Language,+Thought,+and+Culture

__**Language, Thought, and Culture**__ Sarah Duffy and Amrita Ramachandran

//This article is about different languages, its effect on the way people think, and their cultural backgrounds.// Language is not just a way of communicating with one another. Language is now seen as a contributer to culture and thought processes. Due to the work done by Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Whorf, language has been viewed as critical to the shaping of our reality. Before getting into the work of Whorf and Sapir, below will be a quick overview of what language is, and how it affects culture. Keep in mind, culture and language go hand in hand; therefore, the language you speak can affect thought.

__Basics of a language __
 * Language is not completely genetic. You start with the ability to learn and then it continues with what you are taught throughout your childhood and life.
 * Human language is by far Superior to any other forms of language between animals and their “communication abilities”
 * Learning an new language requires you attention. You can't learn it by only memorizing the vocabulary. You have to use it so that you have the proper information to include into what you are saying or talking about.

__Language and your culture __ Language has an impact on how you think. There are certain instances where you take a person and give them a command, then let them do as they please to complete the task. The language you speak has a direct effect on how you get things done or do certain things. In a study using cards paricipants were asked to lay them out and found that the language people spoke effected the way that they laid the cards out in order. Participants that spoke Hebrew laid the cards out from right to left where as the English speaking people laid out the cards from left to right.

When speaking about time it was found that English speakers use a “horizontal picture” the will say things like “good times are ahead of us” the “bad times are behind us.”

Mandarin speakers use a vertical picture of time. In Greek speaking languages they show conversation by by saying it was “big” or “long” in English people tend to go by length “short” or “fast” when speaking about a conversation.

__Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf__ The work done by these two men led to the conclusion that the differences in language can create differences in thought. They came up with several hypotheses, but one that got the most attention was the linguistic relativity hypothesis. According to Sapir and Whorf, the certain language a person speaks affects they way they think about the world. This has been tested by researchers, linguistics, and anthropologists. In a certain study, researchers studied colors since languages differ depending on the amount of color terms in them. For example, English has twelve whereas other languages have two (black and white). //(Berlin and Kay, 1969)// This can have large impact on the way a person thinks about color because their language could restrict them.

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The video we have included has topics throughout that relate to our wiki.

__Work Cited__ O'Neil, Dennis. "Language and Thought Processes." Available from http://anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_5.htm. Internet; accessed 18 January 2011. Boroditsky, Lera. "How does our language shape the way we think?." __EDGE__. Available from http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/boroditsky09/boroditsky09_index.html. Internet; accessed 18 January 2011.