Language and its influence on thoughts
Language is a form of a communication system between people and can be spoken or written. The diverse world population has 5651 kinds of different languages, and there has been a question of whether speaking a certain language has an effect on the way a person thinks. Since the 1940s when Benjamin Lee Whorf suggested that language influences people’s way of thinking, linguists have done continued research into this subject matter. When you think about it, the thought that talking French may make you think is not so farfetched. However, there are more factors involved when a thought crosses one’s mind. For instance, one’s culture, the environment, the tradition. The way one has been raised will definitely shape their way of thinking. When Whorf studied the Hopi tribe of North America, he found that their perception of time was quite different from the rest of the English speaking world. The Hopi people did not have a word for time, or any grammatical construction, and therefore, there was no way for them to perceive it since they could not talk about it, nor think it. But it is possible for one to think about something that does not have a word. Because people do not have words for everything that exists. It is definitely possible for a person to think about images and feel emotions that cannot be described in words. For instance, there are countless colors in the world, and all do not have specific names, but we can see and think about them. Just like the little flower Corona showed us in class.
Conversely, a study by Michael Frank of MIT brought to light the fact that a language with more words results in more thoughts. He and his colleagues studied a community in the Amazon that does not contain words for numbers, and therefore, they could not count. They could only describe the number through generalization. They had a word for a small number, a slightly large number, and for a very large number. He concluded that more words meant more thoughts, which could suggest that people who speak languages with more words experience more thoughts, but the words do not change their way of thinking.
In New Guinea, the Dani tribe only has two names for color; one generalizes dark colors while the other generalizes bright colors. Their language does not provide grammatical constructions for different colors, but this does not mean they cannot think them, or see them. It is just like how the English language names pink and red as two different colors, when in reality, in my perspective, pink is just a lighter shade of red. Therefore, to some extent, language does affect how we think, but it does not limit us to think within its confines. Language gives us a way of grouping objects; for instance, the word dog generalizes all the ‘types of dogs’ as we know them, but a child who is still learning language may see a cat and call it dog since they have not yet fully learnt the language that puts cat in a different category. For that reason, it seems that language barely influences our thoughts, but has a significant influence on how we split reality and label different categories. It is possible that the only difference between people is not their thoughts, but how they speak. We all notice the same things and think similar thoughts, but how we talk and express them is where the difference comes in.
