Language and Thought, Essay Example

Gauker (n.d.) speaks about the possibility of thinking in language terms, discusses the chance that creatures having no language skills could have thoughts, and speculates on the ways language shapes human thoughts. He offers a set of arguments for and against the expressivism point of view relating to those relationships. The basic principle of expressivism is in arguing that speakers are able to convey their thoughts through the usage of language. However, there is much criticism of the approach because of the subjective nature of the message (the sender of the message, i.e. the speaker, may intend to say one thing, and sue to the individual peculiarities of the receiver’s perception the information will be distorted and conveyed in a completely different way). In addition, there is a high level of message dependence on the context in which it is said, which makes the message change its meanings if moved in time, space and with changing the participants of the communicative act. The researchers state that the thought is absolute, while the language is situational and heavily loaded in a contextual way, which contradicts the idea of language supremacy above thoughts.

One should also remember about the world image concept; people from different cultures, ethnicities and parts of the world may have the same conceptual set in their minds, but they reflect those concepts absolutely differently in languages. Thus, for example, it is possible to consider an example of colors named in the Niv language as compared to the English equivalents: green, blue and gray colors are called in one way, depending on the intensity of the color (light – ‘ii’, dark- ‘pupu’), while brown, red and yellow are named by one word – ‘nyian’ (O’Neil, 2006). As it is evident that colors exist objectively, notwithstanding the human attitude to them, one should assume that the thought processes are truly conveyed in the language and differ across culture due to the difference in their values, concepts and beliefs.

There is one more reason to refer to the mental process of thinking as directly connected with the linguistic issues; the language of thought hypothesis (LOTH) studied by philosophers, thinkers, and linguists of the whole world for several decades argues that thinking as an inherent human capability has the structure similar to the semantic one of the language, with the same connections, causative links and units. It means that the thinking processes are designed according to the language patterns of the person who already possesses the ability to speak, or the linguistic patterns used by the speaker directly resemble the structure of the internal thinking one.

There is much debate over whether there is really so much resemblance between the speaking and thinking processes, but it goes without saying that thinking in the traditional human understanding stretches far beyond the limited perception of sentence structures and forms. The thinking process involves the enactment of activities other than thinking in linguistic concepts, operating the concepts taken from the language and theorized in thoughts. Sometimes emotions, vague recollections, associations with smells, tastes or sounds that cannot be reflected in speech affect the very process of thinking, arouse unexpected impressions and thoughts etc. Intuition, the feeling of danger or calmness, some senses are unexplainable in terms of language, no matter how proficient the individual is in linguistic possession. Hence, one can agree with the LOTH stating the richness of thoughts is much more compared to the semantic structure and composition:

“here could be a causally connected series of intentional states that makes no sense at all. Thinking, therefore, is causally proceeding from states to states that makes semantic sense…But in most cases, any interesting intentional or epistemic property would do” (The Language of Thought Hypothesis, 1998).

This finding may be supported by the theory discussed by Chrucky (1990) about the pre-linguistic activities evident in human beings who do not yet possess the command of any language. Thus, for example, the expression of dissatisfaction or pleasure, interest or danger may be clearly understood by people who do not speak a language, showing their predisposition to comprehending the sign language and using the variety of non-verbal tools for communication. However, these are only exceptions, and the major part of thoughts still seems to be dependent on the language (Chrucky, 1990).

The examples illustrating this hypothesis may be found in various anthropological or linguistic studies dedicated to identification of the measure of success in expressing thoughts by people from different backgrounds, with different educational levels, those speaking a second language etc. It will be clearly seen that those people who are not proficient in the standard, accepted language, may have the same feelings more educated people have, but their reflections will be limited to a couple of utterances or even swear words. In the same cases, however, educated people knowing many synonyms and descriptive terminology will deal with their impressions and emotions more seriously, trying to get a proper account of them, explaining what they seem to be and offering several variants to make the idea clearer. Hence, one can see that language really determines the thinking processes, or at least affects the mechanisms of rendering those thinking processes in the communicative acts.

References

Chrucky, A. (1990). Critique of Wilfrid Sellars’ Materialism. Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at Fordham University. New York.

Gauker, C. (n.d.). Language and Thought. Retrieved September 30, 2010, from http://host.uniroma3.it/progetti/kant/field/lat.htm

O’Neil. D. (2006). Language and Thought Processes. Retrieved September 30, 2010, from http://anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_5.htm#blouse_colo r_return

The Language of Thought Hypothesis (1998). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved September 30, 2010, from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ language-thought/