Evaluative Writing

The "Does Language Equal World View Debate?"

In the video "How Language Shapes the Way We Think," a controversial issue has been whether linguistic variations among languages shape the perception of reality for different speech groups. On the one hand, some argue that linguistic distance, or how far apart one language is from another in terms of grammar, vocabulary, syntax, and phonetics, alters a speech group's reality. From this perspective, every speech community on the planet has a different conception of reality based on the linguistic rules of their mother tongue. Were this true, life as we know it could not be. Imagine pulling off global trade deals if Americans and Chinese really did have a chasm in their perceptions of reality!

On the other hand, however, others, such as Columbia professor John McWhorter, argue that linguistic distance does not fundamentally alter our shared perception of reality. In the words of professor John McWhorter, one of this view’s main proponents, “[i]t is language that reflects culture and worldview, not the other way around.” According to this view, different speech communities perceive the same reality, despite often gargantuan linguistic differences among world languages.

In sum, then, the issue is whether, for example, Spanish speakers perceive and thus approach the world differently than, say, Polish speakers; or whether we all perceive more or less the same reality, regardless of whatever language we speak. My own view is that multilingualism is one of the most rewarding experiences avalaible to mankind. Though I concede that linguistic distance and variation cause languages themselves to be quite different from one another, I still maintain that all languages do the same thing: namely, convey reality.

For example, both German and Polish are highly inflected languages with complex case systems which English has, for the most part, abandoned. Although some might object that since the German and Polish languages are so different from English, we must have different perceptions of the world; I would reply that I know many Germans and Poles whose concept of reality is not remarkably different from my own. The issue is important because the study of human language is a science.

References

McWhorter, J, H. (2001). The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language. Perennial.

Ted. (2022, September 7). How Language Shapes the Way We Think. [Video] YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=RKK7wGAYP6k