Language Entails Linguistic Relativity

Abstract

AbstractThis commentary addresses the challenge of linking an individual‐grounded theory of concepts to a phenomenon that assumes conceptual conventions at population level (linguistic relativity). We distinguish I‐concepts (individual, interior, imagistic) from L‐concepts (linguistic, labeled, local) and see that quite different causal processes are often conflated under the term “concepts.” I argue that the Grounded Cognition Model (GCM) entails linguistic relativity only to the extent that it imports L‐concepts into its scope, which it can hardly avoid doing given that practitioners require language to coordinate around their theory and findings. I conclude that what entails linguistic relativity is not the GCM but language itself.