Weekly Blog Post #11

Thursday, October 24th, 2013

Language and Thought: How the world is shaped by language

The section I am covering in Psychology right now covers Language development. One of the topics touched upon in the course of the section was called linguistic relativity. According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis on linguistic relativity, different languages carve up and name the world differently. Different language structures lead to perceive and interpret the world in different ways. As I kept reading the section, I realized the vulnerability of language in the face of interpretation, depending on the perspective of the recipient at that specific time. The book gave an example that illustrated, and clarified, linguistic relativity tremendously:

"This was the time I was in nursing. A doctor saw an elderly patient and, at the end of the visit, told her in parting, 'Take it easy.'. He meant is as an informal way of saying goodbye, nothing more. But this poor lady took it as a medical advice, promptly took to her bed, and refused to get out for the next two weeks, until the doctor returned from what turned out to be an ill-timed vacation. By that time, the little lady was so weak from her self-imposed inactivity that she was unable to walk."

In this case, the woman's thoughts were shaped by her condition. She interpreted the sentence "Take it easy" as a medical warning because of her case of illness. Had the woman been in good health, she would not have thought of the sentence in that way. She would have taken it in the informal way, as the doctor had meant it. 

If the first example illustrates the vulnerability of language in face of different conditions, the following example shows the vulnerability of language in a different perspective:

A little girl got sick after a meal involving a bit of over-indulgence in nachos, the dip for which she knew included some squashed pinto beans. For amny months afterward, she refused to eat anything called "beans", whether these were pinto beans, green beans, black-eyed beans, or even jelly beans. 

The book said that this could be paraphrased with Voltaire's statement as "I speak, therefore I think". Although this case can be explained with the girl's young age, it cannot be hidden that grown-ups are victims of similar incidents as well. Grown-ups overgeneralize some terms as well, though the overgeneralizations may seem less apparent and absurd.

I thought about how much language does shape the way we view the world, how we use language to describe our view of the world. The way we say things, the way we interpret the things we hear, play a crucial role in determining our perspective. I had always heard about the power of language, and about how humans' ability to communicate was the unique feature that distinguished us from other animals. I had not realized that, just as language could be powerful in a positive way, it could also be powerful in less positive ways, sometimes even leading to a close-mindedness. Language might be the strongest barrier in opening us up to the many stories around us, as they constrain us and make us more prone to the danger of a single story, our own story.