How Does Language Shape Perceptions of Reality, Essay Example

There is great likelihood that language was designed to reflect the reality. And usually we consider it to be our instrument, especially when we use it to define some certain things. But in fact not only does language reflect the reality but also shape it. Though it may sound strange, we experience it every day; should we think of it thoroughly, we will realize that we are prone to language influence. We can even change the attitude to a person if we give him or her strong label. Exploration of these phenomena is an applied and thus very interesting activity.

First of all we must understand that language is not as literal as one might think. Lakoff and Johnson in their book ‘Metaphors We Live by’ reasonably claimed that metaphors are not instruments of poets and public speakers alone (1980). We all use them, whether consciously or not, and never think about their impact on our perception of reality. As an example they wrote many expressions concerning argument. What is clear about them is that we describe arguments as wars; we use corresponding words like ‘defense’, ‘attack’, and ‘win or lose argument’ to show what behavior of opponents is like. But think about other situation. If we had been taught from the very childhood that argument is a kind of dance, that it is the process that matters and not the result, and used words like ‘he expressed his point of view’ instead of ‘he attacked his opponent’s point of view’, we would not have perceived argument as something that can be won or lost. So verbal expressions affect our perception, and this influence is not negligible. It appears to be rather complicated issue that emerges is early childhood (Lakoff, Johnson, 1980).

We all used to think that children can only imitate the behavior of adults and thus linguistic labels cannot affect them, at least on the cognitive level. But research conducted by Debra Van Ausdale and Joe Feagin showed that this assumption is not universally applicable (2002). They studied racial and ethical concepts among children whose age varied from 3 to 7 years. One of the problems raised in the research was a problem of racist distinction that is common for young children. While their parents and tutors are not racists, children tend to make differences between people belonging to different nations (Van Ausdale, Feagin, 2002). They are able to categorize, summarize and find links between incoming information and people that surround them. And when they, say, call a child who is Afro-American ‘stinky nigger’ it means that they created a label that is influencing their perception. Or, claims like ‘She is Black and wears boots, it means that her mother is Black and wears boots, too’ (Van Ausdale, Feagin, 2002) are obvious attempts to categorize people. Categorization of people is and indivisible part of children growth (say, division by good and bad people) and racism may be considered as a part of it. So the idea of researchers was that children racism is different from adult one. Children are exploring the world and trying to categorize everything around them. Adults wittingly create labels for colored or white people and judge them correspondingly (provided that their racism is not a consequence of their upbringing).

Racist labels are dangerous as they treat people as unequal, but they are based on obvious differences. Though it is cold comfort for colored, there are more offensive labels, and much more unfair. Rosenhan researched the problem of sanity and insanity and found that influence of labels dangerously affects human attitudes (Rosenhan, 1973).

The experiment included eight sane people with the same complaints – they claimed that they had heard voices. All their life stories could be told absolutely honestly (with the names and places changed to fake ones), their behavior in the hospitals was adequate, and all habits were left natural. They arrived at different hospitals and were admitted to the psychiatric wards. After admission they all ceased simulating mental illnesses and behaved normally. The diagnosis was nearly the same – schizophrenia in remission. Stresses caused by admission made them paragons of cooperation – they behaved friendly and as sanely as always. And then those fake patients wrote their observations and made reports that were used as a base for research.

And the results of the research were thought-provoking. Boundaries between sane and insane people appeared to be blurred and uncertain. What could be normal for sane person was descried as ambiguous and abnormal for schizophrenic one. For example, one pseudopatient claimed that his relationships with parents changed in the course of time; though it is normal and rather common thing, it was described as uncertainty and ambiguity of family relations. Also, staff failed to recognize pseudopatient when was told to do so (notably, some patients did recognize them) (Rosenhan, 1973).

The harsh reality was that sane and casual activities were largely misinterpreted due to psychodiagnostic labels. Even good or bad mood was considered to be a symptom rather than a consequence of external influence. And in our daily lives we tend to think that those who were diagnosed to be schizophrenic are in fact insane, and suspect all of their actions. We never think of them as of ill and curable people. We treat them as insane and do not allow ourselves to think that psychologists made an error; the latter is perfectly possible.

As Lakoff and Johnson wrote, the speaker puts ideas into words and sends them to a bearer who takes the idea out of the words. The problem is that the same words may mean different things to different people: while thousands may think that ‘insane’ is a fair judgment of unfailing doctors, one may say that everything is relative and labels are too strong to follow them.

Works Cited

Lakoff, George, Johnson, Mark Metaphors We Live By. The University of Chicago Press:1980.

Rosenhan, David. On Being Sane in Insane Places. Enfield: Science, 1973.

Van Ausdale, Debra,  Feagin, Joe R. The first R. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc: 2002.