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Do Words Matter?
Do Words Matter? TEXT KAROLINA GUSTAVSSON IMAGE JOHAN LAM
Do words matter? Or rather to what extent do words matter? This all started as a simple google search, then before I managed to realize it, I had fallen down into a rabbit hole of linguistics and cognition. Come along and I’ll bring you on a journey through more open tabs than most browsers are designed for! Part one of this article focuses on thought, in part two we dive deeper into the emotional and societal impact of words, and in the final part we consider the underlying psychology. Part 1: Words and Thought A word is defined as ‘a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing’, in essence, we can boil it down to meaning. For a long time, I’ve been curious about what influence our vocabulary has on the way we think. It becomes a typical hen and egg problem; do I think this way because of what I’m able to express, or do I express this because of what I think? Perhaps it’s an iterative process, where vocabulary and thoughts go hand in hand. If we reframe the question, can language be a limiting factor for thinking?
One concrete example of how language shapes our thinking is the way different cultures categorize colours. Some only have words for dark and light despite being able to see more colours. Or take red and pink, pink is a light red but you might consider them to be different colours. Perhaps we can consider language a tool that can form our thinking, structuring it. On the flipside, mastering a language does not necessarily mean that you can think. To prove this point, I let an artificial neural network (AI) write the next paragraph based on the text in this article.
The debate whether or not language can limit thought is the age-old debate about linguistic relativity. Nowadays most linguists have concluded that it does to some extent, the weak version of the theory is accepted. The difference between the weak and the strong version is that in the former, thoughts and decisions are not determined, only influenced. The idea is that language can constrain thought to a certain degree.
"It’s very important that we can be aware of how we are thinking and doing in any given situation and learning to apply this into our lives. The difference is still that our thinking does not require language. If we are able to think without language we can focus on the feelings we have. It may feel very uncomfortable for some, it may make us feel uncomfortable and it may cause us to be withdrawn, isolated and reluctant to speak or express ourselves."
There’s actually a word for things that can not be expressed: ineffability. Maybe we should all start communicating as bees do when we can’t express ourselves: with dance (imagine that)! Thinking can be sorted into recognizing, remembering, reasoning, imagining, emotion, and deciding. It might be more helpful to flip the question, what is thinking without words? Awareness, feelings, non-verbal reasoning (for example visual thinking), and abstract thinking (interpreting representation instead of literally).
To conclude, you can’t think just because you can formulate cohesive sentences, but this doesn’t settle the original question. Unfortunately, the answer to ‘do words matter’ from this part is a meek maybe. Let’s continue our search and move on to part two, the societal and emotional impact of words.
OSQLEDAREN #4
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Part 2: Societal and Emotional Impact To start, can words be offensive? The simple answer is yes since we ascribe undertones and meaning to them. Slurs are an obvious example of this. But what about subtleties? According to one study of German job descriptions, men were thought to better fit for the job when a masculine job title was used, in contrast to when both masculine and feminine nouns were used in the job description. Another example is that some Spanish words have negative connotations in the feminine version of the word, such as ‘un hombre público’ versus ‘una mujer pública’. The former means influential man, while the latter means prostitute. Language is constantly evolving, it’s worth thinking about what belongs in a museum and how we want to shape the language of tomorrow. Language is like a cultural magnifying glass, highlighting our behaviour and values. I reached out to Alena Ipanova, lecturer in the course Intercultural Competence and business coach, to hear what she had to say on ‘do words matter’. She emphasized the link between language, actions, emotions, behaviours and how we express ourselves - and how they sometimes contradict. People can mean the same thing or feel the same emotion but express it differently, by for instance tone of voice, contrasting actions or vocabulary. Another striking point she brought up was how one aspect of developing emotional intelligence is to adapt your language sensitivity. People can have different levels of emotional intelligence depending on whether they are speaking their mother tongue
