·How does language influence the way we think, act, and perceive the world?

Answer 1

This has to be one of the best questions been asked on Yahoo Answers. I never gave much thought to what you have asked here but after migrating to the united states of America I became aware that language goes far deeper than just being a means of communication. A Gujarati speaking person thinks differently than someone who's native language is diff rent than his language. When I hear a word "mango" or "banyan tree" it carries a different picture for me than my American friends. All these become more problematic when you are dealing with the creative writing. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Your brain is one of the bigger energy users in your body, consuming about 20% of the total base metabolic energy. Make no mistake - thinking is WORK.

It is likewise easily observed that the brain doesn't work if it doesn't have to. Repetitious thoughts and activities are very quickly ceded to parts of the brain to manage without conscious effort. If you doubt that this is so, take a stack of a hundred pages or so, head to a copy machine, and copy each one, a page at a time. Few people get more than twenty pages into a stack before their mind wanders and their hands are doing the work 'automatically'. This can be both a very good thing and a very bad thing.

Most people think in a language. And all languages contain a huge base of implicit assumptions about the universe, how it works, and the types of things within it (you often have to know multiple languages just to see how deep and pervasive these assumptions are). Some languages can embrace some concepts easily, and others much more laboriously.

Put these two concepts together and it seems a pretty straightforward conclusion that based on the language you happen to use for thinking, your brain's efforts to conserve energy will make some thoughts harder than others. This would be a very soft boundary instead of a hard one, but I think it is there nonetheless.

Nor is it the only such boundary. There are cultural influences, environmental ones, and most adults formulate their own versions of values and ethics to colour their many perceptions, thoughts, and actions. These are all things which occasionally require extra work to circumvent. A prudent adult knows this and takes it into account.

For the best of thinkers, the effect language has therefore is little to none. For the worst of thinkers, it can indeed be a much more significant restraint.

Answer 3

Well, you don't want to sound like, "um, well, you know, it's like,..."

Our thoughts have language. Language is how we perceive the world. Think Helen Keller before sign language - wild.

Our thoughts and emotions are based on how we express them. To nurture language and learn others or the meanings and history of words is to live more fully. Language is the road to communication and experience, but it is not its limitation. Many thoughts and feelings can never be expressed, but it's very important we have words like God, love.

Answer 4

Imagine you needed something important - food or a drink for instance but language - including sign language - hadn't developed. Your neighbour might have more than enough food but how are you going to convince him to give you some. You can't say "G'is a bite, mate." He wouldn't understand you. You could mime it but sign language is still a language, he still might not understand you.

Language among one of the main reasons we are at the top of the food chain (along with walking upright). We can shout out precise warnings when predators are near. We can make our needs known and if required, arrange a bartering system in order to fulfil those needs (If you give me two apples, I'll give you 45p).

Of course, language covers so much more than basic needs. We can describe how we are feeling. We can create stories which builds up cultures. We know how people lived thousands of years ago because of their stories and accounts of 'current' events.

Some other creatures can pass on simple messages to those around them but only humans have thousands of highly developed and structured languages and dialects.

Answer 5

Think of each language as a set of labels that consolidate the meaning within each word. It makes communication really simple and shorter, so that not every word has to be redefined, each time it is used. Each word flashes from your surface consciousness down to your source meaning, meaning that a sentence has lots of work involved for the listener, re-establishing the deeper meaning for each 'label'

It's why we typically get tired when we learn something new, whether by listening or reading, where the identical process happens. Tons and tons of searches for each additional words meaning. I often fall asleep, reaching a point of overload very easily.

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Eg.

'Dog' is a label for what many humans understand as a 4 legged creature of many varieties, alsation, sheep dog etc.

'Dangerous' is a label for what many humans interpret as something to be wary of that might cause them harm.

If someone says:

'Watchout there is a dangererous mad dog about to bite you'
It is likely that it will be unscrambled by your brain into the meaning that you have stored for these words(labels). If you are sensible, you will probably perceive your location as dangerous, and your fight or flight response mechanism will kick in, a primitive brain mechanism - influencing your decision to move or 'fight' with the dog.

Voila! Language has influenced someone else's thoughts actions and their perception of the world.

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Words are the surface 'structure' that we relate to our minds encoding of our experience/understanding, the deeper tructure'.

We are creatures of some freewill and can choose to create whatever meaning or (Deep Structure) meaning or response we prefer. Persuasive communicators, like Hitler, have managed to influence peoples minds in order to perform disgusting acts of cruelty.

It's not just the language of communication used between separate people. A spin off benefit of this is that we can also start to understand how our inner (self) communication can affect our results, potentially leading to more congruent perceptions, decisions or behavioural patterns. Change the language, influence the results.

I've studed linguistics and psychology for most of my adult life and find it really fascinating.

Hope this helps - and it's just my own view btw, compiled from various sources of research.

Good luck- and communication! Rob

Answer 6

We don't necessarily know whether language does influence the way we think, because we're not too sure about what language actually is, how we come to use it and how it manages to mean anything.

Certainly, nebulous concepts make bad logic possible, but that's as far as I would want to speculate.

Answer 7

If there is no word for a concept or feeling in your mother tongue then you do not have the capacity of comprehending the concept or experiencing the feeling. For example, the word 'Angst' in German implies a deep-seated feeling which affects your soul. It cannot be translated into the the French 'anxiété' or the English 'fear'/'anxiety'. It means much more than those words.

Answer 8

Not the language, but how you use the language that is important.

Answer 9

It's the primary filter on how we define what we think we see, which contributes to what we think we know.

Answer 10

Without it we'd just be animals.