How much does speech reveal about our beliefs?

I ran across an interesting blog post this morning from Barry Ritholtz, a market strategist whose blog (The Big Picture, which I link to on the right panel of this blog) is a consistently solid source for non-mainstream market insights. He noticed that there were significant differences in the way market action (specifically, the bond market) was being described within the investment community:

Consider the following overheard phrases, each of which come from traders, fund managers, and strategists:

The first two reflect a certain belief in the rationality of markets: “Bonds are pricing in a deflationary outcome” is how one strategist described it. Another...said that “the fixed income market is discounting a double dip.”

But a fund manager described it quite differently, relying on language of sentiment: “Traders fear an economic slowdown.”

The actual language used suggest clear theoretical underpinnings:  The first two speakers are likely adherents of the efficient market hypothesis. They consider market action to reflect the collective knowledge of all participants...The second is a behavioral economics approach.

Barry is dead on. The words we choose--not necessarily what we say, but how we say it--can be incredibly revealing as to the assumptions and beliefs that we operate under. His post reminded me of a Wall Street Journal article from last month, which examined the linkages between language and culture:

Take "Humpty Dumpty sat on a..." Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say "sat" rather than "sit." In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can't) change the verb to mark tense. 

In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Dumpty did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting event was completed or not. If our ovoid hero sat on the wall for the entire time he was meant to, it would be a different form of the verb than if, say, he had a great fall. 

In Turkish, you would have to include in the verb how you acquired this information. For example, if you saw the chubby fellow on the wall with your own eyes, you'd use one form of the verb, but if you had simply read or heard about it, you'd use a different form.

 The Journal article went further:

For example, in Pormpuraaw, a remote Aboriginal community in Australia, the indigenous languages don't use terms like "left" and "right." Instead, everything is talked about in terms of absolute cardinal directions (north, south, east, west), which means you say things like, "There's an ant on your southwest leg." To say hello in Pormpuraaw, one asks, "Where are you going?", and an appropriate response might be, "A long way to the south-southwest. How about you?" If you don't know which way is which, you literally can't get past hello.

I found this to be fascinating. The Pormpuraawans, it turns out, have an incredible gift for sense of direction. Without being told, they know at all times which direction they are facing, without need for a compass. This focus impacts much of the way they view the world, including such seemingly unrelated topics as the passage of time. (If you have time, read the whole Journal article, linked to below. It really is interesting.)

The lingering question is whether the language itself is to credit for the Pormpuraawans' sense of direction, or if the language evolved to reflect their lifestyle. Do we consciously decide the way we speak based on our beliefs? Or does our native language shape those beliefs without us even realizing it?

Either way, as any relocated northerner who's been mocked for using the word "wicked" in Virginia (who, me?) would know, we can give away a lot of information about ourselves without realizing it, simply by the words we choose. It can also help us to understand others, and where they might be coming from.


[The Big Picture] 
[Wall Street Journal]