While my experience with infants suggests that perception can clearly exist without language, it's also true that language aids perception in many ways. The Sapir Whorf hypothesis holds that the language we speak "predisposes us to certain choices of interpretation." (Crystal, p.127) As an American citizen living in California in the year 2008 I have dozens of words for the different types of automobiles that I see every day - "SUV", "pickup" and "limousine" are three examples. I categorize the cars I perceive very quickly and easily using the words of modern American English. A member of the Pintupi tribe, an aboriginal group in Australia, wouldn't have the words I have for automobiles. His tribal language has nine different words for various types of holes in the ground. (Pousada, slide 54) Were I to visit the Pintupi in their natural habitat I might see openings in the ground, but I wouldn't know the difference between a pirtii a hole in the ground , and a yulpilpa, a shallow hole in which ants live (Pousada, slide 54). Our languages streamline perception by giving us categories of thought. Those same categories can be limiting, of course - what happens the first time I perceive an automobile that defies all categories? Can I actually perceive it, or will I mistake it for something completely different? What happens when a Pintupi tribesperson comes to visit me and sees a "manhole" - the opening in the street through which maintenance workers pass when they are repairing the sewer system. Might he mistake it for a very large yulpilpa?
The second knowledge issue raised by this prompt involves the role of language in emotional knowing. Surely I would feel emotions in the absence of any particular language; anger and sadness are universal features of human existence. One of our case studies this year involved Genie, an abused young woman who grew up being punished every time she spoke. This treatment lasted 13 years until she escaped her father's abuse and was "rescued" by linguists and other researchers in 1971. (Nova, Genie) After years of study with Genie researchers established that she could understand words and their meanings, but she was never able to construct functional English sentences. Even after extensive therapy and study, Genie never learned to use language the way normally functioning humans who live in society use it. Yet the footage shown in the Nova video about Genie shows that she clearly had strong emotional states. One of her foster parents even got her to describe her anger or fear using her fingers - four fingers meant she was very upset, one finger meant only a little upset. This case study shows that even humans who lack all the tools of human language can feel and express emotions.
Language, however, does play an important role in our emotional lives. While Genie could only use her fingers to describe her emotional state, we have entire systems of therapy based on language. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has been developed by psychiatrists and psychotherapists to aid people with emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety. (Burns, p. 7) In this system of therapy patients are taught to identify distortions in their thinking, and then to rationally evaluate why they can disregard or even ignore their emotional reactions to things. For example, a depressed person who sees nothing but failure in his future would learn that such an error in thinking is called "Fortune Telling." It's called this because no one knows the future for sure. Common experience, however, shows us that believing the future is doomed will often preclude someone from perceiving successes when they do occur. CBT shows the power of language to channel and neutralize harmful emotions.
The final knowledge issue raised by this prompt involves language and reason. Could we function in a logically coherent way without language? Reason gives us the ability to understand the world we perceive each day. For example, I've observed that every time I leave for school after 7:00 am, the traffic on Winding Way is much worse than when I leave before 7:00 am. Does my leaving time cause the bad traffic? Or is there a correlation between the volume of cars on Winding Way and the time of the morning? In the end it may not matter - either way I reason from my experience on Winding Way to leave my house before 7:00 am in order to avoid bad traffic and get to school on time. The question for us here, however, is could I possibly construct this line of reasoning without using language? I cannot imagine such a thing as possible. Unlike emotions and perceptions (which seem to happen by themselves), reason requires my conscious participation. I have to observe, categorize and then remember my experiences in order to plan for the future. Categories and memories are, for me, dependent upon language.
A better example of the relationship between language and reason comes from the Piraha tribe of the Brazilian Amazon. These people were only recently discovered and their language is very imprecise when it comes to quantities; the only words they possess for quantity are one, two and many. (BBC News) When these people were tested for simple cognitive tasks they were found to be incapable of them. The researchers stated that their performance put them on the same level as "pre linguistic infants, monkeys, birds, and rodents" (BBC News). Was their cognitive deficit caused by an impoverished language? We may never know for sure - there are inherent limits involved in knowing the true thought patterns even of people well known to us, much less strangers from an obscure tribe. But the performance of the Piraha on these cognitive tests suggests that the language we speak (and in which we think) does limit our reasoning ability. Still, to assert that language "controls" reason as a Way of Knowing goes beyond the evidence provided by this example. The Piraha showed no evidence of being incapable of reason, only of specific cognitive tasks.
Language plays a role in each Way of Knowing, but to say that it controls them is not a fair representation of this complex and nuanced relationship. Language both aids and limits perception, it can contain and channel emotion and it provides the framework for reason. One could argue more fairly that language enhances the other Ways of Knowing by providing categories and "short cuts" of interpretation. Ironically even this argument is subject to a problem of circularity; because I think predominantly in language I naturally see great importance to its role in knowing. In the end all we can do is recognize that the four Ways of Knowing are largely interdependent, and that language, perception, emotion and reason work together in allowing us to make and validate our knowledge claims.
Works Cited
Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Pousada, Alicia. The Complexities of Bilingualism. Powerpoint Presentation found at http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:ihzP_qUASAIJ:humanidades.uprrp.edu/ingles/images/faculty/pousada-pres/pousada-complexities.ppt+pintupi+language+hole&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
Nova. The Wild Child. WPBH Boston, 1997.
Burns, David M.D. The Feeling Good Handbook. Penguin Books, 1999.
BBC News, "Brazilian Tribe Proves Words Count" found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3582794.stm
