign brands, one for each of 12 products. The value dimensions included items such as family security, wisdom, honoring parents and elders, creativity, enjoying life, and pleasure, just to name a few. Perhaps more importantly, the participants were asked to check those values that were either important to themselves, more important to Chinese people than to Westerners, and more important to Westerners than to Chinese people.

Results indicated that young, Chinese, educated consumers valued culture-mixed brands more favorably when the names valued or highlighted autonomy and departed from conservative values. Moreover, if the translations referred to the phonetics used in the original Western language of the brand, they were also valued more favorably. Even though Chinese translations were used for Western products, if those translations maintained the phonetic qualities of the original brand names and represented autonomy of thought or action, their participants placed a high value on those translations, as compared to those that highlighted more conservative values. Respondents favored Western, foreign brands that seemed to preserve some of their original emphasis and cultural dynamic even as they were translated into Chinese (for example, Sprite is valued more positively than Seven-Up in China, as the translation for Sprite has a more appealing translation—“Snow Jade”). Language, in particular, phonetics, semantics, the lexical representations of the brand names, and their syntactic representations all play a role in influencing the ways in which products are favored or disfavored, in their translated forms. In this manner, the relationship between language, culture, and cognition can directly impact communication thereby influencing consumer choices and ultimately consumer spending, as well. This article provides a very intricate framework within which to examine the use of brand names in translation and is an impactful model of how cross-cultural research is needed to further a global economy and understand the perceptions and behaviors of those engaging in a global marketplace.

Language Use, Emotion, and Communication in Health Settings

Barrett et al. (2007) have argued that language serves as a context for emotion perception—how one might label emotions in others or consider the emotional states of others. Typically, one may view a facial expression and label an emotion (e.g., a smile might indicate that an individual is happy, see Matsumoto & Hwang, 2011) However, emotion perception is shaped by the way in which language is linked to our own conceptual knowledge built up over time and through experiences that inform a current situation. Words that label emotion—labels that have been used in the past—seem to anchor experiences involving the naming of emotions in the present, particularly those displayed via a human face. Language, therefore, is a context that influences the ways in which the world is perceived and may even contribute to how the world is conceptualized or understood. In fact, Barrett et al. (2011) indicate that language, cultural orientation, visual scenes and other contextual information drives the perception of emotion in faces routinely and in an automatic fashion. Thus, language and culture are inextricably included in the process of emotion perception.

From a cross-cultural perspective, this type of language-as-context hypothesis would indicate that bilingual and multilingual speakers may perceive faces and the emotions depicted by those faces in ways that may differ depending on language mode (e.g., first vs. second, or, dominant vs. subordinate). In fact, findings relevant to this work were reported by Matsumoto et al. (2008) where Spanish-English bilinguals judged emotions differently in their two languages, as a function of their own regulation processes in one language as compared to the other. While participants were more accurate in judging emotions in others in English, they inferred greater intensity of emotion when judging emotions in Spanish, their native and more dominant language.

The notion regarding differential emotion processing in the first vs. the second language of a bilingual speaker has important implications for health practices (see e.g., Altarriba & Santiago-Rivera, 1994; Santiago-Rivera & Altarriba, 2002). In the work by Santiago-Rivera et al. (2009), for example, data were provided suggesting that therapeutic approaches in clinical settings should be linguistically and culturally relevant. Their work focused on the ways in which bilingual, Spanish-English speaking clients switched between languages when working with mental health counselors or therapists. These researchers argued two important points: (1) understanding the role of language in therapy is central to effective treatment regardless of theoretical orientation; and (2) the client’s bilingual language abilities should be considered a strength rather than a deficit particularly when describing emotional events. Emotional expression in the native language, in this case Spanish, was found to be more spontaneous and less inhibited than emotional expression in English. Thus, the recall of past experiences (most often repressed memories) occurred more often in Spanish than in English.

Within this work, therapists described the ways in which their clients or patients switched between languages. Interestingly, clients switched from Spanish to English when they wanted to distance themselves from the arousal that accompanies the recounting of negative emotional events, in the first, more-dominant language. Clients felt more comfortable talking about these situations in the less dominant language, English, and often switched to English in order to distance themselves from the arousal that accompanies talking about negative feelings. Thus, emotion was an important driver of language switching in bilingual clients when describing emotional experiences in the past. Oftentimes, therapists accrued to idiomatic expressions or proverbs in the client’s native language that would help to clarify or to amplify the context of a conversation or communication with the client. These were often emotional in nature. For example, one expression in Spanish reads, “Como dicen en mi barrio, dime con quién andas y te dire quién eres. . .”, which translates loosely to, “As they say in my neighborhood, tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are. . .”. This statement might be made in order to increase client understanding of a given situation related to self-presentation or identity and a client’s struggle to not be perceived as a member of a particular out-group. Ultimately, research that focuses on the relationship between language and emotion, as related to communication, serves to underscore the notion that language is a powerful means through which emotion is modulated, and within bilingual or multilingual speakers, the richness of recall of information from memory can vary significantly depending upon the language being used to recount that memory. Thus, language can be seen as an important tool in any setting where speakers are asked to recall an event or describe an event, and depending upon the linguistic context being used, differing reports may emerge surrounding a single episode or memory.

Conclusions and Future Directions for Research

As we move forward in the study of language, culture, and communication, we need to think about not just how scientific findings generalize to another culture, or the ways in which findings are different from another culture, but also in how less represented or less studied cultures can drive the research questions that are examined in the future. Based on the opening article in this special issue is another key takeaway as we think about these notions, on this anniversary, “. . . Historically, it appears that the IACCP has been a leading organization in that way, their early focus on diversity and lack of a strong hierarchical structure have allowed members from many different backgrounds to contribute to research over the last 50 years” (Berry et al., 2022, p. 715–728). This point ends on a positive note in that IACCP has tried to do a lot to address some of these issues even if there are still global shortcomings that exist in other organizations or journal publications. They have been ahead of the game all these years, in terms of diversity, given that other organizations are just grappling with that issue in current times.

What have we learned over the last 50 years with regards to language, culture, and communication? Clearly, a major emphasis in the work that has been discussed herein is that in order to truly learn how humans process concepts and the symbol systems that represent those concepts, research must be informed by cross-linguistic and cross-cultural examination. Quite clearly, in the domain of language, the study of bilingual and multilingual speakers not only informs work on the processing of individual languages, but it also informs what we know about human behavior overall, particularly for monolingual speakers. Bilingual research, on children and adults, and across a broad range of similar and distinct languages can help us understand how the mind and brain process concepts or semantic representations by knowing more about how language works to distinguish between concepts—often ones that are unique to a given language—and how that uniqueness translates to ways of thinking that derive from a particular culture that could be distinctly unique to those living in that cultural context. We have also learned that a variety of tasks and tools can be used to understand human language and learning, from the earlier sorting or categorization tasks that have been used to learn how individuals group information based on their language or culture, to the use of computers and computer-generated survey and questionnaire tasks, and those that rely on the timing of the presentation of stimuli and the timing of responses to those stimuli. The work in this domain highlights the variety of experimental approaches—quantitative and qualitative—that provide for a well-rounded picture of how language, culture, and context moderate human behavior across many different environments. As technology evolves to providing tools for greater understanding of language use and processing, it would be important to apply those tools along with the methods and tasks that have already been explored in this domain, in order to provide converging evidence on the ways in which language and culture influence thinking, reasoning, decision making, problem solving, and the challenges of everyday communication. For example, the work of Costa et al. (2009) reports significant correlations between word naming and measurements of event-related potentials in the brain. Their data revealed the notion that the brain engages extremely quickly in the retrieval of words, and through the use of these technologies, it is now possible to understand how the brain activates and selects words in the course of speech (see also, Thierry & Wu, 2007; Thierry et al., 2009 for other demonstrations of the ways in which research on brain potentials has deepened our knowledge on language and the brain). Additionally, as much communication today occurs via social media and on electronic devices and within platforms that did not exist 50 years ago, there are many ways in which new questions and new advances in research can forge ahead focusing on the important questions that have already been shared within the many pages of the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, to date.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Jeanette Altarriba

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