Sunday, September 27, 2009

Language is not a prison house, it is a means of escape, escape from our thoughts, our ideas and our own personal perceptions. It is limiting, surely but as it is our only means of communication, it should be appreciated despite its flaws.

Language is not a barrier but can be used to express everything that a person is thinking, allowing humans to link with others. Without language, our perceptions of the world would be even more biased and limited than they are now with any bias language gives us. Without the ability to interact with others, humans would not be able to share their unique perspectives, and would be stuck assuming that their own viewpoints were the only ones.

Nonetheless, language has its own flaws, which should be acknowledged. Because I have studied three languages, I can see that each would influence me to think about the world in a slightly different way. For instance, the subjunctive tense in French and Spanish causes me to think about the world as less factual and clear-cut and instead as having more shades of grey. Another example is that, in French and Spanish, they label items as being masculine or feminine. One noticeable thing about this is that it influences the way that people see the objects and which adjectives they would use to describe the object.

Therefore, while language builds a framework for bias in our ways of viewing the world, it also provides a way of discussing how other people see the world, and gives us ways to expand our views.

1 comment:

  1. Labeling an object as feminine or masculine does influence the way people perceive that certain object. For example, when a French person is asked to describe a key, because it is "un cle" that person would use masculine adjectives; whereas a Spanish individual would use adjectives that are feminine. What's interesting is that the significance of a key in a poem, for example is drastically different because of its label as "masculine" or "feminine". Does that make the French poem prettier than an English one?

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