Theories
of language and thought have mostly been polarized on two opposed ends of
“cloaking” and “moulding.”
Cloaking
The
first school of sees language as “the dress of thought” [1] as
merely a tool that makes thought capable of being shared, of being translatable
across cultures. To these thinkers, language is an independent system unrelated
to thought. It evolved spontaneously through a process much like the Darwinian
natural selection in answer to an intuitive, instinctive need for the
expression of our cognitive processes[2]
How did
we learn language in the first place, they ask, if thought did not pre-exist?
And why do most languages have distinct concepts of thought and language as
self-determining and free of each other if they are not? They point to the
pre-linguistic behaviour of children that is nevertheless intelligent.
Noam
Chomsky's concept of Universal
Grammar[3] iterates that the brain has a program that can build an infinite number of
sentences from a finite lexicon. This program may be called a mental grammar. Children come equipped and
hardwired with a universal mental grammar:
an all-language, common grammatical schematic that our children how to acquire
the syntactic patterns naturally and effortlessly from the speech of elders.
Pre-linguistic
children can discriminate between objects and classify them, they can use
tactics and intuitive insight to achieve goals. Animals also show intelligent
behaviour in communication, avoiding obstacles, using tools, stalking prey etc.
Steven
Pinker extends Chomsky’s framework[4]. Language, according to him, is not a cultural artifact but a distinct
piece of the biological make up of the brain. Pinker proposes that the
acquisition of language is an instinct.
Moulding
Thought,
the other school says, is like liquid and language the container that holds the
liquid. The container could be a crude earthen pot or an elegant crystal
flute—language shapes thought, gives it a structure and makes it intelligible.
Language differentiates thought, keeps it locked within a framework, keeps it
from leaking and diffusing into undifferentiated consciousness even while it,
like a glass or a pot or a mug, makes it possible for the thought to be poured
without. Without language, thought would exist but it could not be understood or
made comprehensible.
Sapir-Whorf
aficionados believe in linguistic determinism[5] or,
at the very least, the weaker linguistic relativism:
We
dissect nature along the lines laid down by our native languages…the world is
presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organised by
our minds—and this means largely by linguistic systems in our minds.”[6]
and
say that language, in fact, determines—or influences—our very perception of
reality.
The author, Dr. Ranee Kaur Banerjee, is Managing Partner at Expressions@Work, a training, consulting and mentoring studio for the development of communication and soft skills
[1]
The full quotation reads "Language
is the dress of thought; and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would
be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of
rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy,
and the most splendid ideas drop their magnificence, if they are conveyed by
words used commonly upon low and trivial occasions, debased by vulgar mouths,
and contaminated by inelegant applications." Johnson, Samuel; Lives of the Most Eminent
English Poets (1779–81);
London, 1781
[2] Pinker, S and P. Bloom; “Natural language and natural selection”
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13: 1990 pp.707-84
[3] Chomsky, Noam; Language and Problems of Knowledge;
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1988
[4] Pinker, S. The Language Instinct; London: Penguin, 1994
[5]
Sapir, Edward; "The
Status of Linguistics as a Science," Language, 5 (1928): 207-214.
[6]
Whorf, Benjamin Lee; “Science and Linguistics,” 1940 in Language, Thought and Reality. Selected
Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Ed. by John B. Carroll. Cambridge, Mass.: The
MIT Press, 1956
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