posted
Language governs thought. what I mean by this is simply the fact that we think in our own native language. If there is a mental construct that our language cannot name we simply don't think about it, how can we? This is extremely evident in the English language were we tend to think of things in a polar manner. Like hot & cold, up & down, big & small, right & wrong, Republican & Democrat, pro-life & pro-choice. We as native English speaking citizens tend to think of the world as two extremes on every issue. The reality being that over two thirds of all people tend to lie in the moderate spectrum. Most people fall somewhere in-between the extremes, but due to our polar language we see the world as polarized. The ability for our language to restrict our free thought is staggering. Think of all the ways we cannot think simply because we don't have the language structure to think that way. Upon considering this I was struck with the thought: what would someone with no concept of language think like. If they could not tag objects or mental constructs with a name how would they think about them. If someone totally alone, in the wilderness had no language, than I would think the word for everything would be "that". Our lonely wild man would recall the visual memory of an object as it's name. Perhaps he would have a much stronger visual memory than we do today simply because we have words to ease the bourdon of naming things. To him "that" rock would be a completely different "word" than another rock. Could someone without language think about non-tangible things? What does "growth" mean to someone who has no word for it, and cannot simply see an example and label it "that". This man-alone-in-the-woods example is strictly a tool to examine these questions. Human beings might not even be able to survive without the ability to externalize their feelings, which is the very core of language. The reason I want to tackle this issue is because of my feeling that the first step in uniting the planet under one government would be to create a Common language that everyone knew. You would not, howeaver, be wise to erradicate all other languages from use. Language needs to be constantly changing to accomodate new ideas that have never been labled with words before. Local cultures would still need to speak their native language to promode a more diverse total human language base. In addition, if there were some sort of "Common" than no doubt it would quickly become at least partially dialectic in that every culture would merge parts of it's orriginal language into "Common" as slang. This would promote a sort of blending of all languages into an overarching planitarry language. It might even be possible to willingly intergrate segments of cirtian languages in order to promote better ways of thinking. For example: if "Common" was mostly English we may still be able to shrug off the polarized nature of our language. The need for such a global language is becoming more and more evidant with the globalization of the world economy and the information accesability that has been born out of The Information Age. We can no longer afford to see the world as many seperate entities. The world is coming together weater we see it or not and without a common language that is globally accepted we are working in darkness. As we move forward we need to have access to the "good ideas" around the world and without a common language we have no common forum. We also, howeaver, need to remember how much language controlls the way we think and in this vein we cannot simply adopt one language and throw away everything else.
Posts: 484 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote: This is extremely evident in the English language were we tend to think of things in a polar manner.
Wow, you know, you don't really have the monopoly on that polar manner of thinking about the world, it's pretty darn general if you ask me. And come on, even you have levels of gray, right?
quote: what I mean by this is simply the fact that we think in our own native language.
Learn a new one and after a while you'll be able to think in that language too. There have been times when what I thought in either English or French was very hard or even impossible to "translate" in Romanian. So, while I agree that we might be at first limited by our native language, I think with a little bit of effort we can overcome those limitations.
Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
I was going to mention that you need some paragraph breaks, but you also lost me at Language governs thought.
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
My particular language-imposed bias is for splitting the world into chunks for easy digestion. Such chunks are also known as paragraphs. Therefore, such a mass of text as this is not only undigestible, it is a threat to my entire worldview. I shall pursue all who commit such atrocities with the full force of my sarcasm. Prepare to be flamed!
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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I seriously don't have the patience to read that.
