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Odors are expressible in language, as long as you speak the right language

Majid, Asifa and Burenhult, Niclas LU (2014) In Cognition 130(2). p.266-270
Abstract
From Plato to Pinker there has been the common belief that the experience of a smell is impossible to put into words. Decades of studies have confirmed this observation. But the studies to date have focused on participants from urbanized Western societies. Cross-cultural research suggests that there may be other cultures where odors play a larger role. The Jahai of the Malay Peninsula are one such group. We tested whether Jahai speakers could name smells as easily as colors in comparison to a matched English group. Using a free naming task we show on three different measures that Jahai speakers find it as easy to name odors as colors, whereas English speakers struggle with odor naming. Our findings show that the long-held assumption that... (More)
From Plato to Pinker there has been the common belief that the experience of a smell is impossible to put into words. Decades of studies have confirmed this observation. But the studies to date have focused on participants from urbanized Western societies. Cross-cultural research suggests that there may be other cultures where odors play a larger role. The Jahai of the Malay Peninsula are one such group. We tested whether Jahai speakers could name smells as easily as colors in comparison to a matched English group. Using a free naming task we show on three different measures that Jahai speakers find it as easy to name odors as colors, whereas English speakers struggle with odor naming. Our findings show that the long-held assumption that people are bad at naming smells is not universally true. Odors are expressible in language, as long as you speak the right language. (Less)
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author
and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
in
Cognition
volume
130
issue
2
pages
266 - 270
publisher
Elsevier
external identifiers
  • pmid:24355816
  • wos:000331420600011
  • scopus:84890647722
ISSN
0010-0277
DOI
10.1016/j.cognition.2013.11.004
project
Language, cognition and landscape: understanding cross-cultural and individual variation in geographical ontology
language
English
LU publication?
yes
additional info
The information about affiliations in this record was updated in December 2015. The record was previously connected to the following departments: Humanities Lab (015101200), Linguistics and Phonetics (015010003)
id
53a10ef5-dff7-4d6d-b906-a804e2cb74f7 (old id 4145718)
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 09:17:36
date last changed
2023-11-30 02:58:24
@article{53a10ef5-dff7-4d6d-b906-a804e2cb74f7,
  abstract     = {{From Plato to Pinker there has been the common belief that the experience of a smell is impossible to put into words. Decades of studies have confirmed this observation. But the studies to date have focused on participants from urbanized Western societies. Cross-cultural research suggests that there may be other cultures where odors play a larger role. The Jahai of the Malay Peninsula are one such group. We tested whether Jahai speakers could name smells as easily as colors in comparison to a matched English group. Using a free naming task we show on three different measures that Jahai speakers find it as easy to name odors as colors, whereas English speakers struggle with odor naming. Our findings show that the long-held assumption that people are bad at naming smells is not universally true. Odors are expressible in language, as long as you speak the right language.}},
  author       = {{Majid, Asifa and Burenhult, Niclas}},
  issn         = {{0010-0277}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{2}},
  pages        = {{266--270}},
  publisher    = {{Elsevier}},
  series       = {{Cognition}},
  title        = {{Odors are expressible in language, as long as you speak the right language}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.11.004}},
  doi          = {{10.1016/j.cognition.2013.11.004}},
  volume       = {{130}},
  year         = {{2014}},
}