Differences Between Language And Language

Language has been an integral part of human existence since the dawn of time. Our innate ability to communicate has guided the progress of civilization since its modest beginnings and facilitates our understanding of what it means to be human. The only practical way to thoroughly express one’s identity is through language, whether it be verbal speech or written text. It is only through this medium that we are able to fulfill our roles as a social people, who use discourse to cultivate relationships both on a personal and communal level. Language defines the human notion of self by revealing culture and beliefs, making individuality context-specific, and providing identity markers.

In the world today, there are more and more multicultural people who can speak different languages; and they need to choose different tongues to correspond to the immediate community they belong. Language makes people remember their own cultures and contribute to their own identity. In “Mother Tongue,” a short story written by Amy Tan; she strongly narrates the stories about her different experiences and life comprehensions based on varying types of English she speaks throughout life. Wandering on two different languages; Amy discovers the importance and power of language: “the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth” (Tan 38). As human beings, language is the tool that contains the mighty powers; it forcefully affects people’s lives, personality, and lifestyles. Moreover, language is the “bridge” of communication between people. However, for Amy, the views on mother’s language are changing from the sense of shame into pride; as she is feeling the effects that two different types of English are giving to her as well as their respective symbols in her mind.

In the same manner as James Baldwin, I defend language to be a political instrument and the most crucial key to identity, in most cases. Language expresses the identity of the human; thus, connecting local and widespread communities. First impressions depict one’s identity among a group, from the moment one opens their mouth, their language outputs an impression in as short as seven seconds.

When I guide my friend Tianchu, an exchange student from Beijing, around school, we engage in a constant exchange of cultural nuances and slang. But after years of casual conversation and practical application, my curiosity leads me to wonder. Each language requires me to observe different aspects of my life. So, are the languages I use merely tools for expressing my thoughts, or do they actually shape my thoughts? In fact, do I attend to, partition, and remember my experiences differently because I choose one set of semantics over

Originally published in the Wall Street Journal in 2010, Lera Boroditsky’s paper titled “Lost in Translation” analyzes the impact language has on thought. Formatted as more of a persuasive than truth seeking essay, Boroditsky begins by asking the reader if the language a person speaks shapes the way they think. This makes the reader believe as though she is truly trying to find an answer to this inquiry, but as the paper goes on, the reader is mostly introduced to evidence that supports Boroditsky’s stance and she merely touches upon the argument of the opposing side. Although Boroditsky does not include more counterarguments, “Lost in Translation” is a well written article which demonstrates that languages indeed shape the way people think through her use of the Rhetorical Triangle, inductive logic, and her stylistic choices.

In the words of George Orwell, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” Language has been spoken for over 350,000 years. It has expanded tremendously, but its power has never changed. The use of language shapes peoples' perceptions and the depth of interactions because it can demean, avoid, portray emphasis, persuade, and conceal from simple phrases such as “I feel like” and “just”.

In the essay “How Does Language Shape the Way We Think?” the author, Lera Boroditsky, attempts to show the direct correlation between the language one person speaks and the way in which that specific person views the world around them. The essay includes many other researchers in the field and in doing so incorporates them into the essay, as a way of giving more information and statics on the topic. Borodisky additionally allows the reader to connect all of the points she makes in her essay together, meaning some of the inferencing is done on the part of the reader, which in turns makes the essay adaptable to each reader. This adaptability or play in the connections of ideas allows “How…Think” to be understood for a wider variety of

Throughout twenty-centuries ago, writers thought that ordinary language and literary language were two different languages. But this is an analytical assumption. There is only one language, which

The main reason that Boroditsky’s argument that language shapes our minds is valid is that the research she did with her teams covers a wide variety of aspects on this topic while still keeping her article cohesive. The first research Boroditsky introduces to her audience is the research on the Kuuk Thaayorre, which is an

What is the meaning of language? How big the role of language in your life? Have you ever realize the impact of language in your life? In my opinion, language is not as simple as people seen in general. Usually the way people see language just as a tool for communicating with others. For me, behind the general usage of language, it also has a big role in our life because a language has the power to stand and show each person’s identity. Inside the Gloria Anzaldua’s essay “How To Tame A Wild Tongue” and Amy Tan’s essay “Mother Tongue” claim that language is an identity. Because they show that language which they commonly use to communicate since the day they were born, showing who are they really are. Language as identity is very arguing phrases, it can be approach from a different perspective. This thing is exactly what are both of these essays are trying to do by approaching differently and using a different tone. Their life and experience give an impact to the way they interpret that language is an identity, and it also seen in each of their essays.

Research by Lera Boroditsky (2001) posed many interesting questions regarding linguistic diversity and the resultant interplay between language and thought: whether linguistic diversity stimulates different ways of thinking, whether learning new languages changes the way one thinks, whether bilingual and multilingual people think differently when speaking different languages. Clark (2003) maintains that although language does not indicate a complete map of consciousness or thought, it is at least a “representational map” that varies across languages.

For all humans, language is the most common means of communication with others and it enables us to share our experiences and stories and to tell about our needs and feelings. For example, Yamamoto states that sociolinguistics see, it is ‘primarily through the use of language that people communicate with each other’ (1979: 146). We all speak one or more languages and as the main way of communication it is an important and vital part of our lives. There is many languages in the world and they differ from one another in many ways. But does the language we speak reflect to the way we see and experience the world around us? This paper will explore the question through the Sapir Whorf hypothesis and arguments for and against it.

Language is a means for an end and that end is literature. Literature moves in language as a medium, but that medium comprises of two layers— content and experience. The flamboyancy of the author’s state of mind is expressed by the style of writing used by the author. The linguists all over the world come to a single opinion that if style is the man, the language used by the author represents the entirety of his mind. As, language analyses the inner cores of human perspective, it is certainly has connections with the facts of utterance to see the patterns of sound, grammar and vocabulary. For analysing the properties of language, it is important to represent the concern of writer with the revelation of inner mental facts and the inner properties of human psyche. Therefore, simplicity is the hallmark of all the modern languages. The simple language has the

Communication takes place through spoken and written language—words hold both literal and emotional meaning, which creates a bridge from abstract experiences to rational ideas. Language's role as the medium of meaning allows authors to appropriate linguistic patterns from other sources in order to modify or extend existing ideas in society (Foster 14). However, language accomplishes little beyond modifying preexisting ideas. Because it applies to entire societies, it captures only the crudest and most basic aspects of a culture’s collective experience of the world, rather than the nuances of an individual’s experience. This limitation often results in the reinforcement of broad social divisions, such as race, as seen in Native Guard, or harmful, widely held ideologies, as exemplified in Heart of Darkness. Making use of its social implications as the infrastructure of human experience, authors use language as a literary symbol to represent the inherent shortcomings of the use of a wide-reaching societal tool to shape individual understandings of reality. Language's nature as a broad medium for culture makes it a clumsy and inaccurate tool for communicating the nuances of an individual's experience of life.

Dervin (1993) takes a purely theoretical view of difference. She views difference as fundamental and postulates that language as symbolic product produced by humans whose lives are at least in part symbolic confounds the differences between humans. Symbolic language also confounds the differences seen in the intuitions produced by humans. It is her contention that language is the key to understanding difference. She utilizes Nouns, Verbs and language structure as metaphors for understanding difference. She posits that when we search for patterns with research tools deviations from the a pattern constitute difference and that we must then locate that difference into a conceptual frameworks the most common being culture or agency.