Does Your Language Shape How You Think?

Does Your Language Shape How You Think?

The debate of whether Language influences human thought structure strongly influences human perception and thoughts of the world (Robinson-Reigler, 2012). However, he argued that perception is endless. The master linguist Whorf Benjamin contended that Language people’s mother tongue constrains their minds, preventing them from thinking certain thoughts. This idea was strongly challenged by some hard facts. For example, Deutscher (2010) finds that when humans learn a new language, they unintentionally also learn a whole new way of perceiving the world. It is known that bilingual humans start to think differently the moment they switch to another language. Get in touch with us at eminencepapers.com. We offer assignment help with high professionalism.

The evidence that when people switch to speaking a new Language, they also change their thoughts is apparent. Some research studies have shown that Language shapes how humans think about objects, colors, time, and space (Mykhailyuk & Pohlod, 2015). Other studies show the effects of Language on how people reason regarding causality and construe happenings. Comprehend material substance, track numbers, choose to risk, experience and perceive emotion, and how they reason regarding other humans’ minds (Mykhailyuk & Pohlod, 2015). For instance, people who speak English tend to speak about duration from the perspective of length, such as ‘the meeting was not long’ or ‘that was a brief meeting.’ On the other hand, Greek and Spanish speakers tend to speak about duration from the perspective of amount. One may find them using words such as little or big as opposed to long or short (Mykhailyuk & Pohlod, 2015).

Similarly, German, French, and Spanish speakers associate some words with gender. For instance, in French, the word ‘la Voiture means the car and is perceived as feminine, and ‘le Japon’ means masculine, meaning Japanese. The word ‘apple’ in Spanish is also feminine. Some speakers, like Japanese and English, do not assign gender to words. These examples show that the effects of Language have some influences on how we think because when an English speaker learns French, they are likely to think of Japan as male or a car as female and perceive those objects differently. However, these influences are more focused on how humans break up the real world into classifications and then label them. By doing so, humans perceive the world differently.

References

Deutscher, G. (2010). Does your Language shape how you Think?

Mykhailyuk, O.Y. & Pohlod, H.Y. (2015). The Languages we Speak affect our Perceptions of the World. Journal of Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University, 2(2-3), pp. 36-41.

Robinson-Reigler, B. (2012). Cognitive Psychology: Applying the Science of the Mind. Boston: Pearson Allyn & Bacon.

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In this discussion forum, you will examine what language says about how the human mind works. More specifically, you will consider whether the language people speak (including the words that are available to them and the way words are organized to convey meaning) merely offers a window into human cognition or it can actually affect the way people perceive and understand the world. Please note that your answer to this question needs be supported by scientific evidence. For your initial post, complete the steps below:

Does Your Language Shape How You Think.

Watch the videos, Steven Pinker: What our Language Habits RevealLinks to an external site. And Keith Chen: Could your Language Affect your Ability to Save Money? Links to an external site. On the links between language and cognition.
Read The New York Times article Does Your Language Shape How You Think? Links to an external site. To further your understanding of the links between language and cognition.
Access the University of Arizona Global Campus Library and Google Scholar, review the psycholinguist literature, and then select a research article that offers an answer to the question of whether language shapes perceptions and thoughts or merely reflects them. Share the evidence you have uncovered and your critical examination of such evidence with the class. Your initial post must include a minimum of 200 words.