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Language or Thought: Which is Affecting Which?

Saman Hassanzadeh, PhD student of TEFL in Esfahan Azad University

Dr. Akbar Afghari, assistant professor of TEFL in Esfahan Azad University

Abstract

The question of whether language affects thought or not is a matter of

controversial debate among linguists and non linguists. A review of the

literature clearly reveals that there are three viewpoints regarding this

relationship. The first one indicates that language heavily influences

thought, the second one argues that it does not influence thought while the

third one shows that language partially influences thought. The present

paper aims to shed some light on these three viewpoints and argue that the

language we speak somehow influences the way we perceive the world, but

it does not regulate reality.

Key words: Language, thought, reality , culture

Introduction

The question of whether or not language affects the way we perceive the

world has ignited a heated debate among linguists and non-linguists,

anthropologists and psychologists for centuries. One cannot give a clear-cut

answer to this question as it seems to be somehow complicated. It reminds

us of the same old chicken-and-egg question: Which one existed first?

Language or thought? If we do not have words for things and ideas then are

we able to think about them? Or do we have no words for them because we

do not think about them? By giving it more thought we can clearly see that

there are other facets involved in the problem besides just language and

___________________________________________________________

Corresponding author: Saman Hassanzadeh,

Email:saman.hassanzadeh1978@gmail.com , Tel: (0098 833725 4473

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thought; it cannot be that simple, there must be an extra element affecting

this relationship.

Culture is definitely a defining issue in the relationship between language

and thought. But what do we mean by culture? Our culture is nothing but a

collection of our traditions, lifestyles, habits, and beliefs shared and

accepted by all of us. So what we take as culture and the people we live and

interact with shape the way we think, and also shape the way we talk. Now

, if we speak different languages and our languages are different from each

other , then we should expect to experience the world differently and have

different thoughts and beliefs. The languages we speak represent a specific

worldview; undoubtedly expecting different worldviews because of

different languages being spoken in the world is not far-fetched image or

idea so it is ,therefore, quite safe to claim that speakers of different

languages think about the world in quite different ways.

Does our language affect our way of thinking? Or is it the case that both

our thoughts and our languages are affected by a difference in cultural

habits? If we are trying to answer these questions, then we must look

somewhere else. It is too simplistic to think that culture is affecting our

worldview or vice versa. A different scenario might help solve the problem.

We are viewing the world differently because we are breaking reality into

different categories and we label these categories differently. So a new

dimension could be added to the discussion and that is the role of reality.

Then, exploring the relationship between language, thought and reality

might help find some answers to our questions. Then we need to explore

human history to find out more about this relationship. Plato was probably

the first philosopher who noticed this relationship in his theory of forms.

His theory claims that non-material and conceptual yet significant forms or

ideas, and not the material world of alteration which is known to us through

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our senses, own the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. He

maintained the idea that thought and language have meaning as stemming

from abstract definitions or concepts called “forms” and which all the

“entities and qualities designated thereby can be subsumed” (Gill,

1997). His view is ultimately implying that language is based on reality.

Similarly, John Locke, a more contemporary philosopher, follows Plato in

his quest to define the relationship between language as reality as follow:

Our senses, conversant about particular sensible object, do convey

into the mind several distinct perceptions of things according to

those various ways wherein those objects affect them. And thus we

come by those ideas we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard,

bitter, sweet and all those which we call sensible qualities; which

when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they from

external objects convey into the mind what produces those

perceptions (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book 2,

chapter 1).

A review of related literature clearly shows that there are three viewpoints

argued by most researchers regarding the relationship between language

and thought up to date: Some argue that language heavily influences

thought, others are of the opinion that language does not influence thought

and yet there is a third group who claims that language partially influences

thought. The influential linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf

were the first people who introduced this idea (Harley, 2008). In 1940, a

short article, which was published by a popular science magazine, M.I.T,

stirred one of the most generally held beliefs of the time. This article

proved to be quite revealing about the talents of a young author, who was

working as an engineer at an insurance company, and brought him

experience of an overnight sensation. It was Benjamin Lee Whorf who

brought up this appealing idea about the power of language over the mind,

and his stimulating approach to deal with the subject convinced an entire

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generation into accepting as true that our mother tongue restricts what we

are able to think. The language he chose to study was Hopi, a Native

American language spoken in northeastern Arizona. Based on his studies,

Whorf claimed that speakers of Hopi and speakers of English see the world

differently because of differences in their language. Particularly, Whorf

declared that Native American languages oblige on their speakers a picture

of reality that is entirely different from ours, so their speakers would just

not be able to appreciate some of most basic concepts, like the flow of time

or the difference between objects like stone and actions like fall because

they are nonexistent in their languages.

This paper aims to shed some light on those three viewpoints mentioned

above and argue that the language we speak somehow influences the way

we perceive the world, but it does not regulate reality. In order to be able to

do so, first we need to know which features of thought are influenced by

which features of language, then we need to discuss the form and the

strength of that influence. For instance, some features of grammar or of the

lexicon might cause a causal effect on certain features of visual perception

(e.g., on which colors we can discriminate), classification (e.g., on how we

sort things by their color), or long-term memory (e.g., on which differences

among colors we remember most accurately) in clearly specifiable ways. If

there is such an influence we would also like to know what mechanisms

acts as a go-between it, but until we have clearer answers to these

questions, we will not be able to answer this.

Human languages can be thought of as flexible and extensible. Most ideas ;

therefore, that can be said in one language can be rendered approximately

in another language ; if this process is difficult or impossible , words and

phrases can then be borrowed to help facilitate the process . However, what

seems to be easy to say in one language may seem to be harder to say in

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another language, and this may make it more natural, easier or more

common for speakers of the first language to think in some given ways than

let us say for speakers of the second language to do so. A category or a

concept may be more obtainable in some linguistic communities than in

others (Brown, 1956). In short, this discussion could be either considered in

stronger or weaker forms, depending on the assumed forms and the

assumed strength of the assumed influence. So let us start with the

discussion of different features of language.

1. Different features of language and perception

Various features of language could cause different thoughts in different

people; consequently, different perceptions could come to mind.

1.1 Syntax

Grammar of a language is one big distinctive feature of that language and it

can differ from language to language. Some languages have easy to use

syntax and yet some others have very complicated syntactical rules to be

learnt and applied by their speakers. There are, therefore, different areas in

which grammar of a language might be at variance with another language:

the classic word order of a language namely may be different between

languages. In English, the frequent order is subject, verb, and object. But

this order is a little different in Japanese, it is subject, object, and verb. Yet

in other languages this order may vary or may be even more flexible. There

are, however, many minute grammatical differences between languages like

time conception, object conceptions. For instance, languages can differ in

whether they distinguish between intransitive verbs and adjectives. Objects,

for example, are again treated differently simply because of the syntax of

different languages. In English, for example, some nouns like apple are

countable and can be made plural apples while others are uncountable and

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cannot be made plural (Take rice for example, you can have two cups of

rice but not two rices). Other languages, like Japanese, do not make this

distinction; instead, classifiers like cup of are used for all nouns. Whether

or not this property of the language makes English speakers more aware of

the distinction between substances and individual objects is not confirmed

yet and calls for more research.

Take this example from Whorf. He mentioned that due to the fact that the

concept of time is treated differently in English and it is broken up into

large masses that can be counted like: three weeks, four hours, ten minutes,

then speakers of English would like to treat time as a group of concepts

consisting of seconds, minutes, hours instead of a smooth uninterrupted

flow. This, he, believed, enables English speakers to think of time as

something that can be lost, wasted, or even saved. For the Hopi, things are a

bit different. They do not have the same concept of time. For them there is

no concept like week, day, or hour so they think about it differently; for

them time is nothing but an uninterrupted sequence. One, of course, should

not take this to mean that that English language is imposing a unique view

of time on its speakers; it is rather the case that the view of the English

speakers of time is echoed in their language, or it could be that their

language and their thoughts are both responsible to shape the way they deal

with time in their culture. Therefore , one can claim that it is quite possible

that language, thought, and culture outline three threads of a braid, and each

one of them is affecting the others.

In addition, English does oblige us to specify certain types of information,

which could not be understood unless the context is given in other

languages. If somebody, for example, wants to tell you in English about a

dinner he/she had with his/her neighbor, he/she may not have to mention

whether the neighbor was a male or female, but rather he/she does have to

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tell you something about the time of the event: He/she has to specify

whether they had dinner, are going to have dinner, are having dinner, or

will have dinner and so on. Chinese, on the other hand, does not oblige its

speakers to specify the exact time of the action in this way, and this is

because they use the same verb form for past, present or future actions.

Again, this does not necessarily mean that the Chinese are not able to

perceive the concept of time. But it does mean they are not forced to think

about timing whenever they are describing an action.

When our language habitually forces us to indicate definite types of

information, it is obliging us to be conscientious about certain details in

the world and specific aspects of the experience that speakers of other

languages may not be forced to consider all the time. So there are factors at

work which are quite beyond language itself and they are constantly

affecting our experiences, observations, associations, manners, mind sets,

memories and directions in the world.

1.2 Vocabulary

No one can deny the fact that different languages are known by their

different lexicons which are in turn used to express different ideas and

intentions. Languages may classify ideas by use of different vocabularies.

Because of the nature of thoughts, it is sometimes possible to think about

something even if we do not have a word for it, Take colors, for example.

There are an infinite number of different colors, and we are not quite sure

if they have their own names. For example, If you have a container of red

paint and little by little put in blue to it, drop by drop, it will very slowly

turn to a reddish purple, then purple, and then bluish purple. Each drop is

definitely changing the color very faintly, but while you are doing this you

cannot think of a single moment when your new color stops being red and

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becoming purple. The color continuum is uninterrupted. Our language,

however, is not permanent. Our language obliges us to break the color

spectrum up into 'red', 'purple', and so on.

The Dani of New Guinea, for instance, have only two basic color terms in

their language to refer to colors, one is used for dark colors including blue

and green and the other one is used for light colors including yellow and

red. Their language instead splits up the color spectrum in a different way

from English speakers. But this is not to mean that they cannot see the

distinction between yellow and red; There are some studies which have

shown that they do see different colors just as English speakers can

(Winawer , 2007)

Take another example from Russian language. They have just two different

words to refer to light blue and dark blue. This does not make Russian

speakers think of these colors as different specific colors, and yet it does

not cause English speakers to think of them as the same, just because they

have one word for them. If we think of red and pink as different colors,

then maybe we are under the influence of our language.

So what our language does is not just obliging us to perceive only what it

provides us words for, but it can rather influence how we are putting things

into groups. When a child is learning a language, it is his/her job to

discover which things go by the same word. After the child learns that the

family's pet is a dog, he/she may see a cow and say dog, .This is because

he/she thinks that the two things are the same. As we grow up, we learn to

categorize things that have something in common and put them under the

same category, but what is considered as being similar enough to go under

a single category may be different from language to language. There are

innumerable words that cannot be translated and they are used to express

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thoughts and beliefs of the people who use them in their everyday

communications. These words give enough vision and tell us much about

the life of the society and culture to which that particular language belongs.

We cannot even expect to be aware of a different culture if we do not know

the words used in that particular culture because ways of living and

thinking are expressed through language.

1.3 Semantics

Semantically speaking, Languages are different from each other. Two

different views on the relationship between semantics and thought are

presented in the literature: the relativist view and the Universalist view. The

former is often attributed to Whorf (1956), which holds that arbitrary

linguistic conventions largely determine semantic distinctions, causing

languages to vary widely freely and independent of each of each other and

it continues to add that such linguistic diversities do have an effect on

cognition. A relativist argues that there is no such thing as universal

vocabulary of thought and perception, languages are, therefore, free to vary

largely randomly in their semantic division of the world and these linguistic

differences can leave their impression on thought and perception. A

Universalist, in contrast, holds that there is a universal vocabulary of

thought and perception, so languages are constrained to reflect it, and

cannot alter it (Richard S. Cook, Paul Kay, and Terry Regier, 2005). They

summarize their findings regarding role of semantics on perception as

follows:

The traditional framing is simplistic, and hides interesting realities.

One such reality is that at least in the color domain, there are clear

universals governing the semantic distinctions that languages make –

but there may also be some limited element of arbitrariness in exactly

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where category boundaries are drawn. This is an ultimately

universalist finding, but with a relativist twist.

1.4 Pragmatics

There is definitely no doubt that context does play a crucial role in the use

and understanding of language as well as in cognition ( Philip & Aydede,

2008; Swoyer, 2002). So it is likely that distinctions in the way speakers of

different languages use their languages in actual contexts have an effect on

their mental life. It is often the case that an individual may utter out words

clearly with no problems and at the same time use long, complex well made

grammatical sentences, but still not be able to establish the inclined

communication - if he or she has not completely learned to use the rules of

pragmatics. People certainly use language for different purposes. They

might use it to greet people (e.g., hello, goodbye), they might wish to use it

to give informing (e.g., I'm going to get a cookie), they may also express

their demanding by language (e.g., Give me a cookie), still they might

prefer to use language for promising purposes (e.g., I'm going to get you a

cookie), or finally they might like to employ their language to make

requests (e.g., I would like a cookie, please).

They might want to use language differently according to the needs of their

listener or situation, such as when they are talking to a baby , their way of

talking is different from the way they talk to an adult, or when they are

trying to give background information to an unfamiliar listener . They also

know that they need to speak differently in a classroom than on a

playground. People also know that they need to observe some rules while

they are using language. This usually occurs when they are using language

for conversations and they are telling a story. Some rules are always

observed such as, brining up topics of conversation, keeping a close

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distance to someone when speaking , making use of verbal and nonverbal

signals ,taking turns in conversation , restating when misinterpreted ,staying

on topic, and employing facial expressions and eye contact. These rules

may be different across cultures and inside cultures. It is therefore of crucial

importance for interlocutors to understand the rules of their communication

partner if they want to know what they mean. For example, in India you

have to know where a person is from in order to know if he/she is

indicating a yes or no by different shakes of his/her head. Or in Norway, if

you happen to see somebody raising his/her eyebrows to your request, you

should take it as a yes. People would think differently when they are to use

a language in a non native context.

2. Thought

Do we think in language? The answer might be yes, much of the time, but

have you ever experienced situations in which you can easily call upon

mental images and sensations that would be hard or impossible to be

expressed in words. We can think about the sound of a music masterpiece,

the form of a apple, or the smell of pepper none of which needs any

language. Does this mean it is possible to think about something even if we

do not have a word for it? Yes. As it was mentioned in the previous section,

colors would be good examples. Sometimes we see colors we do not even

have a word for. But in some languages depending on the diversity of the

words used, they might have as many as 100 words for colors. Some people

believe that learning a different language will not change the way we think.

But how do we know whether differences in language create differences in

thought, or the other way around? The answer, it turns out, is both—the

way we think influences the way we speak, but the influence also goes the

other way. The past decade has witnessed a host of ingenious discoveries

stating that language does plays a causal role in forming cognition. Studies

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have shown that if you change how people talk it changes how they think.

Introducing new color words to people, for instance, changes their ability to

differentiate colors. And if you teach people a new way of talking about

time, it will give them a new way of thinking about it ( Shai Danziger &

Robert Ward, 2010; Caitlin M. Fausey et al, 2010 and Lera Boroditsky &

Alice Gaby, 2010).

Differences in language might also affect more general styles of thought

(Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001). A dual-process explanation of

cognition is what has been suggested by several recent theorists. The basic

idea behind this dual process is that human beings are equipped with two

quite different cognitive subsystems or should we say two types of

subsystems. There is an explicit subsystem which is for the most part

conscious, figurative, verbal, systematic, sequential, flexible and competent

of reflection. But an implicit subsystem could also be thought of which is

mainly unconscious, associative, spontaneous, emotional and that react

involuntarily to stimuli (Chaiken & Trope, 1999; Sloman, 1996). One

feature of language might have an effect on one system at a time or it might

affect both differently.

2.1 Examples of influence of language on thought

Quite recently, different experimentations have discovered that the feelings

and associations of speakers toward objects around them could be shaped

by grammatical genders. In the 1990s, for instance, psychologists compared

associations between German and Spanish speakers. There are many

examples of inanimate nouns whose genders in the two languages are

reversed. In German, a bridge is feminine (die Brücke), for instance, but in

Spanish el puente is masculine; and the same holds true for clocks, pockets,

forks, newspapers, stamps , apartments shoulders, tickets, violins , the sun,

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the world and love. Likewise, an apple is masculine for a German speaker

but Spanish speaker views it as feminine, and the same is also true for

chairs, brooms, butterflies, keys, mountains, stars, tables, wars, rain and

trash. Spanish speakers considered bridges, clocks and violins to have more

masculine assets like power, but Germans rather deemed them as more slim

or graceful, upon being asked to rate different objects on a scale of

masculine or feminine features. The influence proved to be reversed with

objects like mountains or chairs, which are considered as masculine in

German but feminine in Spanish ( Lord, Nancy, 1996; Wierzbicka, Anna ,

1992).

The most remarkable proof to illustrate the influence of effect of language

on how people think could undoubtedly be that of space, how we use

language to illustrate direction of the world around us. Most languages

would use phrases like left, right, behind, opposite, center, around and etc.

to illustrate the locations of things around them. Speakers of these

languages seem to be relying on an egocentric system of orientation

descriptions. They would like to see things according to where their bodies

are. There is, however, a distant Australian indigenous tongue, Guugu

Yimithirr, in north of Queensland which does not seem to utilize any of

egocentric coordinates at all. But geographical coordinates are used instead

by the speakers of this particular language to describe locations. A recent

study showed that people who speak Guugu Yimithirr have a better

appreciation of the space. When they were left on their own in a desert they

were able to find their way back home just because they were thinking in

their native tongue which in turn enabled them to navigate much easier

compared to other people who did not speak their language. (Levinson,

Stephen C. 2003)

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Yet another startling example is the way English speakers lean their bodies

forward or backward when they are talking about future or past. Because of

the structure of their language they believe past is behind and future is up

ahead. But in Aymara, a language spoken in the Andes, the past is said to

be in front and the future behind. The way people in Andes and England

see the past and future was compared in a study and the results showed

English people believe past is past and they tended to work toward their

future while people from Andes never forgot their past and future was not

that much important for them (Raphael Núñez & Eve Sweetser , 2006)

After considering different features of language, thought and the influence,

it is time to go back to the three viewpoints mentioned at the beginning of

the paper. As it was mentioned earlier three different viewpoints regarding

Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf theory could be thought of. The first

viewpoint claims language strongly influences thought, the second one

states language does not influence thought and the last one argues language

partially influences thought. These three viewpoints are discussed in the

light of the discussions made earlier in this paper, in the next section.

3. Three viewpoints about the relationship between language and

thought

3.1 The first viewpoint

Benjamin Whorf, like Sapir also studied Native American

languages. Whorf resorts to several examples from the Native American

language, Hopi, to help him support his assumption that thought is strongly

based on language. According to Whorf the Hopi language does not

contain any words, grammatical constructions or expressions that refer to

the English concept of ‘time.’ Whorf goes on to elucidate that it is likely in

the Hopi language to illustrate the world or reality in ways quite bizarre and

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odd in other languages. The way in which reality is viewed in Hopi is

specific to this specific language and can only be best expressed if one is

familiar with the language (Carroll, 1956). In this example, where Whorf

believes language powerfully affects thought, he is often condemned with

circularity because he conjectures cognitive diversities between two

speakers from an inspection of their respective languages, Hopi and

English. His evidence of cognitive diversity is only “based on recurrence

of the linguistic differences” (Harre, 1990 ).

A whole lot of researchers followed his theory which was later on called

strong determinism and it is used to refer to a firm outlook that states what

is said is straightforwardly accountable for what is seen by the mind. Two

Australian scientists Peterson and Siegal, tried to support this view of

determinism in their experiment. For their experiment, deaf children

viewed a doll, which was placed next to a marble in a box. Then the

marble was removed and placed in a basket and in the end the doll was

taken away, too. The deaf children were later asked where they thought the

doll would search for the marble when it comes back. Tremendously, the

deaf children from deaf parents responded correctly (that the doll would

search for the marble in the box). The deaf children whose parents were

not deaf responded mostly incorrectly. The experiment demonstrated

obviously the relationship between deaf children with deaf- parents who

used to communicate by using a complex sign language system and their

being able to answer the question correctly. They got the answer right

because they were brought up in a place where they used American Sign

Language to relate to their parents. However, the other children, who had

not been brought up in a similar linguistic environment (their parents were

not deaf and thus they were not fluent in ASL) were not able to answer the

question correctly and see the relationship. These results persuaded the

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experimenters to deem that the Sapir-Wharf Hypothesis was acceptable

according to strong determinism.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis has continued to be a troublesome issue for

long years now and this is just because many scholars believe that Whorf’s

examples could not reveal a genuine connection between language and

thought while others are consistent with Whorf and argue that thought is

beyond doubt reliant on language and are not at ease with this

idea. Although these restrictions remain to make it complicated for

scholars, many still hope to look for ways to confirm or contradict the

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

3.2 The second viewpoint

Translatability, differences between linguistic and non-linguistic events and

universals are three main points used by researchers to argue against the

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Translatability is a frequent dispute used by

researchers to stand against the hypothesis, because although languages

may be different significantly in the way they convey specific details, it is

still quite likely to translate those details from one language to another.

The second argument made by Eric Lenneberg against the Sapir-Whorf

Hypothesis relies on the differences between linguistic and non-linguistic

events and it goes like this “linguistic and non-linguistic events must be

separately observed and described before they can be correlated” (Carroll,

1956). He bases his argument on the fact that no one can find a way to

describe language as affecting thought when there is no difference between

these two events and that the proof which supports language as affecting

thought is merely based on linguistic variations.

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The third dispute that proves that language does not affect thought is the

idea of universals. One can trace back the idea of universals to the Port

Royale:

There are grammar observations that apply to all languages; these

observations constitute what one calls general grammar. Grammar,

which has for its object the expression of thought by the help of speed,

spoken or written, thus admits of two sorts of rules. One kind is

immutably true and universally followed, it applies to the form of

thought itself, it follows from the analysis of it and is only the

consequence of it…(Cowie, 1999).

The theory of Universals, which is generally attributed to Chomsky and

generative grammar, is trying to prove that there are deep structures that are

common to all languages (Fishmann, 1976). The theory claims that all

cultures are related and have similar realities, which is quite in deep

contrast with Whorf’s thoughts who believed all cultures perceive the world

in a different way because of their language.

3.3. The third viewpoint

Works of Sapir and Whorf caused an enormous revolution in the way

researchers analyze language and thought. Scholars hurried to find proof

that would give the hypothesis strength. Although the research is

undemanding to devise, the problem is in coming across a number of

variables that precisely test the hypothesis. It is a little difficult if not

impossible to believe that language determines thought, however through

the same examples from Whorf’s studies in Hopi and other explanations

from other scholars it is convincing to put forward that language does to

some extent determine thought. In determining linguistic relativity, it does

not seem to pay off to think whether a language affects ones thoughts but it

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would be much more fruitful to discuss and determine to what degree it

affects ones thought. (Wierzbicka, 1992).

A quick research in the literature can find numerous examples that hold up

for a weaker interpretation of linguistic relativity, which is the main focus

of our third viewpoint. One good example is that of Linda Rogers which

quite precisely gives proof to support a weak interpretation of linguistic

relativity. In her experiment, she chose some bilingual children as the

subjects of her study and read a short story for them while their brain-wave

patterns were being recorded as they were listening to the story. At first,

they listened to the English version of the story and she noticed their left

hemisphere was more active and then for the second time, she let the

children listen to the story being read in Navaho and this time she observed

their brain was more active in the right hemisphere. She concluded that the

children processed the English story in their left hemisphere because

English is a noun- centered language and their right hemisphere was more

active in the second experiment because Navaho is a verb-centered

language. This proved the fact that even though the same story was read to

the same children they processed the story in a different way based on

which language it was told in (Gill, 1997).

Another example is a study done by Agnes Niyekawa-Howard in 1968

which compares and contrasts English and Japanese passive

constructions. It is explained in the study that Japanese language has two

kinds of passive constructions in which when one is merged with the other

one the meaning changes so that the subject of the sentence is taken to take

the action that is found in the verb. This construction was not seen while

the subjects were translating stories from Japanese to English; however, the

Japanese translators incorporated this construction in the translation from

English to Japanese. Likewise, when they were asked to deduce cartoons

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that mostly dealt with interpersonal inconsistency, they attributed

responsibility for the negative results to others. In other words, they shifted

the blame to others. (Salzmann, 1993).

Codability is yet another evidence to support our third viewpoint. It can be

seen as the capability to render a word, phrase or idea from one language to

another. No one can argue against the fact that bilinguals find it easier to

express some ideas in one language than another one. There are times when

an idea, thought, emotion or a location could be easily expressed by using a

few words, while it would take at least a paragraph to explain the same

ideas in another language. This concept demonstrates the idea that language

partially influences thought because it is possible for a speaker in one

language to be able to recognize a lexical category better than another one

but one needs to keep in mind that this does not mean language limits ones

thought in perceiving the same idea.

The arguments made by researchers and scholars in proving or disproving

the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and the implications that surround the claims

made by Sapir have created a whole big challenge for linguists and

anthropologist . There seems to be no single proof that shows which

version of language relativity theory is definitely the best so researchers

and those interested have no choice but to observe small samples of

particular registers in which language can be seen to influence thought and

reality. However, more research in this area does seem to prove the weak

interpretation of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

4. CONCLUSION

The relationship between language and society is so close that one cannot

think of them as two separate beings. The existence of one quite depends on

the other one. There is no human society that does not depend on, is not

20

shaped by, and does not itself shape language” (Chaika, 1989). A close

look at this statement clearly reveals the relationship between language,

thought and reality. Their relationship could be described best as a

reciprocal one in which language not only forms the mode through which

reality is identified but reality can also shape language. How language is

viewed by many people has completely changed because of the Sapir-

Whorf Hypothesis. As it was discussed in this paper, it has produced many

debates and research in the field .There are, therefore; scholars on both

frontiers including Sapir and Whorf and their advocates who are of the

opinion that that language strongly influences thought and yet , there are

others who put forward the idea that language does not influence thought.

The confirmation from research, however; points out that language does

influence thought and awareness of reality but language does not rule

thought or reality. There is still room for more research on this argument,

and the debate is followed by the researchers to the date.

21

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