Language, Culture and Thought

Language expresses our thoughts and emotions. However, our means of expression is not only
limited to that. How do we communicate when we are not using language? One way is
through visual depictions. There are obviously differences in the way feelings and ideas are
communicated between various languages. If every language were the same, we would be
able to understand one another perfectly, making communication simple and effortless.
However, that is clearly not the case. Some languages tend to state things more implicitly than
others.

Language is a social-cultural-geographical phenomenon. There is a deep relationship between

language, culture and society. It is in society that man acquires and uses language. When we
study a language, we have to study its dialects, sociolects, idiolects, etc.

We have to keep in mind the geographical and cultural area in which this language is spoken,
the culture and the society in which it is used, the speakers who use it, the listeners for whom
it is used, and the purpose for which it is used, besides the linguistic components that
compose it. Only then can our study of a language be complete and comprehensive. So we
must look at language not only from within but also from without; we should study language
from the points of view of both form and functions in culture. Socio-linguistics is the study of
speech functions according to the speaker, the hearer, their relationship and contact, the
context and the situation, the topic of discourse, the purpose of discourse, and the form of
discourse. It studies the causes and consequences of linguistic behavior in human societies; it
is concerned with the function of language, and studies language from without. Thus, we see a
unique bond between language and culture. For Saussure:

“There is an absolute relation between language and culture”

Language with its different varieties is the subject matter of socio-linguistics. Socio-
linguistics studies the varied linguistic realizations of socio-cultural meanings which in a
sense are both familiar and unfamiliar and the occurrence of everyday social interactions
which are nevertheless relative to particular cultures, societies, social groups, speech
communities, languages, dialects, varieties, styles. That is why language variation generally
forms a part of socio-linguistic study. Language can vary, not only from one individual to the
next, but also from one sub-section of speech-community (family, village, town, region) to
another. People of different age, sex, social classes, occupations, or cultural groups in the
same community will show variations in their speech. Thus language varies in geographical
and social space.  According to socio-linguists, a language is code.  Every individual have
some idiosyncratic linguistic features in his or her use of language. These personal linguistic
features are known as Idiolect.

Human beings are not static. Their thinking, choice, and behavior vary according to need and
situation. As they adapt their behavior according to the situation, they adapt their language.
This adaptation of language according to situation, context and purpose forms a language
variety that is called ‘Register’.  Unlike register, Dialect is a variety of language which has its
peculiar vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Register is social while dialect is
geographical variation.

Other varieties which develop due to the cultural pressure are: Pidgin and Creole. Pidgin is an
‘odd mixture’ of two languages which cannot be said a divergent variety of ‘a language’ but
of two or more languages. Here languages mixed up oddly that from morphemes to sentence
structure everything reduces and mingles strangely. Most of the present pidgins have
developed in European colonies. A few examples are: Hawaii Creole English and Tok Pisin,
Bislama. Out of these, many have developed as Creoles. Major difference between pidgin and
Creole is that former has no native speakers but the latter has. In fact, when any pidgin is
acquired by children of any community it becomes Creole. At that time it develops its new
structures and vocabulary. In other words when a pidgin becomes ‘lingua franca’ it is called
Creole.

This proves that language and culture are complementary to each other. Language cannot live
without society. Since sociolinguistics is based on language varieties. These varieties are due
to cultural and social needs rather than Interlingua pressures.  Even language of an individual
varies from occasion to occasion. We find that there are different levels of formalities with in
a language and their use depends of speaker’s purpose, mode and audience. Moreover it also
varies due to socio-economic position of individual or group. This variation of language with
social difference makes this notion more firms that language is social and cultural
phenomenon and inextricably tied with social and cultural traditions.

Does thought depend on language?

It may seem that we cannot speak without thinking but probably not because;

• We may use a word correctly before we fully understand the concept

• We express ourselves in paralinguistic ways of gesture and facial expressions

• Some people certainly think in images and pictures and artists express themselves in this
way

• Sometimes we "know" something but can't find the right words to express ourselves

Does language determine thought?

Many psychologists believe that language dictates the way we think. 

Others say that it actually determines our ideas themselves - not only how we think but what
we think.

Important studies and theories have been made on this theme by Bruner (child psychologist),
Sapir and Whorf (linguists), Watson (behaviourist psychologist), Bernstein (sociologist),
Wittgenstein (philosopher), Vygostsky (developmental psychologist)

Wittgenstein: "the limits of language mean the limits of my world"

He meant that the only way we can understand our world is through language.

Sapir claimed that we experience things because the language we use guides our very
thoughts. An extension of this is that different languages guide their speakers in different
ways - different language speakers not only speak differently, they think differently.

Whorf: "... we cut nature up, organise it into concepts and describe significances as we
do, largely because we are party to an agreement which holds in the pattern of our
language."The structure of a language determines the way in which speakers of that language
view the world.

Whorfian view
Language provides a screen or filter to reality; it determines how speakers perceive and
organize the world around them, both the neutral world and the social world. Consequently,
the language you speak helps to form your world-view.

Example on Whorfian Hypothesis

Many kinds of rain in Javanese

 Tlethik
 Trenceng
 Gerimis
 Udan
 Deres

Example # 2
Hopi verbs do not have concept of time and of speed unlike the European languages. For
example in English “He runs fast”, while in Hopi is “He very runs”.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Finally we come to the celebrated “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”, so named after the American
linguists Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and Benjamin Lee Whorf. Both Sapir and Whorf worked
extensively on American Indian languages and made important contributions to our
knowledge of those languages and also to linguistic theory. The work most clearly relevant to
the hypothesis was done in the 1930s, towards the end of their respective careers, so their
ideas represent the results of two distinguished lifetime devoted to the serious study of
language and culture, and cannot be dismissed lightly. On the other hand, it is not at all clear
exactly what formulation of the hypothesis Sapir and Whorf would themselves have accepted,
since neither tried to define any such hypothesis, and both changed their views radically ob
relevant matters from time to time.

Our extreme version of the hypothesis is a combination of extreme relativism with extreme
determinism. It claims that there are no restrictions on the amount and type of variation to be
expected between languages, including their semantic structures, and that the determining
effect of language on thought is total-there is no thought without language. If we put these
two claims together, we arrive at the conclusion that there are no constraints on the variation
to be found between people in the way they think, especially in the concepts they form. It also
follows that if one can find a way to control the language that people learn, one would thereby
be able to control their thoughts, as in George Orwell’s novel 1984.

So all of these researchers believe that language determines our concepts - and we can only
think through the use of concepts (this is called "linguistic determinism") - and different
language speakers "cut nature up" in different ways (this is the linguistic relativity
hypothesis)

Examples of linguistic relativity:

• See "Eskimo words for snow"

• Hopi Indians: use the same word for "insect", "aeroplane" and "pilot"

Have no tenses for their verbs - 

"Lightning", "flame", "meteor" and "puff of smoke" are all verbs e.g. "it puff-of-smoked"

• Zuni Indians: use the same word for "yellow" and "orange"

The use of language to describe the colours of the spectrum has been studied in depth as it
provides strict criteria and definitions. 

Brown and Lenneberg (1954) compared English with Shone (from Zimbabwe) and Bassa
(from Liberia) and found that colours which have no name in the language are more difficult
to recognise than those which do have a name in the language.

Regarding the role of language for development and the relationship between language and
thought: According to Piaget, thought comes before language, which is only one of its forms
of expression. The formation of thought basically depends on the coordination of sensory
motor schemes and not of language. This can occur only after the child has reached a certain
level of mental abilities, subordinating herself, to the thought processes. The language allows
the child to evoke an object or event absent at the communication of concepts. Piaget,
however, established a clear separation between the information that can be passed through
language and processes that do not seem to suffer any influence of it. This is the case of
cognitive operations that cannot be worked by means of specific training done with the aid of
language. For example, you cannot teach, just using words, to classify, to serialize, to think
with reversibility. As for Vygotsky, thought and language are interdependent processes, from
the beginning of life. The acquisition of language by the child modifies its higher mental
functions: it gives a definite shape to thought, enables the emergence of imagination, the
memory usage and the action planning. In this sense, language, unlike what Piaget postulates,
systematizes the direct experience of children and therefore acquires a central role in
cognitive development, reorganizing processes that are ongoing.
However it has been concluded that, while language acts as a label to help us remember it
may distort our recollection of things seen, or tend to make us think in a particular way, but it
does not determine what we have seen. Berlin and Kay (1969) determined that there are
eleven basic colour categories: black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, and pink,
orange, grey. English uses all eleven, the Ibibio (from Nigeria) use four and the Jalé (from
New Guinea) use two. However many psychologists think now that the Whorf hypothesis is
exaggerated and the general view is that as the similarities in the way that different languages
interpret colours are greater than the differences, and as it appears quite easy for cultures with
limited language words to learn new words identifying the "missing" colours (Rosch
1973), Language has a less significant influence on thought then Whorf supposed, though it
does affect it in superficial ways.

Bibliography
http://neoenglishsystem.blogspot.com/2010/12/socio-linguistics-language-and-culture.html?m=1

http://psych.nyu.edu/pelli/#intel

http://www.putlearningfirst.com/language/research/thought.html

http://www.researchgate.net/post/Thought_comes_before_language_or_thought_and_language_ar
e_interdependent_processes

Sociolinguistics by R.A.Hudson