What is Thought?
According to R.A Hudson in his book Sociolinguistics (1980), the term thought covers a number of different types of mental activity and lies in the province of cognitive psychology. The thought is a mental process. For example, the words such as water, oil, floats, and on are different concepts and vary according to our thoughts.
The notion that language determines thought and is influenced by thought has a long history in various fields. The thought comes first and language is an expression of that thought. For instance, one uses the word water because he/she has already a mental picture regarding that regardless of its name. Language helps to communicate our thoughts and is a tool for communication. There are certain debates regarding the fact that does language influence our thoughts or vice versa.
Theories about the relationship between language and Thought
The most significant
theory in explaining the relationship between language and thought is the
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (named after American Linguist Edward Sapir and his
student Benjamin Lee Whorf). There are two versions of this hypothesis; one
version arguing about the influence of language on thought and the other
thought on language acquisition. There are two basic hypotheses formulated by
Brown and Lenneberg on their own.
- The world is differently experienced and conceived in
different linguistic communities
- The language causes a particular cognitive structure.
Sapir Short
Hypothesis:
Firstly, the most
significant theory it explains the relationship between thought and language is
the Sapir Whorf Hypothesis. The strong version of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is
based on linguistic determinism. It claims that people from different cultures
think differently because of differences in their languages. The term implies
that people who speak different languages as their mother tongues have
different thought processes. There are two words in Russian for different
shades of blue, and Russian speakers are faster at discriminating between the
shades than are English speakers. The weak version of the Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis is based on linguistic relativity. It deals with the influence of
language on the thought process. The language we speak affects how we think and
act. Different words mean different things in different languages; not every
word in every language has a one-to-one exact translation in a different
language. A commonly cited example of linguistic relativity is the example of
how Inuit Eskimos describe snow. In English, there is only one word for snow,
but in the Inuit language, many words are used to describe snow: “wet snow”,
“clinging snow,” “frosty snow,” and so on.
Other Theories:
Secondly, Chomsky’s
theory deal with how languages contain similar structures and rules (a
universal grammar), and the fact that children everywhere acquire language the
same way and without much effort; innateness hypothesis. Thirdly, according to
Piaget’s Cognitive determinism children can think in a certain way, then they
developed the language to describe those thoughts. Lastly, Vygotsky also
presents a theory on cognitive development highlighting how learning precedes
development; children learn through social interaction that includes
collaborative and cooperative dialogue with someone more skilled in tasks
they're trying to learn.
Conclusion:
The main purpose of
language is to transfer thoughts from one mind to another mind. It simply is
used for expressing our thoughts and also the form of language determines our
thought process.
Contributed by, Syeda Areeba Fatima
