Talk the Talk and Thought the Thought

Language gives people the ability to discuss the past, present and future.  As Keith Chen explains language, he expresses the differences in languages around the globe, and how some are more detail-oriented than others. For example, in English, we would vaguely describe a person as our "uncle."  However, in Mandarin Chinese, the details about who this uncle is are much more descriptive, like "my uncle who is married in on my mother's side."  He also explains the concept of future-based versus futureless languages, and how the way words are grouped together really make a difference in both personal and national levels when it comes to health and wealth, and probably much more.  Futured languages force us to add a new ending to words, clearly stating that the future is completely different than the present day.  On the other hand, futureless languages do not require a new ending, therefore making the future seem similar to the present.  These differences in word groupings lead people to think in different ways, research has shown.

I noticed that a lack of language can really hinder a person's ability to complete a task.  This August, I was an Awakening leader for ten of the incoming first year students.  We gave them a number of challenges throughout the week, and saw that they were able to get the task done efficiently through communicating.  However, we also realized that they were easily distracted from the task, and we always have to help them refocus.  Because of these observations, we decided to challenge them, and have them complete a task completely mute.  They were given five minutes to plan aloud with each other, but had to be completely silent for the remainder of the activity.  We noticed that they became extremely frustrated because they could not be successful as quickly as usual, and that they used their hands in attempt to get their ideas across to the group.

Team Anaconda during Awakening 2018

One study that I found fascinating was Gary Lupyan's alien experiment.  Students were given a task to identify which aliens were safe and which ones were dangerous just by looking at them.  The experimental group was given the category of alien that the specific alien shown was a part of, whether it be "leebous" or "grecious," while the control group was not told any information other than the original task.  The results showed that the experimental group was able to recognize the similarities and differences between the aliens significantly faster than those in the control group.  The most interesting part of this study, in my opinion, was the fact that the control group created their own categories for the aliens once they began to notice the commonalities and changes between the different pictures.  Clearly, the students in the experimental group had an advantage and was able to process the pictures faster because of the categories they were supplied with, which only builds up the idea that language influences our thought processes.

Left side was catagorized as "leebious" and the right as "grecious" in Lupyan's experiment.

One idea that captured my attention was linguistic relativity.  This is a common interest among people all over the world, considering that it discusses the way people view the world and interact with one another.  This idea is linked with color perception, and how we categorize every new color we see, and how every culture processes color differently.  Some say that people have eleven categories for color, and they are added to as we encounter new colors. However, more recent research shows that one group, called the Namibian Himba, only uses five groups of color descriptively, yet we as a species are able to see the same spectrum of color.

After reading about these experiments, I began to wonder about how deaf people and sign language are connected with this idea.  Obviously, people that speak in sign language use a more visual way of conveying a message, but sometimes we as humans don't always have words to describe our feelings.  In these cases, we turn to actions, just as my Awakeners had to do while they were muted.  Similarly, the participants in Lupyan's study were able to visualize the aliens and see the differences, along with being given language cues.  Do deaf people process their thoughts in a different way?  I learned that deaf people sometimes sign language mumble, which happens when they quickly run through the signs without fully doing them.  People mumble all the time while they are speaking, so does this imply that the processes are similar, if not the same?  Signers also have accents, depending on where they are, and there are different forms of sign language all over the world.  In sign language, the same sign can have many different meanings depending on its placement.  Similarly, languages can have the same word with different spellings that have completely different meanings.

These two different (well, maybe not as different as we think!) forms of communication influence our thoughts in similar ways.  For me, language is very captivating and I am beginning to realize how language is completely taken for granted.  Without a system of communication, we would have very insufficient thought processes and would be extremely limited as a human race.