To What Extent Does Language Influence Thought? Essay

"Social Time: The Heartbeat of Culture", is an article for Robert Levine and Ellen Wolff, it extend readers with the authors’ viewpoints and research about ‘time-sense’ in different cultures. Robbert and Wolff emphasize that there is difference of ‘time-sense’ in two levels, which are inter cultural and cross cultural. When we move into a new culture, understanding the differences of ‘time sense’ might help us to set ourselves to new people and also new places. The author also describe how ‘time sense’ vary in different cultures is more explained by the author’s experience and research. Having lived in Brazil meaning "tomorrow" referring to that Brazilians usually defer whatever they need to do. To find out if "the ‘manha’ pattern

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.

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

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

“ Social scientists have recorded wide differences in the pace of life in various countries and in how societies view-time whenever as an arrow piercing the future or as a revolving wheel in which past, present, and future cycle endlessly” (165). This is how cultures can view time differently than other cultures. In result, cultures can have a clear perspective of how time works and have an understanding of how time is perceived. Estell says that the study of time and society can be divided into the “pragmatic and the cosmological” Estell supports the statement by stating a 1950s anthropologist, Edward T. Hall, JR. Hall wrote about the rules of social time be apart a “silent language” for a culture.

It is often thought that the reality that is being expressed in spoken word is the very same as the reality which is being perceived in thought. Perception and expression are frequently understood to be synonymous and it is assumed that our speech is mostly based on our thoughts. This idea presumes that what one says is dependent of how it is encoded and decoded in the mind. (Badhesha, 2002) In any case, there are numerous individuals that trust the inverse: what one sees is reliant on the talked word. The supporters of this thought trust that thinking is reliant on language. Linguistic Edward Sapir and his understudy Benjamin Lee Whorf are known as far as concerns them in the promotion of this very guideline. Their aggregate hypothesis, known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, also known as theory of linguistic relativity, relativism, determinism, Whorfian hypothesis or even Whorfianism. Initially talked about by Sapir in 1929, the speculation got to be prominent in the 1950s after post mortem production of Whorf's works on the subject. After incredible assault

In his article "Does Your Language Shape How You Think?" the author Guy Deutscher discusses how the acquisition of one's mother tongue shapes one's view of the world. The article was published in The New York Times in August 2010. The author's major paradigm is that every language one learns influences one's mind and feelings in a different way. Deutscher explains that depending on one's mother tongue, objects can be considered masculine or feminine, which results in the speaker feeling differently about them. The author believes that different languages do indeed make one speak about space in different ways as well; although he claims people do not have entirely different views of it. Deutscher then explains that experiments have shown that

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

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

The self-report contained 56 items describing different attitudes and behaviours in relation to time. Participants rated each item on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (very untrue) to 5 (very true). The scale is divided into five subscales of time perspective (past negative, past positive, present hedonistic, present fatalistic and future) which highlighted the particular time perspective participants might be bias towards. Each time perspective score was calculated by recoding five items out of the total 56, followed by individual calculations. The ZTPI was used as this measure had previously been found by Worrell and Mello (2007) to have acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha= .74 to

In “You Are What You Speak”, Guy Deutscher discounts Benjamin Lee Whorf’s proposition that he published in 1940 as an article in the M.I.T Technology Review. Whorf claimed that an individual’s native language hinders their cognitive skills, however, Deutsher argues that linguistics shape an individual’s perception and does not restrict their intellect. Although Chinese language speakers do not have to establish the tense of their actions, Deutscher emphasizes that Chinese speakers are not ignorant to the process of time. Deutscher advocates that an individual’s mother tongue “forces you [them] to be attentive to certain details in the world and to certain aspects of experience” (Deutscher 215). Certain European language speakers that give

Lakoff and Johnson propose that the language we use affects the way we think and the way we think affects the language we use. I am

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

The Sapir Whorf hypothesis mentioned above is based on the ideas of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf who studied aboriginal languages among Native American tribes, mostly the Hopi. They believed that the language one speaks is directly related to the way they understand the reality and see the world. For example, Whorf once wrote ‘we dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages’ (Whorf cited in Salzmann 1993: 153) which led to Zdenek Salzmann’s conclusion of Whorf’s ideas: ‘Difference among languages must therefore be reflected in the differences in the worldviews of their speakers’ (1993: 156). This hypothesis has been challenged many times by several anthropologists and linguists and there are arguments and evidence for and against it.

One argument, for example, is to investigate how and individuals thinks about time and space, from this it is suggest that the syntax and morphology of a language can affect how a speaker thinks about time and space. For example, Whorf suggested that Hopi speakers, think about time and space in a very different way than English speakers, who have a very linear Newtonian perspective on the topic; very unlike the Hopi speakers who have a very natural physicist relativistic perspective. The research here, brings forward the idea that the language we speak does have an influence on the way in which we think, especially in more abstract topics as time and space Slobin, D. I. (1996).