How Native Language Influences Perception Of The World

Language is a beautiful tool that can be used to unify or divide. Language brings people together but it can also tear them apart. In “Mute in an English Only World”, Chang-Rae Lee writes about how his mother was impaired from doing simple tasks such as going to the store alone because she could not speak English. Second, in “Lingua Franchise”, by Charles Foran, he shows how English is unifying people across the globe.

The film “The Linguists” follows linguists Gregory Anderson and David Harrison on their journey to learn about and document endangered languages in Bolivia, India, Arizona, and Siberia. Through their quest, they are able to interact with some of the few remaining speakers of languages that are near death and they manage to make an impact on how these communities view their heritage language. Focusing on the moribund languages of Siberia and Arizona, it becomes evident that speakers of the heritage language feel a love for the language and the culture it represents, but went through periods of oppression and embarrassment for being speakers of a minority language that ultimately shaped their attitudes on the language.

Ken Wiwa presents several ideas pertaining to language and culture within his essay, Get Beyond Babel. Wiwa explains that every language has a chance of dying out over time. For any language to survive through years of societal changes, it must be adapted so it can be used to embrace other cultures, new technology and new perspectives. Wiwa presents the concept that language is the same as culture. I do not agree with this concept because I believe that culture is carried by the people, not by the language.

Most questions of whether and how language shapes thought start with the simple observation that languages differ from one another. And a lot! Just look at the way people talk, they might say. Certainly, speakers of different languages must attend to strikingly different aspects of the world just so they can use their language properly.

This is essential in asserting the author’s creditability. This quotation explains about the fact that digital technology is effective in rekindling dying languages and scripts such as N’Ko. The story of Traore’s personal experience allows the essay to be more compelling as it helps to make Traore’s story more relatable and credible to the average audience, and awards the readers with an intriguing piece of writing. Rosenberg’s approach of using real life examples works because her audience wants to hear firsthand accounts of other cultures that have either dealt or are dealing with the issue of preserving their indigenous language. She uses the story of Traore to raise interest among audience regarding this topic. By the use of anecdotes, Rosenberg makes Traore’s story more relatable and credible to her audience of linguistic minorities.

In the essay “Last Words,” published on the first of October in 2006, the author Walter Michaels instills an idea of what to do when a language is loss. Throughout the essay, he gives examples of how languages are (and how they could be) lost. He also points out, that even though many of those reasons have been eliminated, that languages continue to go extinct. Thus, the author brings up the point, “Why would it be a tragedy if English disappeared?” Although people mourn the loss of a language, Michaels argues that speakers of the dying language should exert effort to learn the dominate one.

The film Linguists is a very unique exploration into the indigenous cultures and the prevalence of their languages. Researchers Gregory and David examine endangered languages in several regions to further understand the different ways the human mind can make sense of the world around it. Linguists covers a diverse range of topics regarding the importance of language to culture, the number of languages that are

Nothing brings people together more than language. As an international student, I noticed that more often than not, international students tend to befriend those with a common native language. Perhaps their common language makes it easier for them to communicate since they might not be comfortable with speaking English. Another possibility would be that sharing a language can also mean that they share a common way of thinking. Lera Boroditsky, an assistant psychology professor at Stanford University, wrote the article “How Does Our Language Shape the Way We Think?” to illustrate to her readers that language, whether it is grammar or just the general logic, does indeed affect how we think. Boroditsky and research teams in Stanford and MIT collected data from all over the world. Because of the extensive amount of research and her article’s solid structure, I find Boroditsky’s argument easy to follow and understand, therefore quite convincing. She is so knowledgeable in her area that her arguments and article are solid and build on top of each other like Tetris tiles. A well-written article can only be achieved by knowing and understanding your material well.

For those languages which have no written form, when the language dies off, so does the accumulated knowledge and history of the culture. Sadly, indigenous languages around the world are dying off at an alarming rate. It is estimated that nearly half of the languages spoken today are likely to die off within the next century if steps are not taken to preserve those which still exist.

Over centuries we have seen the amount and complexity of languages all across the globe reduced. If this trend continues, we could see the number of world languages potentially reduced from 6,000 to 600 in the future. Colonization and urbanization has led to the abolishment of languages spoke by smaller and less dominant civilizations. McWhorter uses the Native Americans in North America and the Aboriginal

Language is a vital tool for human beings. Human language is a measure for communicating thoughts, ideas, and identity to one another. Cultural relations, economic dealings, and the shaping of friendships are all dependent upon language. While it could be viewed that today’s languages are the result of past language extinctions, the death of language signifies a loss much greater than just words.

Linguistic relativity is the notion that language can affect our thought processes, and is often referred to as the ‘Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’, after the two linguists who brought the idea into the spotlight. Whorf writes how “Language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual’s mental activity” (1956:212), and I will explain how it is able to do so. In this essay I will argue that certain ways of mental categorization, spatial cognition and reality interpretation, based on the characteristics of our specific variety of language, influence our perception of the world. I will discuss how languages divide up nature differently, and

Although there is no official language in the United States, the English language is the most widely spoken. Language helps to shape our identities, define and limit our expectations of the world around us and who we are. You might ask yourself, how does our language shape our identities and influence our perceptions of the world? Through language, we are able to make meaning, understand, and define ourselves. We are able to communicate what we feel, our ideas, our hopes, and our dreams with others who can respond to our feelings and thoughts. However, our choice of words cannot always capture what we are feeling to the full extent.

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.

The idea that language affects the way we remember things and the way we perceive the world was first introduced by the influential linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf (Harley, 2008). The central idea of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, today more commonly known as the linguistic relativity hypothesis, holds that “each language embodies a worldview, with quite different languages embodying quite different views, so that speakers of different languages think about the world in quite different ways” (Swoyer, 2003). In the late 1990s, Cameron claimed that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was regarded as “that which must be refuted