The Self that Gets Left Behind: On language, the brain, and the contingency of belief
By: Brianna Hamamoto
Where the Question Begins
Imagine a thought experiment involving a runaway trolley, a moral dilemma, and a question of whom to sacrifice for the greater good. Now, imagine a similar scenario, except this time, it is expressed in a language you were taught in school and not one you grew up speaking from infancy. Time to put those three years of high school French classes to the test. According to Keysaret al. of the University of Chicago, people think about moral problems such as these differently according to the language they are thinking in. Specifically, if they are using their second language, they make decisions in a more deliberate way, less influenced by intuition and more amenable to rationality. The discomfort this finding tends to produce in people is worth sitting with, and it is natural to feel uncomfortable while doing so. This is not due to any kind of error on your part, but rather because of the realization that your certainty in believing something, the idea that what you believe is just the truth and there is no way around it, may have more to do with the language you believe it in than anything else. This leads to a rather unpleasant dilemma: If the conviction means something else when expressed in another language, then how much of your conviction actually belongs to you? What does it say about the fact that the acquisition of a foreign language could actually provide a solution?
Language and the Predictive Brain
It has been argued by neuroscientists that the brain does not perceive the world as a passive receptor, but rather as a predictive system. While the brain receives sensory information from the world, it also constantly forms predictions of what it expects to receive and updates its predictions based on feedback. This predictive processing is often referred to as predictive processing, and it suggests that perception itself is partly constructed rather than observed. Language is the heart of this process. It is through the use of language that the brain categorizes experiences, ascribes affective values to occurrences, and forms beliefs and concepts. However, language performs this function to different extents. A first language learned during childhood becomes hardwired into the brain’s automatic systems and holds an affective power that a second language just does not carry from the beginning of acquisition. Thinking in your native language is not just an exercise in vocabulary. It triggers associations that are laden with emotional valence and cultural significance. The term “home” in any language that you speak originally does not have the same neurological meaning as its definition. Linguistic scientists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson revealed that our abstract thinking is based on physical metaphors, but these metaphors are not shared by all cultures. In English, time flows from left to right, while in Chinese, it flows from top to bottom. This difference is not just an interesting linguistic phenomenon: researchers discovered that speakers of these languages differ significantly in their ability to solve certain spatial puzzles. The idea may seem outrageous, but there is no denying that the framework within which our beliefs are formed is, to some degree, determined by the primary language(s)1 we speak.
1 A primary language, also known as a native language or mother tongue, is the first language a person acquires, usually from birth through natural interaction with caregivers and their environment. It is central to communication, identity, and cultural development. In some cases, individuals may acquire more than one first language when exposed to multiple languages early in life.
What the Bilingual Brain Reveals about Belief
Whereas the first language is a room, a second language acquired later in life is a window to it. The reason for Keysar et al.’s results is neurological: The brain uses fewer automatic emotional circuits when processing a second language, and thus frees itself from the influence of the amygdala on decision-making. This insight is no deficit. The identical belief, once studied in a second language, no longer possesses the power to control us. It can be held up against the light and scrutinized from all angles. This occurrence is not limited to the individual act of making a choice. Numerous studies have confirmed that people exhibit distinct personalities when communicating in their first versus their second languages. They tend to be more self-assured or more restrained. Psychometric tests confirm the differences, ranging from investigations of risk-taking behavior to emotional expression and even moral philosophy. This does not mean that bilingual speakers are somehow unreliable, but rather that a person’s holding certain beliefs is not something constant and free from language. On the contrary, it is partly built by the very language that is spoken. What you believe more than anything else regarding fairness, belongingness, and your rights cannot be merely expressed in your native language; it is partly made up by it, which means that encountering a second language is, at some level, an encounter with the contingency of your own convictions.
The Classroom as a Cognitive Threshold
None of this is lost in the language classroom, or rather, it should not be. If second language use does indeed establish some sort of psychological distance between a learner and emotionally charged beliefs and opinions, then the act of debating controversial topics in an L2 is not just a chance for a learner to practice their skills and abilities. In effect, such activities amount to engaging in the process of thinking differently about things one usually thinks about automatically, using one’s native language. This redefines the nature of communicative language classroom practice on a neurological level. A debate, a role play, a culture or an ethics discussion in the target language may well become exercises in defamiliarizing cognitive processes of learners, whether the language teacher intended them to be or not. However, this is not necessarily a pleasant experience. For example, it is reported by native Russian speakers that when speaking in English, they feel less fluent, less humorous, less emotional, and not truly themselves when using a second language, and neuroscience supports this experience rather than dismissing it. The diminished affective arousal that facilitates critical detachment is precisely what causes the experience of emotional expression to be dulled, the punchline of a joke to fall flat, and difficulty in speaking up in favor of something one believes in. It has nothing to do with lack of skill or effort. It is simply the price paid for working at the edge of cognitive capacity. Instructors who teach languages well, either instinctively or as a result of training, are acutely aware of this dynamic, and instead of trying to ignore it, they embrace it—for better or worse.
Further than we assumed
Now, let us return to the moral dilemma, to that problem which seemed somehow different when you worked out the reasoning behind it using a different language. The unease such discoveries typically cause is an unease worth considering. It is not the unease of being mistaken. Rather, it is the unease of discovering that being correct, or being convinced, or even believing anything at all, that all of this is less certain than you thought it was. Language goes all the way down. It determines the metaphorical structures by which we reason, the affective resonance with which we carry our beliefs, and the self who is doing the believing. To learn a second language is not to abandon any of those things. However, it is to gain an occasional outside perspective on them. The bulk of the mental scaffolding we occupy has been built long before we were capable of challenging it, in a tongue we did not speak, by a civilization that simply dropped it on our heads all at once. Learning another language, like REALLY learning it, past the point of grammar drills and into the territory where it starts to feel like thought, is one of the few ways available to us to step briefly outside that inheritance and look back at it. What you do with that view is, of course, up to you, but it helps to know that the window is there.
References
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Keysar, B., Hayakawa, S. L., & An, S. G. (2012). The foreign-language effect: Thinking in a foreign tongue reduces decision biases. Psychological Science, 23(6), 661–668.
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Ramirez-Esparza, N., Gosling, S. D., Benet-Martínez, V., Potter, J. P., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006). Do bilinguals have two personalities? A special case of cultural frame shifting. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(2), 99–120.
Shu, D., Xu, J., Zhang, H., & Tian, Z. (2024). Editorial: Second or foreign language learning and cognitive development. Frontiers in psychology, 14, 1354329. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1354329
Then & Now. (2020). Metaphors we live by: George Lakoff and Mark Johnson [YouTube Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYcQcwUfo8c
Pictures
- https://unsplash.com/photos/brown-wooden-surface-ZzWsHbu2y80 (Hannah Wright, Unsplash)
- https://unsplash.com/photos/a-persons-hand-holding-a-glowing-brain-model-9_jvKRbNdTM (TSD Studio, Unsplash)
- https://unsplash.com/photos/persons-hand-se3tHNszbkM (Billy Pasco, Unsplash)
Brianna Hamamoto is a returning Master’s student in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Capella University. She holds a BS in Public Health, an MS in Clinical Psychology, and JADP certification in Mental Health Counseling in Japan. She currently works at a private counseling practice and does part-time university work.