Introduction
People have always been fascinated about how language affects their thoughts or even the process of thinking. Considering this thought, is it then right to say that people from different language groups speak differently? This paper’s thesis statement argues that language simply serves as a medium of communication and is therefore only a means that can be used to interpret how unique and different people and groups of people are from each other.
The argument that suggests that language affects people’s thoughts is based on the idea that language is what determines how moral or crooked one group of people’s thoughts and actions would be relative to that of other groups . For the notion that suggests that language directly affects people’s thoughts to be true, the underlying principle to which it is dependent on must be back-tested to be true as well. Unfortunately, the latter is something that may not only be hard to prove ; it may even be fallacious.
Theories that suggest that Language Affects Thoughts
For starters, there are numerous previously published works and literatures about this topic. There is a mixture of anecdotes about this topic, some of which are affirmative. Some, on the other hand, oppose the said notion about how the uniqueness of one’s language may be correlated with the uniqueness of one’s thoughts.
In Whorf’s (1956) book entitled Language, Thought, and Reality, he drew a line that connected the three variables namely language, the way how people think, and their perception of reality. The thesis of that book suggested that the human way of perceiving the world and the things that surround him is influenced by the structure of the language he speaks. A person’s way of thinking (i.e. thought) is also influenced by language structure in the same way, at least according to Whorf (1956). Some of the examples he mentioned include the way how the Mayans and Shawnees’ perceptions on reality and thought processes different from each other. Mayans, for example, were fond of creating pyramids and burial mounds as a form of demonstration of their language and culture; they also managed to create a relatively well-structure form of government. The Shawnees, on the other hand, were unique in that they managed to adapt to a more modern era of civilization. Now there are many geopolitical factors that may have affected the fates of these two social and language-based groups but if one is to use Whorf’s explanation purely, their realities and fates were largely shaped by their language structure.
Now who is Whorf and what makes him and his ideas about the relationship between language and the process of thinking credible? Benjamin Lee Whorf was an American who worked as a fire prevention engineer; he simultaneously published numerous studies centered on sociolinguistic theories about grammar, usage, and differences between people’s world experience. As a young man belonging to the chemical engineering profession, he grew so skeptic about how language affects man’s living experience. This prompted him to study linguistics. One of the first things he focused his attention on was the Biblical Hebrew and other old books. This got him exposed to various indigenous languages. From his independent studies, he managed to make meaningful deductions and inferences about how society, culture, and language evolved side by side. He became more knowledgeable in this field until his initial works enabled him to attract a significant following in the academic community. Arguably, among his works, the most prominent one and at the same time relevant to this discussion on language and society, would be the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Basically, this was an academic concept he and his mentor Edward Sapir developed. For a brief background on who Edward Sapir was, he was essentially a colleague of Whorf who specialized in anthropology and of course linguistics. Together, they created and popularized the hypothesis that suggests that the structural characteristics of a language can be held accountable for the speakers of that particular language’s cognition and world view. The existence of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis has created a divergence between linguistics and a more contemporary field which is cognitive science. This is, in fact, one of the avenues of criticism for the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. It cannot be denied that Sapir and Whorf are experts in the field of linguistics, anthropology, and even sociology at some point as these fields can be inherently related. However, it might indeed be questionable for them to develop a hypothesis that is based on a relatively more distant field that is cognitive science.
Despite this source of objection, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis still became one of the most prominent concepts that experts in the field often referred to as a possibly valid explanation to the different world views, experiences, and thought processes of people. Over the years, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis has evolved. It previously had a more conservative version, one that sounds more absolute as far as its explanation of the relationship between language and cognition is concerned. This is essentially a more hardline stance on the more contemporary but still Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis-based ideas that are available today. That conservative version suggests that language structure determines one’s linguistic and cognitive outcomes. The key in understanding the more conservative approach is to know that it sees language’s role in one’ linguistic and cognitive development as hard-coded or even evolutionary; the more contemporary version is basically a toned-down version of that. In an era where man knows that there are simply so much that is left unknown and that more absolute and aggressive assertions would most likely lead to more misconceptions, the more contemporary version of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis grew to be the one that is more accepted. It basically sees language not as a hardcoded determinant but rather a mere influencer to one’s linguistic and cognitive development. Some critics of the weaker version of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis suggest that it symbolizes the acceptance of defeat—that there, in reality, is no place for Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis-based ideas about language and thinking. This argument only makes sense because analyzing the weaker version of the hypothesis shows that it essentially recognizes that there are other variables that may affect cognition and though processes, aside from language (that is not present within the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis’ conceptual framework). In other literatures, the terms linguistic determinism and linguistic relativism may be used. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis’ linguistic determinism is basically the more hardline stance on language and thinking relationship. Linguistic relativism, on the other hand, is the more accepted and weaker version of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis which sees language as a mere influencer and not a hardcoded determinant of linguistic and cognitive categories.
Boas-Jakobson is an alternative hypothesis about linguistic relativity. It suggests that “languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey” . This means that language may be open to a lot of interpretations but one universal rule that may be applied to avoid misconceptions about it is to remember that they differ in what they must convey; that they can essentially convey anything, depending on how the receiver of the language plans to interpret it. Between the two, the Boas-Jakobson hypothesis is the more realistic. It does not present a pure stance about the language and thinking relationship but it is more acceptable and realistic compared to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Still, it can be used to explain that language and thinking may indeed be related and that the former affects the latter significantly.
Lera Boroditsky, another contemporary linguist, is popular for being a proponent of Whorf’s linguistic relativity. She and her research support the idea that language affects how people think and behave. Currently, she conducts studies to further the research on linguistic relativity. In one of her work entitled Does Language Shape Thought? Mandarin and English Speakers’ Conceptions of Time , she argued and proved that the weak version of linguistic relativity worked as evidenced by the observation that English speakers’ perception of time was analogous to their conception of spatial and horizontal movements whereas that of the Mandarin speakers were more associative to vertical movements.
Theories that suggest that Language does not affect Thoughts
The problem with the hypotheses in the sections above such as Whorf’s stance on the issue, however, is that they lack a basis that sets forth the most correct or at least the most accepted way of thinking or perception on reality. This basis would also serve as the one from which the language examples they used in their respective works would be based on. For example, how could Whorf accurately say that the people who spoke the Mayan language had a different perception on reality and process of thinking relative to other people? It was only natural for the Mayans to experience a different fate, social structure, culture, among other different things because they lived in a different part of the American continent. As opposed to the Shawnees (as yet another example) who were more scattered and as a result were more exposed to various social and political stimuli. Moreover, the Mayans did not suffer from the same kind of invasion that the Shawnees and other cultural groups mentioned in Whorf’s book did.
It would of course be convenient to suggest that Mayans and Hopis spoke two different languages and therefore perceived the world in different ways; and thought differently, with Mayans speaking their native language, which can be anything from the Cholan-Tzeltalan to the Yucatecan major groups and Hopis speaking any of the four varieties of it namely the Polcacca, Toreva, Sipaulovi, and Oraibi, may be one of the collective effects of their experiences and thought processes instead of the other way around. It was very convenient to point that fact because those two groups of people had different culture. So maybe culture was the one thing that set the difference and not language, but even this may be a mere product of speculation, just like the notion about how language affects the way how people think.
Mooney et al. (2011) argued that language can affect a group of people’s ethnic and cultural identity. Mooney is a professor of language and society in University of Roehampton in London. Ethnic and culture are some of the things that make a group of people’s unique. They, unlike language, directly affect people’s thoughts. Mooney et al.’s (2011) may be opposed to what the author of this paper suggests about the correlation between language and thoughts but it provides a more valid explanation on how that happens. Mooney et al.’s premise is based on the argument ethnicity and cultures are products of language. If one is to follow what Whorf (1956) said about language—that it affects how a person thinks, then linearly, one can deduct that language indeed affects the way how a person thinks, although in this example, Mooney et al.’s (2011) main argument was used.
This was debunked by McWhorter’s (2014) work entitled The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language. John McWhorter is a popular political commentator, critic, academic, and a professor of linguistics at the Columbia University. Perhaps the most pronounced example he used in the book was the way how people from a certain culture or ethnic group would have a corresponding term or concept that may be used to substitute a similarly natured term or concept that may be found in another culture or ethnic group.
The Japanese, as an example, perceives the colors green and blue the same way how Russians do. They know how both the colors green and blue look like. The main difference is that they do not have the same language or term that is being used to name or describe those colors. This example from McWhorter’s book proves two things. Firstly, it proves that language is not the differentiating factor that explains how people from different cultural or national group think differently. In fact, McWhorter did not stop short of calling this idea about language a hoax.
This was essentially the same thesis that was raised by Deutscher (2010) when he published about language. Deutscher is a popular Israeli linguist who currently teaches language and cultural studies at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. According to him, speakers of different languages do not think in similar ways and so language cannot be used as an answer to the question on what sets people apart. If anything, it is the uniqueness of the way how people think that may set them apart from the others, regardless whether they speak the same language or not.
Montgomery (1995), a linguistics expert who also published The Discourse of Broadcast News, asserted that language plays a key role in modern society; in one’s social life, career, and education. However, it would still be wrong to suggest that language can and should be used as a lens that can accurately differentiate how and why certain people think differently compared to others. It is a farfetched idea that has been debunked numerous times.
In various fields, this idea about language has been consistently rejected. In philosophy, for example, it is argued that cognition is what causes and therefore creates language and not the other way around . So far, the correlational studies and notions about language and thinking have been inverted. The arguments that suggest that language affect thinking directly are so far weak and in this case, it may even be safe to say that they are fallacious.
Conclusions
In conclusion, it is definitely convenient to say that language is the one thing that determines how similar or differently two groups of people (presumably from two different ethnic or cultural groups) would think or perceive the world. After all, they have different languages. However, those arguments are based on the notion that language and a group of people’s way of thinking are the only two variables affecting each other—which clearly is not the case.
Culture, ethnicity, and cognition are just some of the other things that may affect an individual’s way of thinking aside from language and for most of the works that were reviewed in this paper that were affirmative to that argument, those other factors were not included. So no, language may be one factor but it cannot be used to tell the whole story as to why certain groups of people think differently relative to the others.Bibliography
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