Shoulda Taken That West Turn at Albuquerque?

Contrary to what the title implies, this post isn’t going to be about Bugs Bunny. . . . Well, not entirely about Bugs Bunny.

You see, most of the old ideas that language, on its own, can limit how we think and how we perceive the world have been discarded in the 70 plus years since Benjamin Lee Whorf introduced them. For example, Whorf proffered the idea that Native American languages impose a picture of reality on speakers that is totally different from say, English speakers. He said that because of constraints of the language, speakers of Native American languages would simply not be able to understand some of our most basic concepts, like the flow of time or the distinction between objects, like “stone”, and actions, like “fall”. And we’ve since come to know that these notions are entirely baseless. (You can read a good article in the New York Times Magazine on that very subject here.)

But one area where there seems to be striking evidence for the influence of language on thought is the language of space — how we describe the orientation of the world around us. And that area is going to be our primary playground for this post. However, as always, don’t be alarmed if I bring a lot of other toys with me to the playground.

Now, as you may recall, the line Bugs Bunny so routinely uttered in the classic Warner Brothers’ cartoons was, “I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque.”

He specified the direction “left” each time he emerged from his rabbit hole lost to indicate the route that would have taken him to his desired destination (Pismo Beach, Coney Island, Coachella Valley, etc.). And the joke was not only entertaining, but actually made some directional sense, because generally we, the viewers, had no notion of Bugs’ supposed orientation to Albuquerque as he approached it. Was he coming in from Mexico? Was he approaching from Los Angeles? Was he en route from Canada? Was he on his way in from Brooklyn? We never knew, so missing the left turn at Albuquerque could theoretically have steered him right to the Black Forest, or to the South Pole, or to a Bull Ring in Spain, or to whatever exotic location he mistakenly ended up.

Now, when we use directions like left, right, and behind, we are using what are called egocentric coordinates. In other words, we are using directional terms derived with us (our bodies) as the focal point when describing the orientation of the world around us (e.g. the nose hair trimmer is to my left, the karaoke microphone is in front of me, my collection of erotic sand paintings is on my right, and my pretense of sophistication is in the trash can behind me). So when Bugs laments about missing that left turn at Albuquerque, it is entirely in relation to him.

But what if, by a constraint of our language, we didn’t have egocentric coordinates? What if by some quirk of English, only geographical directions were available to us?

Geographical directions are very useful, and we use them quite often, especially when orienting ourselves in wide open spaces, or on large geographical scales. We say, “The mountains are to the east of the river” or “My sister lives on the south side of town” or “Go northwest on Highway 290 out of Houston to get to Austin.”

But what if geographical directions were all we had? How would we direct someone to the neighborhood gas station that’s two blocks down, and then left another two blocks, and then right for one block? How would we give someone directions to the bathroom at a dinner party? How would we explain on which side of the plate the salad fork goes? In which direction would we walk upon leaving the bank of elevators to get to the Vice President of Marketing’s office? How would we know on which side to pass the dutchie?

Communicating these ideas could be awkward. We’d have to instruct the motorist low on fuel to go west two blocks, south another two blocks, and then west again for another block to get to the gas station. The bathroom would be down the carpeted corridor, through the door most in need of a coat of paint. The salad fork would be that small-ish one on the side of the plate nearest Irene’s discarded gum. The VP of Marketing’s office would be east out of the bank of elevators, then south past the copy room, along the south-facing side of the building, three doors from the far southeast corner, across the hall from the utility closet. And I’m pretty sure someone would eventually wind up simply snatching the dutchie out of our hands while were thinking about all this.

Now, we probably could grow accustom to having only geographical directions, but the language constraints would still throw Bugs Bunny’s running joke into turmoil. Bugs would have to either keep missing the same direction at Albuquerque, say “west”, which would make his desired destination pretty much the same place every time. Or he would have to change the missed direction at Albuquerque every time, which would ruin the concept of a running joke. Either way, the gag would surely lose a little bit of its luster.

Of course, at this point, you’re probably thinking that I’ve just watched too many cartoons, and this entire post so far has been a sad by-product of the damage the brightly-colored fast-moving images have done to my cerebral cortex. And I’m really in no position to argue with you there. Except for the fact that there are indeed spoken languages in the world that have no egocentric coordinates. There are people that, in their speech, rely solely on geographical directions.

The Guugu Yimithirr, a remote Australian aboriginal people who speak the aptly named Guugu Yimithirrlanguage, are a good example. The Guugu Yimithirr language contains only geographical directions. It doesn’t make any use of egocentric coordinates at all.

Anthropologist John Haviland, and later linguist Stephen Levinson, showed the Guugu Yimithirr people have no words for “left”, “right”, “behind” or “in front of” to describe the positions of objects. In situations where an English speaker would use the egocentric system, the Guugu Yimithirr rely on cardinal directions. If they want you to move your big English-speaking ass over on the couch, they’ll say “move a bit to the east”. To tell you where they left your sub-machine gun, they’ll say, “I left it on the southern edge of the western table”. Or they would warn you to “look out for that murderous bear just north of your face”.

Even when observing something in a two dimensional context, like on a photograph or on film, the Guugu Yimithirr use geographical directions to describe the setting based on the orientation of the picture or screen. So for example, if a grainy sasquatch on a television screen that was facing north was lumbering away from the camera after looking back over his shoulder, they would say the sasquatch was “moving southward”. Their language of orientation is different then ours, but it is no less effective.

Guugu Yimithirr is a fascinating case of a geographical language, but languages that rely on geographical coordinates are not rare. As it happens, they are scattered around the world, from Polynesia to Mexico, from Namibia to Bali. And the speakers of those languages all seem to communicate quite efficiently.

And, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this system, the speakers seem to know instinctively where the cardinal directions are at every waking moment of their lives. They refer to the “west side” of something as easily as we refer to the “right side” of something. They don’t have to stop and think about it. In fact, the talent is reported to be so strong that one story relates how a speaker of Tzeltal in southern Mexico was blindfolded and spun around more than 20 times in a darkened room. Still blindfolded and presumably dizzy, he pointed out, without hesitation, the geographic directions.

Of course, there may be some embellishment to such accounts, but we can imagine taking the instantaneous referencing of the personal axis — the skill that we employ without thought when we use egocentric coordinates — and projecting that out on a broader, geographical scale. It may seem cumbersome for us, because we are conditioned to use egocentric coordinates, but were we conditioned from childhood to use geographical directions, the skill would likely come as easily and as seamlessly.

But there are indications that geographical language speakers do occasionally run into problems egocentric language speakers do not. For example, Canadian-American musicologist Colin McPheespent several years on Bali in the 1930s. McPhee often recounted the story of a young boy who demonstrated some talent for dancing. There were no dance instructors in the boy’s village, so McPhee sent him to a teacher in a different village. Both teacher and student spoke a geographical language, but after a few days, they were ready to quit. It turned out to be difficult to teach the boy any complex steps, because he simply did not understand any of the instructions. When told to take “three steps east” or “bend southwest,” he didn’t know what to do, because he had been removed from the reference points of his normal surroundings. The boy would not have had any trouble with the directions in his own village, but because the landscape in the new village was entirely unfamiliar, he became disoriented and confused.

A dancer using egocentric coordinates would never encounter such a problem.

It might be fun, however, to attempt a dance like the Hokey Pokey using geographical direction instead of egocentric. It certainly would add a whole new level of difficulty. “You put your east southeast foot in. You take your east southeast foot out. You put your east southeast foot in and you shake it all about.” Plus, since the Hokey Pokey is done in a circle, the caller would have to designate a different direction foot or hand for every person in the circle. The Hokey Pokey would take forever!

Oh, and it has been demonstrated in a series of experiments that how we perceive colors is influenced by our native tongue as well. There are radical variations in the way languages carve up the spectrum of visible light; for example, green and blue are distinct colors in English but are considered shades of the same color in many languages. So if we combine that with a geographical language, playing Twister also becomes an entirely new challenge. “East foot, low grade blue shade.” “West hand, yellow.” “West foot, middle grade blue shade.”

And we don’t even want to get into the languages that assign gender to everything.

But strange surroundings, novelty dances, party games, and Benny Hill skits aside, as we can see, where the differences may not be monumental, or extremely detrimental to cross-cultural communication, or even oppressive to one language as Whorf suggested for the Native American languages, the manner in which we describe how we are oriented in space does indeed affect how we think. The two systems of direction determine certain habits of thought. If one is obliged to convey direction in a particular way because of language constraints, he or she is going to develop habits of thought that help him or her operate more efficiently within the constraint.

And there doesn’t have to be a complete rejection of other systems, if one is aware of them, as would be the case with most English speakers. In fact, in many cases, we might find the habits of thought by a speaker due not to a constraint of language at all, but due simply to the system most predominant in a given vernacular. So for example, an English-speaking deep sea fishing guide certainly knows what “right” and “left” mean and she knows how to use the terms, but she may nonetheless demonstrate habits of thought that are more conducive to conveying geographical directions (or even nautical directions), because that is the prevailing system in her world. By contrast, an English-speaking shoe salesman certainly knows what “east” and “west” mean and he knows how to use the terms, but he may nonetheless demonstrate habits of thought that are more conducive to conveying egocentric coordinates, because that is the prevailing system in his world.

Now, it’s not clear if one system of direction is inherently better than the other. It is just not easy for us to fully conceive how geographical speakers experience the world, with cardinal directions imposed on any mental picture or memory. Nor is it easy to speculate about how geographic languages affect areas of experience other than spatial orientation. Do they influence the speaker’s sense of identity? Or bring about a less-egocentric outlook on life? Plus, the drawbacks the geographical system encounters at close quarters, the egocentric system encounters in larger scale settings. So the concepts of better or worse may not be things we can consider, or even should consider.

But if we put the derogatory ideas of Whorf aside and examine the subject critically, we see that language does affect how we think.

And that only leaves us to ponder what Bugs Bunny’s running joke would be given a geographical language. Whatever it would be, I think Bugs would be proud that I was able to work a reference to him, the Hokey Pokey, Twister, and Benny Hill into a one post.

And as you all know, I’m nothing if not obsessed with seeking the approval of a sarcastic cartoon rabbit.