Languageless Thinking

It only takes one word to process the word language in a person’s mind, and that is purely the language that he/she speaks. Language is the immediate translator of communication. Author Thompson Olusegun Ewata writes in his book Business Communication for Academic and professional Purposes that “Language is a vehicle that we use in presenting ideas, thoughts, feelings, opinions to the world” (Ewata 2010). In other words, language is how people share with others all of the information they are processing. Science fiction author Philip K. Dick expands on this relationship between language and communication in his novel The Penultimate Truth, by demonstrating the connections and flow of information from the above-ground and below-ground people.

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.

Language is a tool that may be used in thinking, but it isn’t the sole basis of

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein, a philosopher of the mind and epistemologist who studied language makes a point in one of his lectures at

In the essay “Thought” by Louis H. Sullivan, he mainly discusses how words can come in middle of the thoughts. He said that we just utilize words to correspond to other people. The rest of the time we simply think and we don’t use words. Sullivan says words are just thoughts and we can use creative thinking instead of words to express our thoughts. His main point that he makes in the essay is that thought and thinking is more valuable than words. He gave some very diverse examples in his essay about metaphors of why words don’t make difference. Also, he pointed out that people should not read because when they read they try to copy others thoughts and ideas. They are many different types of thoughts and thinking in our mind and they are stronger than words. The thing that made me pause when is when Sullivan said that real thinking is done without words, words are clumsy and nobody has time to connect words together. Sullivan said that thinking can be done with images, pictures, and feelings, but wouldn’t people need to express their thoughts of images through words?

Famous American anthropologist and social theorist Clyde Kluckholm , claims in one of his publication that “Every language is also a special way of looking at the world and interpreting experience concealed in the structure of language are a whole set of unconscious assumptions about the world and the life in it”(Writing logically, Thinking critically 7th edition P 35). Based on this theory, we can learn more

　　　　Benjamin Lee Whorf believed that language had power over the mind however, this theory has crashed due

The idea behind “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought” is that it is so easy for bad language habits to spread by means of imitation. People know better, but they follow to crowd and end up using bad English all the time. I think that this greatly occurs with the rise of texting and other technological advances. With texting, everything that someone has typed is documented and remains on someone’s phone. A person can reference what someone else said with the push of a button and see a bad use of language again that they can spread some more. Also, unless you are consciously thinking about using correct language, you slip things that you know to be wrong in your speaking. Texting is supposed to be a very relaxed

Language is a cognitive function that most of us take for granted. It starts from early on, some say at conception, and it develops in complexity as we get older. It is an essential part of communication and without it its development would be greatly hindered. This natural process requires complex structures and reasoning, the bringing together of sounds and words to develop concrete ideas and thoughts. In this paper we will discuss the components of language and how it relates to cognitive processes.

In the article “Lost in Translation”, the author, Lera Boroditsky, maintains as her thesis that the languages we speak not only reflect or express our thoughts, but also shape the very thoughts we wish to express. Boroditsky begins the main section of her essay with the history of the issue of whether or not languages shape the way speakers think. Charlemagne was the first to think that languages do in fact shape the mindset of speaker, but Noam Chomsky rebutted this idea with his thought that languages do not differ much from each other, thus in turn proposing that linguistic differences do not cause a difference in thinking. Now with scientists

How would you give someone directions to your house? Would you tell them you are on Cherry street, second house on the left? Or, are you more likely to say you are in the southwest corner of town, second house to the north? This line of thought is discussed in Lera Boroditsky’s “Lost in Translation” (469-473). Similarly, John O’C Hamilton praises Boroditsky’s research in “You Say Up, I say Yesterday” (463-468). However, Steven Pinker believes all of the focus on brain changes are a waste of time in “TITLETITLETITLE” (PAGE#). +Guy Deutscher discuses BLANK in “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” (PAGE#) Regardless, Boroditsky’s is correct in her research that our spoken languages do shape our minds. Language

Steven Pinker finds that language comes naturally in human capacity. In “The Language Instinct,” he argues that even if thoughts may lead to form of speech, language and thoughts are not the same thing. He explains that thoughts do not necessarily depend on words, as one would not always be able to find specific words that exactly represent what one thinks. Countless amounts of thoughts can be created from a single mind, which would seem to be more complicated than a complete sentence, but Pinker is not focusing on the limitlessness of the mind, but the specific aspect of imagery without confusion. A sentence can provide a sense of time, action, and meaning generated from the source of thoughts. However, Pinker mentions how “sometimes a whole

People can think without language because thinking is not just conducted by language. There are limits in language, but thoughts are limitless. Language can be described as medium of which thoughts are directed but to a particular extent, which is decided by the person and not by the language.

“Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.” – Benjamin Lee Whorf