"All of the other Ways of Knowing are controlled by language." What does this statement mean and do you think it is a fair representation of the relationship between perception, emotion, reason and language?

Arisara K. 12J

“All of the other Ways of Knowing are controlled by language.” What does this statement mean and do you think it is a fair representation of the relationship between perception, emotion, reason and language?

The statement “all of the other ways of knowing are controlled by language" means that the ways in which an individual obtains knowledge are controlled by the use of language. The verb “controlled’ in this statement implies restrictions, for that only language allows us to “know” that something is “true”. Language is defined by sets of symbols which enable us to communicate complex ideas. It can influence our thoughts and behaviour in ways we do not even realize, since “words are more powerful and dangerous than we think”.

The relationship between knowledge and language, as well as their manipulation, is illustrated in the novel 1984. As the story goes, the party or “big brother” is able to obtain full control over society by implementing restrictions on language and developing a method called “newspeak” or “doublespeak”. The omnipotent party would also alter history in ways that they saw fit. This is why most of society, under the strict totalitarian rule of the government, had no base for their knowledge and opinions, because without history people cannot tell factual knowledge from that which is fraudulent. The chain of past to present to future is broken or, as the author tells us, “those who control the past, control the future, who controls the present controls the past”. Thus, if history doesn’t exist or is continuously altered, where does the knowledge that society has come from? Winston, the protagonist in the book, could only rely upon his memories and consciousness, that would remind him of a time when things were different and untouched by the party’s influence. These memories, however, had no proof without a written account in history and even by thinking about them he would risk imprisonment. The only way to receive information then is from mass media, which was controlled by the government. This example proves how language can control our thoughts and in effect also control our ways of knowing.

If language controlled all the ways of knowing, then how does a person acquire knowledge without using language? Young children, for instance, are able to obtain new concepts of the world around them purely by observation and learn through sense experience.

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I believe that language doesn’t control our thoughts, but preconditions our perception of the world. Therefore the structure of one’s language influences the manner in which one perceives and understands the world. The theory of linguistic relativism states that language is essential to our thinking, but some languages are better to communicate certain thoughts than others. For example, In Steve Pinker’s “Science and Linguistics” he claimed that Eskimo’s language is better to use when talking about snow than other languages. But the type of language doesn’t stop an English speaker from classifying a certain type of snow.

The media has been taking advantage of the language and the role that it plays in society by advertisement, whether in the newspapers, television or radio. One of the most famous war campaigns in America during Word War I “I want you (to join the army)” significantly demonstrates this. By using the personal pronoun, the person that reads the word feel the sense of unity, “want” gives out a strong sense of need and the “you” gives out the sense of individuality. These 3 little words can conjure emotions in young males. Thus language and emotion are very closely linked. What is this “we want you” campaign, when was it used and why is it only conjuring emotions in ‘young males’? Arguably, the poster display of the army recruitment campaign invented a character of Uncle Sam pointing towards the viewer as a figure head, thus, putting on more control of the young male’s emotion through their perception of the poster. Both superpowers of the 19th Century, Britain and American used this to recruit their army and were very successful at it.

Perception is another way to claim our knowledge through the process of recording and or becoming conscious of the external world. However perception is dependent on our ability to empirically obtain knowledge. For example, dogs are known for their wide range of hearing compared to humans. Dogs detect sounds as low as the 20 to 70 Hz frequencies (compared to 16 to 20 Hz for humans) and as high as 70,000 to 100,000 Hz (compared to 20,000 Hz for humans). In addition, dogs have a degree of ear mobility that helps them to rapidly pinpoint the exact location of a sound. They can identify a sound's location much faster than can a human, and they can hear sounds up to four times the distance that humans can. Thereby, perception is controlled by our biological limitations.

Perception, though, is dependent on many different variables including social and cultural conditioning and past experiences or familiarity, which can cause confusion while pursuing an answer leading to knowledge claims. Our brains might trick us into seeing what it wants us to see rather than of what is really there. As children some of us may have interpreted shadows of trees at night as some kind of dark, scary monster moving around in the darkness. But as we grow up our experiences has taught us that monsters do not exist and our brains would logically conclude that it’s only trees twirling around in the wind.

Reasoning, which consists of the construction of an argument, application of logic in working out the argument and a conclusion, is also a way of knowing. I believe that reasoning relies heavily on language, since before we truly know something we usually weigh up all the arguments in our head. Language is required in order for thoughts to be processed and for an accurate conclusion to be made. For example, after we watched a movie with friends, we walk out of the cinema and often talk about the movie and start criticizing it. The discussions are usually based upon the conclusion of whether or not the movie was “good”. However, others may argue that our reasoning in this issue is linked to our personal perception of the movie, which is linked to our emotions and beliefs.

For all of the reasons stated above, I believe that ideas and thoughts are limitlessly capable of contributing to our knowledge under any circumstances, but are inexpressible without language. We can think without language, although there would be no term for it and we may not be able to organise our thoughts and share them with others. I believe that all the ways of knowing, whether though language, perception, emotion and reason are intertwined. Language can influence our perception of things and influence our emotions, but does not necessarily dominate and affect our reasoning.

Due to the implications involved in obtaining knowledge using only language and the limitations and ambiguous nature of language, it would be unwise to claim that all the ways of knowing are controlled by language. There is no way to separate the different ways of knowing and claim that one is controlled by the other. All of the ways of knowing work together, helping establish our knowledge and make it plausible.

Word Count

1182

Sartre 1905-1980

Nineteen Eighty Four , George Orwell, Signet Classic

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