Linguistic Relativity Essay

At 18 I joined the Marines. In boot camp I was introduced to new way of speaking and thinking. The new language, learned and internalized, was integral to changing my thought practices from that of a civilian, to that of a Marine. My experiences in the Marines confirm the the idea of linguistic relativity put forth in the Sapir-wharf Hypothesis, and served as my Initiation in the the Marine Corp’s Community of Practice.

BA#3 “Lost in Translation” by Lera Boroditsky is aimed at persuading the audience that meaning changes from language to language due the different structures within those languages. The most likely audience are a more technical type of people who are interested in philosophy, want to learn a new language, and, or are already multilingual. Borodisky anticipates the objection of “just because people talk differently doesn't necessarily mean they think differently” by pointing out that “in the past decade, cognitive scientists have begun to measure not just how people talk . . . [and] ask whether our understanding of even such fundamental domains of experience as space, time and causality could be constructed by language.”

Similarly to Silva-Pereyra et al’s article (2004), all words that children were exposed to came from the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories lexical database. Children were required to observe 20 correct control sentences mixed with 20 syntactically anomalous sentences. Comparably to Silva-Pereyra et al’s (2004) methods, syntactically anomalous sentences were accomplished by adding the suffix “ing” to the verbs (i.e. My dog will catching the ball). All sentences were gestured by experimenters, while recorded on a video system.

Language influences thought. The rule of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language influences the routes in which its speakers can conceptualize their reality, i.e. their view of reality. Famously known as the Sapir–Whorf theory, or Whorfianism, the standard is by and large comprehended as having two unique variants: (i) the solid form that language decides thought and that linguistic categories constrain and decide psychological classifications and (ii) the feeble rendition that phonetic classes and utilization impact thought and certain sorts of non-semantic conduct.

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

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

Languages and the way one speaks, can have many differences around the world, however, just different alphabets or linguistic rules are not the only things that make a person unique. Speaking a certain language contrast to others also may affect the way one thinks or operates. In a article published by the Wall Street Journal, Lera Boroditsky, a professor of psychology at Stanford, proves that language distinctions can have an effective on one’s cognitive skills and decision-making. “Lost in Translation” by Lera Boroditsky is an article convincing fellow psychologists or language scholars that knowing divergent languages can cause one to think in different ways. Boroditsky uses allusion, appeal to expert opinion, statistics, and anticipating objection to argue to her audience that there is a direct connection between language and one’s thought process which can cause one to act or think in a particular way.

“Language is a lens” is the thinking idea of presented by John McWhorter in this book which most of the Neo-Whorfian studies don’t support this theory. And which quote from the book” not only does a full representation of how languages work show how utterly unworkable the idea is that Language X makes its speakers see and feel “a different world” than speakers of Language Y, but in the end, the embrace of this idea is founded on a quest to acknowledge the intelligence of “the other,” which, though well intentioned, drifts into a kind of patronization that the magnificent complexity and nuance of any language makes unnecessary.” John McWhorter pointed out reasons that opposing the idea of “the world looks different in other languages.”

One of the most important themes in this novel is power. The society of Gilead restructures the meaning of words to establish power. Gilead’s new vocabulary reinforces a totalitarian regime by using language to regulate the words and ideas that people can express, similar to linguistic determinism. In Eleanor Rosch’s (1974) article of Linguistic relativity, she identified both a strong and weak version of the linguistic relativity hypotheses, a degree in which language is presumed to influence our thought and behavior. The weak hypothesis is linguistic relativity, where linguistic categories and usage only influence thought and decisions. (Rosch, 1974). However, the Gilead’s use of language reflects that more of the strong hypothesis.

While reading the passage from “Meaning, Thought, and Reality” there was some questions that I asked myself. One of the questions was what does Sapir mean by “language is a guide to “social reality’? Also, what does Whorf mean by “linguistic relativity”? Another question is what was meant by our own language predisposing us to see both reality and other languages through a filter.

Key features of language include its words and their sub structures such as morphemes, graphemes and syllables at the writing level as well as reading or speaking, words, their meanings and contexts in which the words get spoken or read. Language has to be interpreted as a whole, and not just as the specific word. There must be an explicit pattern or structure. In order for language to be understood correctly, the meaning of words must be arranged in a given context. This is what constructs language; even though words are arbitrary themselves, in order to integrate as a language, they must be used in the appropriate context. This pre-established cultural context is what will enable effective communication. (Daniel Willingham, 2007, p. 1).

No matter where you are in the world, you are taught about language. Whether it’s in your home learning your language or in school trying to learn a foreign language. Although while learning language the notion is never really thought about or brought up that the language and way we speak can influence the way we think and interact. Phycologist and neuroscientist alike have spent years, with multiple different tests to see if there is a connection between the various languages that are spoken and the way people not only think but also how they go about their daily lives. She writes to not only her colleagues and neuroscientists but also to anyone in the general public that is genuinely interested in the connection between

Social categories such as race and gender can be difficult for children to understand and sort out. It is already remarkable that they acquire such large amounts of knowledge during their early years, and social categories are just a small part of that. They start to understand that every object they encounter has a name through language so it would not be surprising to learn that language plays a vital role in children’s formation of social categories as well. The manner in which adults talk and teach children in particular are how language influences their thoughts. One example of how children have to sort and form categories is because they are presented with so many different characteristics about a person such as language, hair color,

Linguistics has impacted cognitive psychology as the quest to understand language acquisition and the structure of language itself is undertaken. Linguistics is a complex and multifaceted; it includes language structural patterns and language development (Barsalou, 2005). The process of language development is complicated and dense, as the study of language is examined; the role of cognition is inherently examined and analyzed. Sternberg (2006) also explores language as an innate process and presents the idea that humans are born ready for language as a biological and cognitive process.

Because of this, it is difficult to reach any definite conclusion regarding the validity of linguistic relativity, and I am left with my own subjective experiences and a handful of other texts with which to judge the legitimacy of Whorf’s arguments. Based solely on these resources, I find it is necessary and important to make a distinction between language determining thought and simply influencing it. The latter carries some weight to its arguments—which I shall discuss later—but the former is almost entirely unconvincing.