Published: 11:08 PM, 19 September 2026
Language and Socio-Psychological Factors in Managing Climate Change
Dr. Kanan Purkayastha
When we differentiate between weather and climate, we say ‘Climate is what you expect, but weather is what you actually get.’ In fact, Weather describes the short-term, day-to-day atmospheric conditions, while climate refers to the long-term, predictable weather patterns of a specific region averaged over decades. To take various actions on weather and climate change, we need to consider language, socio-economic and psychological factors in addition to various scientific factors.
Cross-cultural research published in the American Anthropological Journal (2000) suggests that the way we speak depends on how much time we spend outside. The difference in speaking time outside and in the language is related to the weather. For example, speaking is not an outdoor activity in Viking weather, whereas in Africa it is on a bench under a bower in the sun. So, we see in southern languages more consonant-vowel syllables, because they are more powerful and travel further, and hence this is needed when someone works outside. But in northern languages, we see more consonant-vowel-consonant syllables, which require less power to pronounce.
Weather affects language in other ways, too. Places with a higher level of humidity tend to have languages with a higher proportion of vowels, for the same reason that tonal languages like Chinese emerge in humid climates. It is also observed that where there are areas of dense plant cover, you will see more sonorous vowels, which means high acoustic energy and volume, because they have to fight their way through all the foliage.
A research paper published in the Evolutionary Human Sciences (2024) suggests that climate and weather drive language evolution, but it does more than that. Climate also drives the evolution of human beliefs, known as ‘whorfianism’, which is based on the principle that the structure of a language dictates or influences how its speakers perceive and think about the world. This means that language influences worldview. In the context of extreme weather and climate change, linguists and cognitive scientists argue that shifting the terminology from passive or abstract concepts to active, human-centric language can significantly boost public engagement and climate action.
Other climate and weather-related behaviour are that the hotter and more humid a country is, the more pathogens it has to contend with and the more likely it is to subscribe to what look like socially conservative values. Research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (2017) suggests that an environment with a higher level of pathogens favours strict norms and rules to ensure nobody does anything unexpected. They tend to be collectivist- preferring community over the individual- because in a world of high contagion, an individual’s choice can have a devastating impact on the group. For similar reasons, such an environment predicts greater prejudice towards people who look different and becomes neophobic.
Besides pathogens and extreme weather, the variability of climate itself is a key influence on our beliefs. Extreme climate may produce inflexible belief systems, but highly variable ones tend to produce the opposite. Research carried out at Harvard by Nunn and Giuliano (2009) suggests that places with high levels of weather variation tend to produce people who are more open to change and less attached to tradition. This means variable climate tends to produce flexibility in our attitude, but an extremely hot and humid climate tends to make people more introverted and closed to new experiences and people.
While we consider various psychological, linguistic and socio-economic factors for implementing adaptation to extreme weather, there are limits and hard choices we need to bear in mind. There will be some hard and soft limits. For example, one of the hard physical limits is where land is lost to the sea. Soft limits are what people or the government can afford to pay or what inconvenience people are willing to live with. People can stay living in many coastal locations if the low-lying land can be raised. People can stay living in areas of extreme heat if they have access to indoor air-conditioned spaces.
Even if there is enough money available for adaptation tomorrow, there remain huge challenges in how adaptation is implemented. Sometimes adaptation makes people more vulnerable to climate impacts. This might happen straight away or over the long term and is called ‘maladaptation’. Schipper (2020), in his research on ‘maladaptation’ published in the journal One Earth, shows that individuals or households sometimes make the best choice they can with the information they have, or that adaptation planned and supported by government or international donors is poorly designed, which leads to maladaptation. Sometimes adaptation can also increase risks from climate change; if the action in one place is intended to reduce risks for some people, it actually increases them for others.
One example is that an adaptation program supporting people living along the river diverts water for irrigation; then people living downstream would have less water for irrigation. Another study published in the Environmental Hazards journal (2011) suggests that efforts to control floods in the South Asian region, such as in Bangladesh, left women without land unable to find food and resources to sell, making them more vulnerable to climate change. It is also to be noted that if the adaptation strategy encourages continued development along the low-lying coastline, but the cost of raising houses and managing the water coming up becomes too high or even unmanageable, it will not be economically viable to live with sea level rise in the coastal area.
In short, there are various ways one can implement mitigation and adaptation, such as by cutting greenhouse gas emissions through energy transition, rethinking transportation, adaptation to unavoidable climate impacts and promoting the circular economy. However, various socio-economic, psychological, behavioural and linguistic factors need to be considered when implementing adaptations to extreme weather and climate change. Hence, in addition to mitigation and adaptation, we need to rethink advocacy.
Dr. Kanan Purkayastha is a
UK-based academic scholar
who writes on science,
philosophy and education.
