A Psycholinguistic Study of the Whorfian Hypothesis Based on the Japanese Passive.

In the translation part of this study, 22 Japanese short stories were translated into English by native speakers of English and 20 English short stories were translated into Japanese by Japanese. The passive passages in the Japanese version were classified into either adversative or non-adversative passive. (See related documents AL 001 564 and AL 001 565.) They were then compared with the corresponding passages in English to determine equivalence of translation. Distortion in translation was found to be in the direction of the translator's way of perceiving things in terms of his first language. The perception study compared the perception of Japanese with that of Americans by using stick figure cartoons depicting interpersonal conflict situations with negative outcomes. As hypothesized, Japanese were found to have a greater tendency than Americans to attribute responsibility to others. In order to separate the role of language from other crucial cultural factors in the perception of interpersonal events, 20 monolingual (English-speaking) Americans of Japanese ancestory and 90 Germans in Berlin were also tested. No significant differences were found between the Americans and Germans; but the English-speaking Japanese-Americans fell in between the Americans and the Japanese, closer to the Japanese. (DO)