Language has the power to relay information without displaying a visual of the meaning. In this way language is one of the most powerful qualities of humanity, because it can not only unite people, but also convey vital information and allow a high level of communication. Different languages impact their speakers in different ways, creating different levels of understanding and intent. Communication can either bar groups from interacting, or create an interface in which they can convey information. Language shapes the way speakers view the world, their habits of thought, and allows them to communicate on a higher level with some individuals, yet restrains them from communicating with others.
Every language is comprised of a different vocabulary,
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As Guy Deutscher noted in Does Your Language Shape How You Think?, “Recently, it has been demonstrated in a series of ingenious experiments that we even perceive colors through the lens of our mother tongue”. For example, one language might lack the word for the color blue, and therefore, the speakers think of blue as a darker shade of green instead of its own color. In Korean, whenever speaking to someone else it is important that the speaker uses the correct speaking level, which is aligned with their relationship with the person they are talking to. There are seven different levels of speech in the Korean language, which are expressed as verb paradigms and show the respect or authority of whoever is talking. Meaning all speakers of Korean are constantly assessing their relationships with those they are talking to, integrating the system of respect that runs deep through their culture. In many Romance languages nouns are gendered, and it has been studied and proven that “grammatical genders can shape the feelings and associations of speakers …show more content…
Language allows humans to exchange ideas, work together, and shape relations with others. However, language can also be responsible for exclusion and separation of groups. While communication today is at an all-time high, “these different languages impose a barrier, as we 've just seen, to the transfer of goods and ideas and technologies and wisdom. And they impose a barrier to cooperation” (Pagel). There are currently around 7,000 languages spoken, but languages are always dying out and it looks as though humanity is headed towards a single language to unite the world and destroy the barrier. Groups of humans broke off to create the thousands of languages we speak today, but would an individual have the power to change language? How would the modern world’s accelerated ability to spread information help change language
Most people who grow up with a foreign language spoken in there house grow up with an advantage in society. This advantage can only occur once the individual learning that foreign language also learns the dominant language spoken in that country. Once both of these languages are learned and mastered, the individual has now placed them se...
Language has the power to influence and reshape our thoughts and actions. In Anthem, by Ayn Rand, there is a society which controls the language of everyone in it. Under the World Council, everyone is to follow the many rules put in place and no one even tries to break them. There is no “I” in their language, there is only “we”. With the power to influence and reshape people, language has a big impact on our thoughts and actions.
The power of words is immeasurable. Words help people to voice their opinions and express their thoughts and feelings. Our everyday lives are shaped by communication and in general language. A persons language can often influence success and happiness. America is viewed as a melting pot for numerous different people and their respective languages. Language is so vital in our society that a person of diverse ethnic background can face many tribulations throughout their everyday life.
Language is used to preserve and transfer culture and cultural ties. Diverse ideas branch from differing language use within one’s culture and the whole intertwining of these relationships start at one’s birth. I have to agree with Confucius when he said that we are all born exactly the same; it is only once a child is exposed to their surroundings that they become individuals in and of their cultural group. Every individual’s views are dependent on the culture which has influenced them, as well as the language which has been shaped by that culture. The understanding of a culture and its people can be enhanced by the knowledge of their language. And learning a new language involves the learning of a new culture (Allwright & Bailey
The word language is most often associated with speech, yet it is also closely related to power. While many see language as a tool of unification and empowerment, it is also used to silence others. Society gives advantages to individuals that speak the dominant language, and those who are not fluent, are victims of social pressures such as ridicule, harassment, and isolation. Language gives individuals the power to manipulate and oppress others. Oppression occurs when one group has power over another group, and use that power to manipulate. Language gives dominant groups the power to oppress minority individuals through segregation, assimilation and hierarchies.
In her article, How Does Our Language Shape the Way We Think, Lera Boroditsky (2009) explains how the results of her experiments support the idea that the structure of language shapes the way we think. In one of her experiments, she found that English speakers would place cards showing temporal progression in temporal order from left to right, Hebrew speakers would place them right to left, and that the Kuuk Thaayorre would place them from east to west. This shows that the written language affects how time is represented to them. In another one of her experiments, she asked German and Spanish speakers to describe some items and found that the masculinity or femininity of the noun in their respective languages affects how it is ultimately described. This can also be seen in how artists represent the human form of abstract entities like death. Boroditsky concludes that “Language is central to our experience of being human, and the languages we speak profoundly shape the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our lives.” (Core reader p. 49) I would like to add that language is also the foundation of a person’s culture, pride, and self by exploring articles written by Eric Liu, Amy Tan, and Gloria Anzaldua.
It is indisputable that language is a very emotionally change concept it was born from the necessity to express and connect. Having gone through countless school days learning the difference in spelling their, they’re, and there there was one thing that I could not understand, if language was born for talking way before writing and the sole purpose of it was to vocalize a person inner thoughts with those around them then what is the point of having such intricacies in the writing of it? That in itself does not present itself much of an issue until things like these are taught more than how it could be applied to express yourself in everyday life, we are taught by the book and with a very ridged outline. But, language is so much looser and fluid than that it is not meant to be so deprived of emotion and identity. Cummins illustrates this very well in “The effects of bilingualism” by comparing the use of language to a wheel, if you focus on the first and second figures this is very easy to see, a wheel is meant to spin freely with little effort so that it can take to the idea that you are trying to convey through it but try to make language too ridged and it will not spin unless you put huge amounts of effort into it. Cummins take this a step further and adds the concept of speaking two languages at
language can allow us to communicate an exact idea or to persuade others to one
The difference in languages can cause different perceptions of various cultures leading to distinctions or possible clashes. When I lived in France I faced some of the problems a language barrier can cause. The most common and at the same time most irritating problem of language is the inability to translate word for word as some words just don’t have a direct translation into another language. These are normally colloquialisms for example “up the apples and pears” does not translate into “monter les pommes et les poires.” This would cause people to look at you in a very strange manner wondering what on earth you were talking about and it’s not only verbal language which creates different perceptions of people. Body language, such as hand movements and voice intonation can determine or change someone’s perception of a culture. The following paragraphs will illustrate the way language can be misconstrued.
Language is a part of our everyday lives, and we can describe the meaning of language in many ways. As suggested in Gee and Hayes (2011, p.6 ) people can view language as something in our minds or something existing in our world in the form of speech, audio recordings, and writings or we can view language as a way of communicating with a group of people. Language can be used to express our emotions, make sense of our mental and abstract thoughts and assists us in communicating with others around us. Language is of vital importance for children to enable them to succeed in school and everyday life. Everyone uses both oral and written language. Language developed as a common ability amongst human beings with the change
Language is a method in which individuals communicate in order to get their opinion across to the listening party. Language is the tool which ideas can be conveyed in various ways. Typically, language is referred to verbal communication, however, it ranges to all methods of communication i.e. sign language.
Language. It is a sign of who we are and where we come from. As language defines us, so does it unite us, but it can also impose barriers that drive us apart. As our society aggressively pursues globalization, individuals who maintain cultural sensitivity and strive for effective communication despite language barriers will be an increasingly important commodity; individuals who can also pass the gift of adept communication to others will be invaluable. On the eve of my college graduation, the culmination of four years ' immersion in language and communication and the beginning of a lifetime of educating others in these disciplines, I feel increasingly the weight of
To start with, I do not want to narrowly define language as merely verbal communication. Language is far broader than that. In a few seconds a person walking past you on the street could tell you more about themselves with a sincere smile than they could with a few rushed words. Language encompasses all aspects of communication that enhance the level of our interaction. The tone in our voice demonstrating our feelings on a topic or our body language indicating our level of interest are just as important in interaction as verbally communicating content. There for I define language as any act that is involved in the interaction between two or more people.
Language is nothing but a media which expresses feelings, ideas, experiences and even pains properly to others. Cultural background is the origin of language. Language is one of the channels which promote human relations and human affections. Language always unites the people and sometimes language itself diverse the people. Without the language we cannot imagine the existence of human beings on the earth. Language is a system of words that people used to express thoughts, feelings each other. The word ‘language’ derived from Latin “lingua” which means ‘tongue, speech’. The word sometimes used to refer to codes, ciphers and other kind of communication systems. For example computer programming.
Shafak speaks about her opinion on linguistic knowledge, suggesting that people who are only relative to their own language are minimized in terms of communication and have barriers that are set into place when trying to expand the understanding they have for the world’s different cultures. Although superficially this point does seem to be true, understanding a different language does not make one accustomed to the social aspects and certain sayings that comes along with many years of living and breathing it, as well as the culture it surrounds. Shafak views language as something that is easily obtained through study by emphasizing the ability to learn a new language through cultural exposure and personal practice, while that is only the beginning. The art of words is intertwined with centuries and centuries of knowledge and experience, and would take one that wasn’t born into it, a lifetime to fully understand the true depths to the words and how language brings forth power on the individual, and cultural level. Not only do languages differ vastly on a cultivated level, they also contrast heavily in a cognitive aspect. Nicolas Evans and Stephen C. Levinson discuss this thinking in “The Myth of Language Universals: Language Diversity and its Importance for Cognitive Science”. Evans and Levinson recognize the true mental diversity of languages by suggesting that “languages differ so fundamentally from one another at every level of description (sound, grammar, lexicon, [and] meaning) that it is very hard to find any single structural property they share”(429). Shafak appears to advert to the widespread misconception of language uniformity, both on a cognitive and cultural dimension as she fails to recognize not only the intellectual differences that make mastering a language so difficult, but more importantly the heritage