What is language? Linguists, psycholinguists, neurologists, evolutionary biologists, and philosophers have all tried to answer this question. ‘Language’ is often used interchangeably with ‘communication’, but they are not the same. Animals can communicate with each other, but they can’t be said to have language. Language, especially human language is unique and radically different from other types of tools of communication because of its immense vocabulary, ordered structure, use of metaphor and analogy, and syntactic flexibility. Human language can, thus, be broadly defined as an amalgam of lexicon, syntax, and semantics. Our identity is influenced by the language we speak. Identity can be broadly classified into ‘personal’ and ‘collective’ identity. Personal identity is, basically, a definition of yourself, and collective identity is how you define yourself in relation to others. Our identity is defined by myriad factors such as our beliefs, cognition, perception, culture, and tradition. The language we speak influences these factors and thus influences and cultivates our personal and collective identity.
Language affects the way we think. There is a hypothesis in linguistics known as linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir-Whorf or the Whorf hypothesis. It concerns the relationship between language and thought. According to the Whorfian hypothesis, the language one speaks influences one’s cognition and perception of the world and thus people’s perception is relative to their spoken language. Nuances and idiosyncrasies in our language affect the way we communicate with and perceive the world, thus influencing our perception and cognition. There is empirical evidence available that establishes a link between language and thought, for example, the study of Chinese bilinguals and dialectical thinking. Eastern cultures and languages are proven to promote dialectical thinking. A group of researchers conducted a study in 2013 to see if Chinese bilinguals displayed different levels of dialectical thinking when communicating in different languages. The study concluded that the Chinese bilinguals displayed higher levels of dialectical thinking when primed by the Chinese language than with the English language (Chen et al., 2013).
The study regarding the gender of words and their effect on the speaker’s perception and cognition also helps establish a link between language and thought. The study conducted in 2003 asked German and Spanish speakers to describe objects that have opposite gender assignments in those 2 languages. When the speakers were asked to describe a “key” which is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish, German speakers used words like “hard”, “jagged”, “heavy” whereas Spanish speakers used words like “delicate”, “intricate”, and “lovely”. When asked to describe a “bridge”, feminine in German and masculine in Spanish, German speakers used words like “elegant” and “fragile” whereas Spanish speakers used “strong” and “sturdy” (Boroditsky 6).
These studies, to some extent, prove the Whorfian hypothesis. We think in our primary language, and we alter our thinking to fit our language. We can think without language, but we need language to know that we are thinking. Language thus influences our cognition and thought processes.
Language affects the way we perceive the world. Perception is subjective. The same objects evoke different meanings for different people and thus the way we experience the environment around us also differs from person to person due to different individual values, beliefs, culture, and language. Lera Boroditsky’s work with the Pormpuraaw community shows how language can influence a person’s perception of the world. The pormpuraaw community of aboriginal Australia think about time and space very differently. Their language does not use relative spatial terms like ‘left’ and ‘right’ but instead uses absolute directional terms like ‘north’, ‘south’, ‘south-east’. When asked to arrange cards that depicted temporal progression in the correct order, the Pormpuraawans sometimes arranged the cards from right to left and sometimes left to right. Their decision was not random but was instead dependent on their spatial orientation. If they were facing south the cards would be arranged from left to right and when facing east the cards would come towards the body and so on, thus always arranging the cards from east to west. The Pormpuraawans superior knowledge of spatial orientation stems from their immense vocabulary dedicated to describing time and space (Boroditsky and Gaby, 2010).
Another study was conducted in 2007 that establishes a link between language and perception. The study tested Russian speakers and English speakers on their ability to discriminate between different shades of blue. The result of the 2007 study indicated that the Russian speakers were faster to discriminate between the 2 shades of blue than the English speakers because the Russian language describes a clear distinction between light blue and dark blue unlike the English language (Winawer et al., 2007).
Thus, a person’s language can immensely influence how he views objects, colours, and even fundamental concepts like time and space.
Language is a carrier of culture and tradition. You communicate through language and when you communicate you pass and receive information that reflects your upbringing, your culture, history, and tradition. In a community, the history and culture of that community are passed down generation after generation through a shared language. This fact makes the task of preserving and saving language even more cardinal. When a language dies, it’s not just mere words that go out of existence. The history, heritage, tradition, and culture attached to that language also cease to exist. The Mahabharata and Ramayana were oral stories before they were written, same with the Iliad and Odyssey. The accumulated body of knowledge of a community dies when its language dies. If you lose your language, you also lose a sense of your personal and collective identity because “language carries culture, and culture carries the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world” (Thiong’O, 118).
Humans are social creatures. We have an innate need to communicate with others and it is through communication that we come to define ourselves, our personal identity, and our place in the world, our collective identity. Language is located at the epicentre of our identity as it is through language we communicate with others. Our attachment to language thus cultivates our identities. Our personality, our individuality, our ego, and our existence are defined by the mere words we utter.
Works cited
Chen, Sylvia Xiaohua, et al. “Does Language Affect Personality Perception? A Functional Approach to Testing the Whorfian Hypothesis.” Journal of Personality, vol. 82, no. 2, 2013, pp. 130–43. Crossref, doi:10.1111/jopy.12040.
Boroditsky, Lera. “HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? | Edge.Org.” Edge, 09–11-06, http://www.edge.org/conversation/lera_boroditsky-how-does-our-language-shape-the-way-we-think.
Boroditsky, Lera & Gaby, Alice. (2010). Remembrances of Times East. Psychological science. 21. 1635-9. 10.1177/0956797610386621.
Winawer, J., et al. “Russian Blues Reveal Effects of Language on Color Discrimination.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 19, 2007, pp. 7780–85. Crossref, doi:10.1073/pnas.0701644104.
Thiong’O, Wa Ngugi. “The Language of African Literature.” Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, James Currey Ltd / Heinemann, 2011, pp. 109–27.
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