Proof that thinking without language is possible has been found by several scientific experiments. There is a famous saying which states “a picture is worth a thousand words”; this quotation was said by many people through history and shows that descriptions of pieces of art have been limited by language. Language can also facilitate knowledge. It can simplify very complex thoughts and allow us to organize ourselves. Math equations, for example, if thought about in images, feelings and sounds would be very difficult to understand. An example of someone not using language to think are newborns. Several researchers have worked for years on this and they have found out that babies who still cannot talk can actually think; now the same researchers are trying to understand how they do this. A ScienceDaily article from 2004 states that: “Babies as young as five months old make distinctions about categories of events that their parents do not,” it continues then saying: “Learning a particular language may lead us to favor some of these concepts over others, but the concepts already existed before we put them into words.” In this article not only is it stated that thought without language exists, but also that language will direct our thoughts to some things instead of some others, will facilitate our ability of thinking of certain ideas, but will limit our knowledge and thoughts on other subjects. Harvard University, one of the most important and high level universities in the world, published an article on its newspaper: the Harvard Gazette. This article written by William J. Cromie faces an interesting and important question: which comes first, language or thought? Again the author agrees with my point of view: thought without language can exist and language has different effects on thinking depending on the situation, it can facilitate and extend thoughts or it can limit and direct them. Aristophanes, an Athenian comic dramatist who lived around the 400 B.C., believed that language only facilitated and extended thinking. He once stated that “high thoughts must have high language.” Such radical ideas though are very hard to find, this is why in all my research I did not find anyone thinking that ideas without language cannot exist and only this one quotation that thought that language only had one kind of effect on the thinking process.
This topic I am writing about may be approached from several ways of knowing. Think of Helen Keller. She was born deaf and blind and still got her Bachelor degree in arts. Her thoughts were not images, sounds or some special kind of language – at least not until she started reading braille – but she still thought in some way. Sensory perception is then needed to understand a language since to learn it you have to hear it, read it or at least touch it. Still, sensory perception is not needed to think since thoughts do not have to have any sense to be structured. Some thoughts which are not made using words are the ones which are centered on emotions. When someone falls in love or becomes depressed it is normal for him or her to feel things that are impossible to say. Only a few days ago when Genoa got flooded I tried calling a very good friend of mine and could not because the telephone lines were overloaded. What I felt inside were not words, but a feeling of terror. After a few minutes I was able to call him and I felt relieved knowing he was all right, this thought too was not made up of words. Logic can changes based on which language, if any, is known. For example, Koreans have two words that can define that an object is touching tightly or loosely another one; English instead has words meaning that something is inside or on something else. If Korean and English men saw a spoon and a towel touching the Koreans will notice if they are holding each other tightly or loosely while the English will see if the spoon is on the towel or not. Children who still did not learn any language will notice both the position of spoon and the towel with respect to each other and if they are held tightly or loosely. After several studies researchers have found the language which can better extend the thinking process because of its broad vocabulary: it’s German. This again shows that language may affect thoughts in several ways.
The two questions posed at the beginning of this study were if thought may exist without language and if language affects the thinking process. While proving my point of view throughout the essay, I showed that thinking without language is possible and that language has several different effects on thoughts. For example language will limit the possibility of describing A marvelous landscape, but it will give a greater sense of organization in thoughts facilitating the connection between them. May be in the future parents will treat their children differently knowing how their babies think while they still look like they do not understand. Fortunately researchers are still learning new things on how the thinking process works, with and without the use of language.
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