For example, thinking for language (i.e., thinking about speaking) might allow language to bias our attention toward the more linguistically describable aspects of what we perceive (Slobin, 1996), but this does not mean that language alters the underlying conceptual structures.

In the middle are a variety of standpoints, some of which are more limiting of the role of language than others. Although there is no agreement as to where between these two opposing views the truth is situated, the broad consensus is that neither extreme is correct (Gleitman & Papafragou, 2013). At the opposite extreme is the “universalist” position, in which thought is said to be independent of language (e.g., Pinker, 1994 see Lucy, 2016, for a historical overview). In its strongest incarnation-linguistic determinism-thought is constrained by language, but few if any contemporary scholars take this view (Athanasopoulos, 2009). The Sapir–Whorf or linguistic relativity hypothesis-henceforth, simply “relativity” (Whorf, 1956)-takes various forms, but at its heart it contends that the idiosyncrasies of the languages we speak influence the way we think about the world.

We also argue that it remains unclear whether grammatical gender is in fact a useful tool for investigating relativity. Overall, we found that support was strongly task- and context-dependent, and rested heavily on outcomes that have clear and equally viable alternative explanations. We classified the findings in terms of their support for this hypothesis and assessed the results against parameters previously identified as potentially influencing outcomes.

We systematically reviewed 43 pieces of empirical research examining grammatical gender and thought, which together tested 5,895 participants. In the context of research assessing the potential for language to influence thought (the linguistic relativity hypothesis), a number of scholars have investigated whether grammatical gender assignment “rubs off” on concepts themselves, such that Italian speakers might conceptualize beds as more masculine than Spanish speakers do. Many languages assign nouns to a grammatical gender class, such that “bed” might be assigned masculine gender in one language (e.g., Italian) but feminine gender in another (e.g., Spanish).

Assigning gender to inanimate objects