Language, Thought, and Culture

Probably no topic is more central to psycholinguistic than which concerns the relationship of language, thought, and culture. Does Language influence Thought? Does it’s create Thought? Can we think without Language? Does language affect our perception of nature and society?

The purpose of writing this article is to gain a clear and thorough understanding of the interconnection between language, thought, and culture. The data used in this article is the data of several books and articles about mind, language, and culture. The results of this analysis show, that the capability of the human mind can think and remember about things or objects. We can understand everything in our mind if they are manifested in language. The result of that, we know as Culture. So the language, mind, and culture are the three things that affect each other and the relationship is deeply rooted.

·Thought

Mind or thought is a mental tool of thinking. The mind process is the brain's response of what has happened today, the present and the future. Mind or thought made humans to think about everything, and the result is expressed in speech or action to notice the other peoples, and to realize that we used language.

Any three steps of thinking process that is:

I.Make formation of concept about something in we are mind, in this step we analyze the characteristics of some objects.

II.Forming the opinion about that, in this step we make and arrange the concept of idea in language with a sentence.

III.Make conclusion and forming the decision, in this step we make conclusion about the opinion. Any three kinds of opinion that is: agreement, disagreement, and analogical (comparison).

·Language

Language is media and results of the human mind. That is used to communicate, either like through written, oral speech, or body movement (sign language). With language, humans can adapt they customs, behavior, social governance, and also easy to assimilate themselves with all forms in society. This indicates that in speech necessary language and thought, then it realized in the form of language.

Language in general can be interpreted as a symbol of the human vocal system that used as a tool for thinking, forming we are mind, and to understand the mind of other person (Kunjana Rahadi, 2001:159). With language we can think about all objects in this world, the concrete and abstract objects that are not only near with us but also far away from us. With symbol abstract language, people can think about something constantly and then bequeathing the experience to the next generations. With language we can also learn something from the other people.

·Culture

Culture is things that related to the mind and human reason. Culture is the result of the creativity and thinking of each member in language community. Culture that born from the individual and the community reflects the attitude and thinking of the society itself.

Culture is derived from the Latin word Colere mean the process or work. Culture is very closely connected with the society. Malville J. Bronislaw Mlinowski Herkovits, suggested that everything contained in the society is determined by the culture of the society itself.

According the various definitions, we can make conclusion. Culture is the result of human thought which will affect the level of knowledge and the system of ideas contained in the human mind, so it make the culture is abstract. The manifestation of culture is such as behavior and real things, example language is human life equipment to communicate with other human beings or other living creatures.

1.Language and Thought

Language in general can be interpreted as a symbol of the human vocal system that used as a tool for thinking, forming we are mind, and to understand the mind of the other person. From this definition we can know the clear connection between language and mind. Language cannot be separated from thought.

There different statement from two group researcher. Frist group explain that language as the basis of thought. Second group explain that thought as basis of Language.

a.Language and Speech As The Basis Of Thought

The opinion as explained by Edward Sapir supported by his student, Benjamin Lee Whorf. Both explain that the language affect to the thought. In other words, morebetters people to mastery language, better too the quality of thinking and to speak well. Accordingly this statement, thought is not something different from speech, but is actually a kind of speech that is not spoken aloud. It is speech that controls what and how we think, thought does not control we say.

Argument against this idea

·In speech, understanding come first than production

Normal children learning a language understand speech before they are able to meaningfully produce it. Researcher studying children have found that the children understanding of speech is well in progress than their ability to produce it. For example in one study children who could say only single words such as ‘ball’, ‘truck’ ,’kiss’ and ‘smell’ could understand and entirely new structures composed of more than one word, example ‘kiss ball’ and ‘smell truck’. We know the children understood what was said to them because they did what they were told to do-unusual acts of kissing a ball and smelling a truck, things they had never done before. From this research, it can conclude that speech production is not basis of thought.

·Speech understanding by people with speech disabilities

Those born without the ability to speak, they have intellectually like a normal people. They can learn to understand speech even though they cannot produce any. For example the case of a 3 years old Japanese girl who was dumb from birth but could hear and was normal in all other respects. The fact that she could respond correctly to a variety of complex commands proved that she could understand what was being said to her. If someone said, “rie, put the red paper under the table“, “or bring me a banana from the cupboard”, she could do it. In facts, while she has never had the ability to produce speech, she can think more creatively than a large majority of the speaking population.

·Thinking  while paralyzed by a drug

In 1947 one group of researchers (smith, Brown, Tomas and Goodman) Wondered what would happen to a person’s thought if the body were almost completely paralyzed. Their wondering led to smith make himself injected with a curare-like drug which induces complete paralysis of the system such as the heart and digestive system continue to function under the drug. Smith had made a scientific point since while paralyzed he could in no way speak and could make only minimal bodily responses, it is clear that thought was not dependent on body movement or movements of the organs of speech, then it would indeed seem that speech-associated muscle movements are not necessary for-thought.

·Talking about one thing while thinking about another

Suppose you are talking to someone, say, about a movie you both have seen, and further suppose that you are thinking about something else at the same time, such as where you are going for dinner. We often speak about one thing and about another at the same time.

·Where Language does affect Thought

Language can affect thought when thought is established. For example, Language may be used to provide us with new ideas, if you read some sentence, article, listening what other people said to us, etc.

b.Thought As The Basis Of Language

The second groups have opinion, the mind is determines the quality of language. This opinion is explained by Noam Chomsky. Since human is born, people have supplied with thought and language competence (language competence). In other words, the basic language competence is innate by nature not as the result of a learning process.

Argument of this idea

·People acquired meaning some word with thought

The relationship between the sound of the word and meaning is conventional. The meaning that is to be associated with a sequence of speech sounds does not come with it, it must be acquired. Meaning for words is acquired in four main ways:

1.A sound form is associated with an object, situation or event in the world, e.g. the sound ‘dog’ with the object ‘dog’.

2.A sound forms is associated with an idea or experience in the mind, e.g. the sound ’pain’ with the feeling of pain.

3.An analysis of known component morphemes may suggest a meaning, e.g. the meaning of unprimitive can be gained through knowledge of un and primitive.

4.By a linguistic description (definition) or by linguistic context.

So, the ultimate source of meaning is based on experiences of the world and mind, experiences which are of a non-linguistic nature. It must be the case that thought, with its ideas and concepts, is created in the mind by a process, and that is independent of language.

·Deaf children without language can think

There are many deaf children who do not begin to acquire language until a rather late age, often after 3 or 4 years when they begin to attend special school. However, if you were to observe young deaf children playing in a playground, you would not notice much difference between them and ordinary hearing children. They are not animalistic creatures. At play and when participating in activities around the home, they behave just as intelligently and rationally with respect to their environment as do hearing children.

·The true relationship between language and thought

The philosopher, John Locke, some centuries ago proposed precisely this view: that the relationship between language and thought is such that thought is independent of language, with language deriving from thought. Given such a relationship, language can thereby fulfill its primary role which is as an instrument for the expression or communication of thought. I find no good reason to challenge this reason

·Discussion Question

If we in discussion situation and have some question, the process to make the question is fact that thought is determine the language, because we make a concept about the good question in this discussion before we say the question. Example: I know what I want to say, but I can’t find the word to application that?

According the two researchers opinion above, each have the own prescriptive to analyze mind and language. Language and mind in principle, affect each other until a person reaches a certain level of development. For example, young children under teen ages get a huge influence language of the elder people, parents, and the environment.

If we look at how a child under three or five years to learn the language, child will tend to mimic and imitate everything that people said and doing around him. That is why at this stage the development of a child needs to get a good exposure of language and correction, so in future child could speak well too. When child grow older, language doesn’t give much influence to thought, but the thought that will determine the quality of language. If people can think properly and coherently, they can speak well too. Conversely the people cannot think properly and coherently, they have a poor quality in language usage.

2.Language, Thought and Culture

Culture is the result of the creativity and thinking of each member in language community. (Kujana Rahadi, 2001: 162). So the relationship between language thought and culture is deeply rooted. Language can be interpreted as a symbol of the human vocal system that used as a tool for thinking, forming we are mind, and to understand the mind of other person. Thought is place to process all information that we obtain and also place to process all Information that we want to utterance. The results of thought process and language we know as culture

Culture is never static. Culture is dynamic and adapts to the dynamics of the society and environment. Language and thought is includes on element that builds a culture. When compared, the language and culture are two different sides of a coin, but it cannot be separated because the language is a reflection of the culture and the thought identity of the speakers. So to create a good culture in a society depends on how the society was able to think well in extracting a speech language.

3.Conclusion

The culture of each nation is always different in all the time as long as the language is also in different. When a person is not a good mastery of the language, the people's minds will not qualify either. If the quality of a person's mind is not good, the people will not be optimal to thinking and creativity in create the culture. In other words, when the language of a community is not controlled properly, the cultural of society that not be born properly.

Culture will be optimal to progress and developed when thinking process of society is organized. Thinking process of society can organized if the language acquisition in society is also qualified.