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| MUST WE USE LANGUAGE TO THINK? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Every single day of our life, rivers of sounds pass between our lips and come out from the mouth in order to satisfy the basic instinct of communication inset in the human soul. Those that I call sounds are of course the words we use to externalize whatever is inside us we think that should be manifested. For this important reason we have created a means of communication whose purpose is to make the desire of having a contact become "flesh and blood". However this sort of code does not consist only of sounds (words) but of many other ways to express one's ideas such as an image or a symbol. This system of different elements is what we commonly call language. The language is not merely embodied by the alphabet or by the images; it can also consist of something non-written like the body language or the sign language. We probably do not realize the fundamental importance of language, because we are too used to using it and we can grasp the real value of something only when we don't have it whenever and wherever we need it. Naturally, we need the language; otherwise we'll have the total isolation from everything and everybody because you can see that the entire reality is based upon the communication that at its turn is founded upon the language. So we have seen that we use the language for each type of communication. When we are talking to a friend, when we are drawing, when we are in love, we externalize our sentiment by using a determined kind of gestures (so we use body language), etc�. In order to respond the question concerning the relationship existing between language and thought, we had better to consider the other side of the problem as well, that is provide a definition of thinking. The question is quite hard to solve, because the human mind still appears as in intricate and seducing mystery even to the anthropologists. What can we, normal people pretend to know? Let our brains work and we will see the results! All over the centuries, several people (philosophers, psychologists�) have tried to define this exceptional ability that digs a huge gap between humankind and animal. This might seem a senseless tentative since we all know by acquaintance what thinking is. Simplistically, we could define a mental process as an operation that takes place in the inner part of our intellect. How complex this operation is we don't exactly know, we only realize that it is a vast process requiring a great deal of energy. We all think. Sometimes thinking is synonymous of remembering, in this case we try to recall to the mind an image or at least a detail of the object we are trying to revoke. The elements that our memory provides form a message, and since the main purpose of the language is to make the interlocutor get this message, we can affirm, that the images, the symbols and all the other factors are part of a particular language that we use to think. While thinking, we require silence for concentrating. This does not mean at all that the language is absent at that precise moment, we irremediably need a sort of language to think. Another element that plays in favor of my theory is that we always think. Let's combine this statement with the very fact that we ceaselessly make use of whatever kind of language to front the vital necessity to communicate. We could come to the evident conclusion that even a thought is a kind of communication, in which only one interlocutor is involved and that interlocutor is ourselves. When we think, it's our intellect or our ethics that sends us the message we are looking for, and it manages to do that with the aid of a language. Definitely, I strongly disagree with those who assume only the "concrete" aspect of language by defining it as the mere words dimension, the language has more important task, that's to lead us to the real knowledge. Whose knowledge does this kind of language provide? A better understanding of the world and of us could be the answer. Concluding, must we use the language to think? Actually, we mustn't use the language to think because it's not us who decide whether to utilize it or not. The use of language while thinking is something innate and fundamental for the understanding of the thought. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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