Language Shapes Thought

[VoidCat]

Yes, but painting is not a means of inter-human communication.



As per my comment above. Inter-human communication cannot be achieved by images. I can look at an image and you can look at the same image, but that does not constitute communication between us.

As someone who has had to use images to communicate when nonverbal it does communicate something and sometimes it works a lot better then you'd think.

Some autistics use pictures to communicate you know.

 

[VoidCat]

@Secret Chief
Ever heard of The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)? I've used it. Not personally but I helped taught it to my brother. With other types of communication such as using your body and movements it can be quite effective and eventually the person uses words.
Im sure @Guitar's Cry could point out how a nonverbal person can talk through pictures and body language he's a special ed teacher.
All that is through images. We aren't communicating through words if im using my body and pictures to convey a message.

I might not of spoke english till I was almost 4 and now my vocabulary is complex tho I go nonverbal at times but there are loads of ways to communicate when you can't speak.

Edit: English isn't my native language. Pictures and mild fingerspelling(not enough that I was solely signing English words) is.

 

[Valjean]

In anthropology this is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/sapir-whorf-hypothesis.html

 

[Secret Chief]

In anthropology this is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/sapir-whorf-hypothesis.html

Wow, that's really interesting. Particularly of note for me is the part about the Hopi and time.

 

[VoidCat]

@Secret Chief
Ever heard of The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)? I've used it. Not personally but I helped taught it to my brother. With other types of communication such as using your body and movements it can be quite effective and eventually the person uses words.
Im sure @Guitar's Cry could point out how a nonverbal person can talk through pictures and body language he's a special ed teacher.
All that is through images. We aren't communicating through words if im using my body and pictures to convey a message.

I might not of spoke english till I was almost 4 and now my vocabulary is complex tho I go nonverbal at times but there are loads of ways to communicate when you can't speak.

Edit: English isn't my native language. Pictures and mild fingerspelling(not enough that I was solely signing English words) is.

In full transparency I should point out what I taught my brother wasn't actually PECS but basically was the same thing. I was like 6 and I cut out a ton of pictures for my brother to use to communicate. My dad figured out how to use the cards I made to teach my brother to speak. I didn't know of PECS. I just made cards and me and my brother came up with a way to communicate. Seeing as I wasnt fluent in English I couldn't actually teach him to speak we just communicated with the cards but once my dad figured out what we were doing... He figured out what PECS was after and explained it to me. I helped my brother where I could. It makes more sense to say I helped teach him PECS then taught him myself.

 

[Kenny]

As it turns out, the Words you speak into existence Create your reality around you.

How are your thoughts shaping your perception of reality?

This is a primary reality in the faith of Christianity.

God created with words and then told mankind that death and life are in the power of the tongue. Proverbs.

Also, as a man thinking in his heart (thought) so is he. Proverbs.

As well as, by your words your are justified and by your words your are condemned (creating your reality). Jesus.

 

[Estro Felino]

When my employers tell me to translate the text of a law from Italian to English, I realize how pompous, uselessly redundant, and barock the juridical language Italian lawmakers and jurists use, is.

In other words : a law text of ten lines becomes a text of five lines, translated into English.

In those moments, I immensely hate my language.
Immensely.


Ah...by the way...immensely is an adverb we use...

 

[firedragon]

I agree with her.
Anthropologists confirm that language shapes the psyche in a way that goes beyond genetics.

I would have been a completely different person if German had been my first language, or if Inuit had been my first language.

Please be kind enough to share an anthropologist in this field to read up. Thanks in advance.

 

[Estro Felino]

Please be kind enough to share an anthropologist in this field to read up. Thanks in advance.

What do you say?
@metis

 

[Clara Tea]

According to Percy Shelley, who knew a thing or two about the use of words, language coaxes thought from out of the unconscious into the conscious world. He called language “the perpetual Orphic song”, Orpheus being the musical son of Apollo, who descended into the underworld in search of his dead lover Eurydice.


Our thoughts, like Eurydice, are phantoms, until our words (song) bring them into the light. The question then is, do those phantoms not exist, until we perceive and define them? Do they only become real, when we clothe them with words? And from which realm or dimension do they originate?

Opinions of Clara Tea:

Percy Shelley's wife, Mary Shelley, wrote Frankenstein.

Percy looked like a nice young man. Frankenstein looked like parts of several nice young men.

Actor Gene Wilder (of Willie Wonka fame) co-wrote Young Frankenstein, and wrote the "Sitting on the Ritz" segment. His co-writer, Mel Brooks, felt that the segment was frivolous. Yet, it became iconic.

All of the arts (movies, art, literature, and poetry, etc.) reflect society. Gruesome and scary Grimm's fairy tales (from Germany) reflect the gruesome and scary culture (made iconic by WW II's Nazis).

A German sitting next to me griped about a dog barking. He said that his dog would never bark in public, because he is trained to behave. How, I asked, did the dog get trained so well? The German man said that he hit him constantly, and eventually the dog learned to behave. He said that in Germany no one has a misbehaving dog, and it is strikingly weird to see such dogs in other countries.

Does the strict German discipline account for German literature, or does German literature account for strict German discipline? Everyone in the world could read German literature (Hansel and Grettel...fattening kids to eat them, tossing a witch into an oven), but they don't acquire the strict German mindset.

Though strict, Germans are not stoic. They don't deprive themselves of the pleasures of life. It is ironic that such a merciless society that would murder and torture 6 million Jews would also bring us Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, and Handel, and their cooking would bring German chocolate and a variety of deserts (German chocolate cake) and delicasies. It is as though they are strict with those around them, but pamper themselves.

German shepherds are known to be fierce, and Germans like them that way. They are not like lap dogs, athough dachshunds are.

Culture is reflected in art. Russian abstractionist, Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was part of the avant garde (new) movement, started by Der Blaue Reitier, of which Piccasso, Russo, Van Gogh, and others were a part. Such art was shunned (and banned and burned) by Hitler, who was, himself, an artist.

Hitler's art was very carefully hidden from view during his political leadership of Nazis, due to its homoerotic content. Some of Hitler's paintings were of naked young men, wrapped passionately around each other, with groins touching. No wonder Hitler's German ideal was blond and blue eyed men (he often used to review the troops personally). Hitler was well known for banning Gays. Hitler had a platonic girlfriend, Eva Braun, and no kids.

Avant garde musicians (Zorn, Galas, Cage, Partch, Stockhausen, Parkins, Frith, Laswell, et al) were part of the same avant garde art movement. Abstract, and sometimes random, notes were considered music. Musique concrete used sounds as music.

Morality and religion are inexorably entwined. If it can be shown that culture plays a part in morality, it can also be proposed that morality has an impact in the arts and in religion. That is, a culture might reflect how people react to religion ("thou shalt not kill" might be merely a suggestion, not a commandment from God, as we have seen in the recent war in Iraq).

Nazi occupied France and Italy noted that Germans were not at all amused by their humor. They felt that there was no whimsy in their souls. Street mimes were thought to be silly. Comedians were thought to be useless and distracting.

 

[Clara Tea]

Please be kind enough to share an anthropologist in this field to read up. Thanks in advance.

I agree. It seemed like quite a claim to have no website to back it up. If we search for our own background information, we might get the wrong source.

 

[firedragon]

I agree. It seemed like quite a claim to have no website to back it up. If we search for our own background information, we might get the wrong source.

You misunderstood me. I was not making a critique of the claim. I was only asking for the scholar to read up. Its an interesting topic.

 

[Father Heathen]

If you don't have a word for it, you can't think it.

Then wouldn't most animals be in a vegetative state?

 

[sun rise]

Really? Cuz I don't think in words but images

Probably because im autistic and have no native tongue. Slow to speak learnt years later than most. Now you can't get me to shut up unless I go mute. I translate my thoughts when I speak

I remember reading that autistic people do think in images perhaps in the context of Temple Grandin. It's one of those things that I find interesting. You think in a way I don't really understand.

 

[Secret Chief]

Then wouldn't most animals be in a vegetative state?

Good point. Dunno.

Higher mammals obviously have language but I can't think how critters get on. Maybe it's all instinctive?

 

[metis]

What do you say?
@metis

Yep, it's often quite a bugger.

Fairly early in our marriage, we went to see the Greek movie "Never On Sunday" that included English subtitles, and at one point in the movie my wife and a few others in the audience started laughing. I asked her to explain what was so funny, and she said that she's have to try and explain if after the movie was over.

It was a play on words using the word "bacalao", as the Greek is similar to the Italian on this.

 

[Estro Felino]

Whereas in Spain they use “Bravo” to indicate a peculiarly Spanish concept of pride and machismo.

And while “machismo” has negative connotations in English, in Spanish it denotes something more akin to honour than to toxic masculinity.

And so on. What a gloriously fluid tool is language, and how well it adapts to fluctuations in cultural nuance.

Because Spanish is much more faithful to Latin than Italian.
It comes from pravus which means bad, mean.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

As it turns out, the Words you speak into existence Create your reality around you.

How are your thoughts shaping your perception of reality?

While there is a very small amount of truth to this, it is mostly false. Watch.

I have a million dollars!!!!

Hmmm somehow the money did not materialize.

 

[The Hammer]

While there is a very small amount of truth to this, it is mostly false. Watch.

I have a million dollars!!!!

Hmmm somehow the money did not materialize.

Over simplification.

 

[blü 2]

As it turns out, the Words you speak into existence Create your reality around you.

How are your thoughts shaping your perception of reality?

I was familiar with most of what she was saying.

Language is a part of culture, and the differences between cultures are generally well-known, and in many cases are represented by not particularly but not always baseless stereotypes. She's pointing out the role that language can play in these distinctions.

Mass media (TV, radio, net) have for several generations been bringing greater homogeneity of course.