Thinking in your own language

While working with an executive living abroad, I noticed that their language changed with the topic.

When they talked about their family or their past, they spoke in Turkish. When they started describing their current work environment, English words settled into their sentences on their own. Telling some work experiences entirely in English felt more natural to them.

Each of these shifts was very fluid. It was as if some parts of their life had been recorded in Turkish, and others in English.

After that session, I began to think more about the relationship between language and thought. Could the language in which we describe something also affect how we approach it?

Some memories come with a language

In their research with people who speak Russian and English, Viorica Marian and Ulric Neisser examined how language affects the recall of personal memories.

When participants were interviewed in Russian, they recalled more memories from the periods of their lives when they spoke Russian. In the interviews conducted in English, memories from the English-speaking periods came more easily.

The research suggests that language can create a kind of context during recall. When the language we use to remember matches the language spoken at the time of the memory, that memory can become easier to reach.

This does not mean every memory belongs to a single language. Still, in our own lives we may notice that certain words take us more quickly to a particular period or relationship.

When you think of your childhood, in which language do sentences come to mind? When you remember the voice of someone in your family, in which language do you hear it?

Sometimes language shapes not only what we remember, but how we remember it.

Working life has its own language too

For an executive working abroad, the language of working life is often the language of the country they live in, or English. Meetings take place in that language. Presentations and feedback conversations happen in it too.

After a while, some work-related concepts may begin to form directly in that language. Even when the equivalent in one’s mother tongue is known, it may not feel as if it carries the same meaning.

Even so, the language we use constantly at work can put a certain distance between us and something we are going through. When we describe a major career decision in familiar professional phrases, we may leave behind the side of the issue that actually touches us.

When we start to talk about the same subject in Turkish, different words may come. The tone of a sentence may change. A feeling we had not noticed before may come to the surface.

This is where one of the valuable sides of living between two languages appears. When we look at the same subject in another language, we can notice how our thinking changes.

Which language is spoken in a coaching session?

My coaching sessions with Turkish executives living abroad mostly take place in Turkish. Even so, some expressions from working life come in English. Sometimes the person I am coaching switches entirely to English while describing an experience.

Which word comes in which language can itself be part of the thinking process. You may notice that you are more distant when talking about something in English and more emotional in Turkish. The opposite can happen too.

What matters is not so much choosing one language, but noticing what changes in you when the language changes.

Questions to ask yourself

• In which language do I mostly think about work-related matters?
• Does my view change when I think about an important decision in the other language?
• On which topics do I need distance?

Living between two languages can offer the chance to look at the same subject from more than one place. Sometimes one language brings us closer to the experience. The other helps us step back and look at it.

Noticing which language helps when can be a way of getting to know our own way of thinking more closely.

Related page: Coaching for executives abroad