Language and Cognition

A fascinating aspect of the relationship between language and culture is the impact of language on their way we organize our thought (cognition) and perceive our environment.

The anthropologists Edward Sapir first brought the problem of language, culture and perception into open, and one of his students, Benjamin Lee Whorf, developed this idea further in his own research and writing.

Together, they were responsible for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,, which focuses on the relationship between language and culture.

One important question in this regard is: Are we really free to express anything and everything through language?

The answer is: Maybe not. To some extent our language structures and hence limits or directs our communication.

If our studied a foreign language, you know that there are some ideas or way thinking that are language-specific, unique to that language.

If you speak a particular language, you might use different terms to refer to older brothers and younger brothers.

This forces you to think of your brothers differently than if you speak English, where all brothers are called by same term regardless of age.

Or to use another example, not all languages have the concepts of past, present and future built into their verbs.

For native English speakers, it is natural to think about time and to structure thought in terms of a linear view of time.

However, of we all assume that an infant can learn any language in the world, then we can see that it is not some inborn trait that directs a person’s way of thinking but, rather, something contained in the structure of the language.
Language and Cognition