Language Clues Can Mislead Cultural Psychologists

literally means “I am shortly at home,” which has the same meaning in English as “I’ll be home soon.”

When we learn that a language lacks a future tense, we may be tempted to imagine that people who speak the language think differently about time. Maybe Estonians, for example, are less oriented toward the future than English speakers are. Maybe they’re less likely to save money and buy life insurance. Maybe Estonians are less punctual when meeting others because the “present” extends farther in time than it does for English speakers.

These are intriguing guesses, but in this case, we have a linguistic clue that has led us down the wrong path. To my knowledge, there is no evidence that the lack of a future tense is associated with differences in thinking about the future, planning for the future, or being punctual. All languages can clearly communicate when an action or event will occur. Some languages use verb tenses to perform this function, while others use time markers.

This pattern of pronoun usage suggests that, in Japan, one's identity varies at least slightly across different situations. In other words, we can hypothesize that the typical Japanese sense of self is more sensitive to context and more dependent on others than the typical American sense of self. In fact, Japanese and American researchers have conducted dozens of studies to examine self-concepts in Japan and the United States . In these studies, American participants typically experience and present a sense of self that is autonomous, stable, and separate from others. Japanese participants typically experience and present a sense of self that is flexible and contingent on others.

Yes, they never think or talk about the future.

Interesting. I wonder if we all should stop thinking about the future and stay in the now, now that the future is so bleak. Between climate change impacts and the government response by evermore fossil fuel production, a lot of people are going to be very, very miffed. And sad.

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