Ramblings on Language and the Way We Think

Last week we discussed rhetoric and how it is used to shape what we think.  This week, we are moving onto inquiry paradigms or how we think.  However, the purpose of this blog is not to discuss this directly, so if you want a good article that explains what inquiry paradigms are and how they work, I highly suggest taking a look at this article by Janet Emig.  Today, I would like to discuss another article, which is related to inquiry paradigms.  The article I would like to discuss is "How Does Language Shape the Way We Think?" by Lera Boroditsky.

Take a look at this photo.  Is this object masculine or feminine?
Depending on your native language, your view may differ from others.

I found this particular article to be simply fascinating.  In it, the author explores that idea that language is not shaped by how we think.  Instead, she holds that how we think may in fact be formulated by the way we use language.  Boroditsky uses evidence from a study conducted on individuals who speak different languages.  This study showed that based on what language the subject spoke, he or she viewed the idea of direction and order different.  In the individual was used to reading left-to-right, he or she would arrange events in that direction, likewise for individuals who read right-to-left.  Of course, this is something that I had expected; however, I did not expect that some would arrange events east-to-west regardless of how he or she was seated.  The article also discusses how most romantic languages assign gender to objects.  Now, this is something that many would not think twice about; however, studies showed that the gender of an object not only effect pronoun and verb usage but it also affected how individuals view and describe the object altogether.  Such evidence shows that thinking and language are very closely connected.  I also feel that the idea that language influences thinking is highly valid.  An object may be masculine in one language yet feminine in another.  This shows that thinking is not the same across cultures.  After all, if something were truth or 100% finite, it wouldn't change across language barriers, would it?  However, the fact that not everyone sees objects the same way should be taken as an indication that the human mind does create language based on ideas but that ideas are created based on language.

I was able to very easily follow Boroditsky's ideas and understand what she was saying in her article.  As a bilingual individual, I knew exactly what she was talking about.  In English, most objects do not have a gender; they are neuter.  We refer to these objects with the pronoun "it."  Men and women, on the other hand, are given gender and are assigned he and she or his and hers, respectively.  However, Spanish is a whole other story.  Everything has a gender.  A bed ("la cama"), which is soft and peaceful, is feminine, denoted by the article "la" and ending in the feminine suffice of "a."  Whereas a car ("el carro" or "el coche"), which is loud, strongly built, and dangerous, is masculine, using the pronoun "el." Going beyond gender, there are several other grammatical rules that are very different than English, which leads me to believe their conceptualization of various aspects of the world differ greatly from those in the English-speaking world.  If there is one thing I learned throughout my time taking Spanish courses, it is that you absolutely must switch the your frame of mind from one language to the other.  If you try to think English and speak Spanish it will not work and vice versa.  That is why texts that are directly translated from one language to another are sometimes confusing.  They are not just two different ways of saying something, they are two different ways of thinking about it.  Therefore, translation must not look at what the words are but instead pay attention to what the words mean.


In conclusion, language is the governing factor in how we think.  As we discussed in our post on rhetoric, it is a device used to persuade the way one thinks.  Therefore, anytime we use language or rhetoric, we are constructing meaning; we are persuading the way we and others think.