Trusting the future in different languages: exploring differences in future-focused attitudinal trust among Speakers of languages with strong and weak future time references.

Futureless languages, or those described in the field of linguistics as having a weak Future Time Reference (FTR), allow their speakers to use the present tense when talking about the future while other languages do not. For example, it is grammatically acceptable for speakers of futureless languages to say the equivalent of: “Next week, I work on the project” while speakers of languages with a strong FTR are required to say the equivalent of: “Next week, I will work on the project”. This linguistic difference may cause speakers to either view the future as a continuation of the present (weak FTR) or as distant and distinct from the present (strong FTR) and as a result act in different ways. For example, Chen suggests that future time orientation in languages is associated with levels of risk-avoidance behaviours. This article explores the possibility that a relationship exists between such future time orientation in languages and other future-focused attitudinal variables such as trust. Following initial consideration of the relationship between language, thought and behaviour, an analysis of research into the relationship between future orientation in language, risk-avoidance behaviour and levels of trust is presented. The article then turns to the results of an empirical study designed to explore the possibility that a relationship may exist between future orientation in languages and levels of trust displayed by the speakers of those languages. Our hope is that this exploration of a feature of language(s) and potentially associated attitudes informs some of the debates around the complex relationships between language(s), identity and interculturalism that are at the heart of this volume