Does the language you speak really affect how you see the future?

Does the language you speak really affect how you see the future? | Digg Science:

'via Blog this'

The way people discuss the future varies from language to language. Some have a well-defined future tense, while others distinguish much between present and future. But does this point of grammar actually affect how we see the world?

As you may have seen in some recent reports elsewhere in the blogosphere, that question forms the basis for a new paper by Yale researcher Keith Chen. Chen - who, it should be pointed out, is an economist, not a linguist - is currently working on a paper in which he examines the effect of the future tense in different cultures' future-oriented behavior.

The idea is that some languages have very clear grammar governing the future tense - like in English, how we can distinguish between "I am doing something" and "I will do something" - whereas other languages don't. His hypothesis is that the former, the so-called strong future time references (FTR) languages, are more likely to make poor decisions in terms of planning for the future, which means higher rates of obesity, debt, smoking, drinking, and so forth.