"Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think." Evaluate to what extent words affect - negatively or positively - different Areas of Knowledge.

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“Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.” Evaluate to what extent words affect – negatively or positively – different Areas of Knowledge

Presented to

Stephen Byron

Theory of Knowledge

Duyen Hau Nguyen

0230696

Vanier College

The Power of Language

Language is an integral part of our everyday life. As knowers, we depend on it to think and communicate. It is through language that thoughts and knowledge are exchanged and conveyed. In the modern society, language is used so frequently that we rarely realize how powerful and treacherous it can be. Sartre’s statement praises this important point, suggesting that words may be more deceptive and powerful than we think. Are our thought processes directly linked to language? Is it possible that words and symbols can alter the way we think or even what we know? Language can in fact have the ability to do all those things, but to what extend does it affect the different Areas of Knowledge?

To start with and in the most basic terms, language is a means of communication which conveys meaning through words and symbols. As well, thought is defined as the product of conceiving mentally, determining something by reasoning or imagining. According to the Sapir-Whorf theory, language shapes the way we perceive the world and orders the way we structure and display our thoughts. In effect, without language, we wouldn’t be able to attach anything to our sense perceptions and experiences. How can we then think and imagine if there are no labels to transfer thought? When I see a small rectangular plastic erasing tool, I call it an eraser. Without any labels, I wouldn’t have been able to describe it and differentiate it from a pencil. In addition, we cannot know that we are thinking about an eraser without first labeling it as an eraser and knowing that it is rectangular, small and plastic. Thus, language does more than simply attaching labels to objects or situations that we encounter. Obviously, these labels are directly linked to our thoughts.

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Similarly, language is not simply a list of such labels, for a simple sequence of labels does not convey meaning in the way that a statement does. When the scientist talks about the boiling point of water being 100ºC, he must know what “boiling point” means and what “100ºC” represents. Something such as temperature cannot really be measured because it is indefinitely variable. The terms we assigned to the concept of temperature reduce it to numbers so that we may be able to conceive it in our mind. The statement “The boiling point of water is 100ºC.” contains predetermined ...

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