Key Words, Culture and Cognition

How much does language influence how we think? How far are the categories of our language contingent and culture-specific? Few questions are of greater significance to the social sciences. In this paper we attempt to demonstrate that linguistic semantics can address these questions with rigour and precision, by analysing some examples of cultural 'key words' in several languages. We want to argue for two complementary positions: on the one hand, that there are enormous differences in the semantic structuring of different languages and that these linguistic differences greatly influence how people think; but on the other, that all languages share a small set of 'universal concepts'. which can provide a solid basis for cross-cultural understanding and for the culture-independent formulation of philosophical problems. The insight that languages and cultures are deeply interconnected is an old one. For example, in 1690 John Locke (1976: 226) observed that in any language there is a 'great store of words ... which have not any that answer them in another [language]'. Such language-specific words, he said, represent certain 'complex ideas' which have grown out of 'the customs and manner of life' of the people. He further observed that such complex ideas were 'collections made and abstracted by the mind' and were thus contingent, rather than being the product of 'the steady workmanship of nature', which would not vary from culture to culture. This same insight burned bright throughout the German Romantic tradition, lead by Johann Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt. It was eventually carried to America in the person of Franz Boas, who founded cultural