Language and Thought: DO the languages we speak shape the way we think?

"How the Languages we Speak Shape the Way We Think" seems to take for granted the answer to the question "DO languages shape the way we think?". From our discussions and the evidence exhibited so far, that would seem to be the case, but not everybody is entirely convinced of that.

Thoughts can clearly be abstract, and when recalling pictures or music people clearly do not analyze the content of the thought in words, but rather re-create the sensory experience in their minds. If asked to describe a picture or a piece of music, one has the ability to take the thought from its abstract sensory medium and turn it into words, which can give a rough approximation of the thought to another person. The other person then, in turn, attempts to recreate the thought in his own head, to varying degrees of success depending on the quality of the description and the receiver's experience with the topic. So is it true that "language is a way for getting a thought from one head into another; it's not a way of having a thought" as Steven Pinker claims?

A quick side-note, the definition of "thought" could well encompass many books, but for the purpose of this post, I'll just go with something from the Oxford English Dictionary, thought is "exercise of the mental faculty; formation and arrangement of ideas in the mind." That, of course, begs the question of what constitutes an "idea," but we'll let that one sit for now.

Pinker offers some evidence for the assertion that language is utterly unnecessary for thought(this comes from the video available in the library in which Pinker is giving a lecture in Britain about The Language Instinct):
1. Other creatures, dogs or chimps for example, certainly appear to have thoughts in the absence of language. The same goes for babies early in development: they can think, remember, make associations, experience sensations and communicate their inner state without the use of any formal language.
2. While they are limited in number, there are deaf adults who never learned a formal sign language and are apparently "without language." They also clearly are capable of thoughts and ideas and creativity. They can do things like repair bike locks which not only shows technical skill, but suggests that they know of the function of a bike lock: two pieces of metal that should stick together sometimes and come apart at others depending on who is accessing it.
3. Even for those who have language, the process from thought to speech is often a treacherous one. What we say is often different from what we mean; further, it's very difficult to express thoughts in words. (This just got me thinking, it often seems, at least for myself, that I have an understanding of something, or I have some complex idea in my head that doesn't lend itself to explanation. However, when forced to transmit this idea from myself to another person and I endeavor to put the thought/idea into words, it solidifies my understanding of it, storing it more effectively in memory. Perhaps it is more advanced thoughts, more accessible and communicable thoughts that rely on language while baser or more abstract thoughts/ideas exist at a prelingual level.)
4. Our thoughts are very unambiguous (at least to ourselves) while language is highly ambiguous as seen by our unsuccessful attempts to teach computers to speak. (Think back to the alternative meanings that the computer gave to "Time flies like an arrow") Language's ambiguity is also shown by the endless lists of ambiguous, comical headlines
. The authors of these headlines weren't being ambiguous on purpose, they had a very clear idea in their head, but when that idea is translated into language, ambiguity arises.
5. Language is very sketchy. There are not enough words for full lines of reasoning. The husband in the " 'I'm leaving you.' 'Who is he?' " sketch had a huge series of thoughts in one instance between what his wife said and what he said. He could elaborate them into words if need be, but what happened in his head was not based in language, it was a chain of nonverbal reasoning.

The only conclusion I can really draw from this limited discussion is that there are clearly "thoughts" that one can have without language. Is the title of our seminar inaccurate? I really don't think so. It is also just as clear that plenty of thoughts happen WITH the help of language, and it might even be that they are the most useful, solid, fully-understood thoughts that we have which are based in language. As mentioned, one (or a few) could go on for ages discussing what constitutes real "thoughts" anyway.

My main source for all this was the video in the library (source info in the post below), but an excellent source for information on psycholinguistics (or many other cognitive studies) is here.



Another language acquisition link. This is another youtube video; they start discussing language around 22:00 if you're interested. It's Steven Pinker and Gene Searchinger, author of "The Human Language" speaking on some show from what appears to be the 1980's. In it, Pinker says, "I believe we think in images, we think in abstract propositions... I believe that the thoughts underlying language are not themselves words, but that we use words as the primary means from getting ideas from one head to another."


A random article. Do video games that "train" your brain work? Looks like there's some minimal evidence:
Video game brain training works?