http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiobJhogNnA
The short version is that if the language you speak requires different verbs for the present and the future, it causes you to think about it differently. Depending on the magnitude of the effect, this has important implications for construal level theory. If your language allows you to think about the future in Near mode, it may allow you to think about it more rationally.
Previous discussion on one of Keith Chen's papers here.
I've no problem stomaching these findings; I have no objections to weak priming effects, differences in ease or speed of categorization and the like, and it doesn't seem like Boroditsky is pushing a case for anything more. It's strong relativism that I have misgivings about (as well as, in this case, the way the folks in the video seem to have overlooked controlling for factors other than the linguistic ones).
Well yeah, strong relativism is a steaming pile of nonsense. But I'm not sure that you need strong relativism to get future-oriented behaviour differences, weak priming effects could well add up over time to produce noticeable differences in amount of savings over a long period.
What kind of factors did you have in mind? As far as I know they controlled for country, city, religion, income, family values.. probably some other stuff I can't remember. And at least some of the pairs of households he compared were in non-Western countries, again I can't remember off the top of my head.