Does language shape the way we think? Why or why not?
In the TED talk video we watched in Seminar class called, “How Language Shapes the Way We Think” (Links to an external site.) Lera Boroditsky discusses how there are 7,000 different languages in the world, and different languages affect how individuals think. I agree that language shapes the way we think because language doesn’t craft reality. This is because different linguistics can affect the views on things such as space or time. Boroditsky uses time as an example, touching on how different languages would order pictures of her father in different stages of his life. English speaker would most likely do it left to right since it connects to the way they read and write, and other languages such as Arabic would represent time from right to left. I connect this to when I started reading manga for the first time and had to get used to a whole new way of reading comic book panels and a book that you open from the left side, but once I started it actually came to me pretty easily even though I was very frustrated with this unknown way of reading. I think language shapes the way you think because if I, a fluent english speaker that grew up in the American school system, got upset with changing the way I was used to reading, a Japanese or Arabic speaker would be in the reversed role where my norm would be their obstacle. She also discusses nouns, how language guides our reasoning, different languages identify nouns in opposing ways. Such as in french the milk would be “Le lait” being masculine but in spanish it would be “la leche” making the milk feminine. I find it very interesting how languages all over the world shape different personal meanings, but I don’t think it just the linguistics that cause this, I can see culture taking a big role in how nouns or other factors are perceived and achieved.
