When Language Can Hold the Answer. The latest research changes the framework, perhaps the language of the debate, suggesting that language clearly affects some thinking as a special device added to an ancient mental skill set. Just as adding features to a cellphone or camera can backfire, language is not always helpful. For the most part, it enhances thinking. But it can trip us up, too.

Grant Barrett said:

When Language Can Hold the Answer.
The latest research changes the framework, perhaps the language of the debate, suggesting that language clearly affects some thinking as a special device added to an ancient mental skill set. Just as adding features to a cellphone or camera can backfire, language is not always helpful. For the most part, it enhances thinking. But it can trip us up, too.

In the early part of the 20th century, the anthropologists Benjamin Lee Whorf and Edward Sapir postulated that the language we speak shapes our view of the world. And more recently Umberto Eco, the semiotician, has supported that view. Unfortunately, we don’t have the experiential evidence to ascertain just how linguistic hegemony works. Suffice to say, it appears that our L1 language influences us in ways we haven’t figured out yet.

Felipe de Ortego y Gasca
Scholar in Residence
Western New Mexico University