Does Thought Shape Language, Or Does Language Shape Language

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In high school you are taught that the 3.5 format is the one and only acceptable way to write a paper, you can easily develop a work cited page by copying the URL into easybib.com, and thesis statements start with “I think” followed by “because” and are no longer than one sentence long. All it takes in high school to write a good academic paper is thirty minutes of writing down what you think you might know about a certain topic and hoping it is remotely correct. In high school English classes you are not expected to use a large amount of in-depth thinking and your teachers are impressed simply by how much it was “fluffed.” Before English 101 you wrote meaningless words on a paper the class period before so that you could get a decent grade …show more content…

I quickly learned that language comes before thought just as thought comes before language. “Language comes before thought because you cannot describe something that you do not have words for. Just like in a person 's everyday vocabulary, they use the words they know. The more you know, the more you think.” (Dawson) This proved to be true throughout the class. When I completed my first writing assignment my high school writing career shone through. I wrote how I was used to and how I talked. I used simple, familiar words and sentence structures that certainly did not represent a college level paper. Though, the more I began to learn and establish more of an academic vocabulary the more complex my writing became. “People rely on language even when doing simple things like distinguishing patches of color, counting dots on a screen or orienting in a small room.” (Boroditsky) Without a written language the simple process of communicating with someone would be increasingly difficult. Whether it be explaining where something is or explaining something you saw, you wouldn’t be able to effectively communicate it without a written

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