By Jonathan Locci

By jonathan locci

Definition of language 

A formalized and traditional set of spoken, written, or gesticulated symbols signs which serve to express and communicate feelings and thoughts.

Definition of Thinking 

According to Watts, Plato regarded thinking as the conversation of the soul with herself, in which the process of question and response is alternately occuring.

Relationship between language and thinking 

Language to plato was merely a shadow of inner thought. He credited language as a mere reflexion of the reality which in turn is a reflection of the idea.

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According to Watts, Jean Lock and Alexander Pope were also the one who believed that language is just a symbol of independent thought.

Language influences Thinking Whorf’s (1956) suggesteg that language determines the way 

we think. 

He also supported linguistic relativity, which states that the differences in language reflect the different views of different people.

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In the course of study of the indian language, Whorf found that the concepts of time, space and matter to Hopi Indians are different from those English speakers. He found that western people use Space and Time but the Hopi use Manifested Manifesting.

hopi 

Hopi speakers do not include tense in their sentences, therefore must have a different sense of time than other groups of people.



The hopi has different forms to say present and past such as “manifested and manifesting (Unmanifested)” or “Objective and subjective” Manifested inculdes all that are “accessible to the sense” without distinction between past and present. Manifesting includes all of “futur and mental world”.

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the Pirahã Language 

The Pirahã language is one of the phonologically simplest languages known, claimed to have as few as ten phonemes. the absence of numbers of any kind or a concept of counting the absence of color terms the absence of embedding in the grammar the absence of 'relative tenses’ 

I think that they don’t have this terms because they don’t need it. Like the numbers, Western people need a lot to use it to go to work at a certain hour, for economy while the Piraha devote three words to the numerical realm which are “one” “two” and “many”

Conclusion 

Does language affect thinking?



It hard to give a definite answer. I think that if there is certain evidences that exist that show the influence of language upon thinking, there is no reason that the Whorf Hypothesis should be rejected. I would say that since language and thinking are so closely related that they are hardly separable, I think is possible that language has an influence upon the thought.

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Sources    

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http://whyfiles.org/shorties/160number_lang/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language http://www.paris-philo.com/article-3865350.html http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:2ksH2cQ333kJ:cogprints.org/3439/1/ThinkingComplex.pd

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