UNESCO Office in Bangkok UNESCO Bangkok. The Hindu, march 2. Newspaper Clipping. The Nation, March 2. Bangkok Post, March 2. Newsclipping. www. Global Partnership for Education, March 2. India Blooms, March 1. W8. 81. 94concerned diyarbakir architects implore unesco intervention. The Effect of Language upon Thinkingby Michael Marlowe April 2. Revised July 2. 01. For then will I restore to the peoples a pure language,that they may all call upon the name of the Lord,to serve him with one consent. Zephaniah 3 9. In recent discussions about theories and methods of translation one often encounters general statements about the relationship of language to thought. Save Yourself From It Band Syndrome Ebook. Some theorists maintain that the peculiarities of a given language do not significantly affect the thinking of those who speak or write in that language, and so the differences between languages are largely accidental or irrelevent to the meaning of the text. These theorists have a very optimistic view of the ability of translators to put the meaning of a text into different languages in ways that are perfectly natural or idiomatic for the receptor languages. For example, the New Testament scholar D. A. Carson says in one place, Although it is true that the meanings of words only partially overlap between languages, nevertheless all languages can talk about the same meaning, and for that matter about all meanings. It is just that translators. Other writers maintain that differences between languages are such that an accurate translation must frequently be unidiomatic in the receptor language, because the idiomatic contructions and usages of the receptor language cannot capture the foreign modes of thought which are inherent in the language of the original text. The idea that languages affect the way we think has been called a fallacy by Carson and by others who advocate paraphrastic translations, and one gets the impression from them that this idea has no standing at all among the linguistically informed, as Carson puts it. The idea is portrayed as being an eccentric minority opinion which hardly deserves serious consideration. In this essay I will try to show that the case is otherwise. I will argue that most liguistically informed people are, and always have been, of the opinion that language influences thought, and that the contrary opinion has only recently gained the upper hand among professional linguists. It seems to me that the opinion that thought is independent of language has been adopted of late by many linguists only as a theoretical axiom, by those who wish it to be so, without any proof, and that the writers who present this idea as if it were a scientific finding are themselves guilty of a fallacy, because they are treating a presumptive axiom of a school as if it were a conclusion. In science, axioms are often adopted as the basis of hypotheses which are then tested for their adequacy in explaining data collected in some area, and if one hypothesis is found to be more useful than all its rivals it is regarded as proven in some sense. But in my reading on this subject I have found that linguists have scarcely begun to test this particular hypothesis in any rigorous scientific fashion, and that most of the research which has been done in recent years suggests that language does influence thought in various ways. Judging by the treatment of the question in journals of the past 3. In any case, it is not true that linguists have arrived at a consensus on the question by any process of scientific proof. Much of what has been written on this subject by professional linguists focuses rather narrowly on the question of whether the grammar of a language will influence the thinking of its speakers, without any attention being given to how vocabulary might influence thought. But obviously language is more than grammar, and so conclusions about language in general cannot be drawn from studies which deal only with questions of grammar. This essay does not equate language with grammar. The word language will be used in reference to the full reality of language, including all the messy details of lexical semantics. I will not enter into all the technicalities of the subject. That would require an introductory course in linguistics. Bitumen is a mixture of dark, sticky, highly viscous organic liquids composed mainly of aromatic hydrocarbons. It is usually black or dark brown in color. I only aim to give an overview of how the idea that language influences thinking has been expressed in the writings of celebrated philosophers, scientists, literary critics, philologists and linguists. Many of these did not deal with the question in a modern scientific fashion, but I do not think that any of them can be dismissed as linguistically naive. For lack of a better plan I will present this material in historical order. Although we do not find any extensive discussion of the ways in which language influences thought in the writings of Plato, anyone who has read them will easily see that it was one of his chief concerns to examine how words might relate to concepts and to realities, and to show how people go astray in their thinking when they use words without adequate analysis of the concepts they are supposed to express. Therefore in his Dialogues Plato represents Socrates as a thinker who is continually challenging his disciples to define their words rather than be content with naive and common acceptations. DyK7ckqoSBtAd9tGqDFFceSmHdapuTrRjrGKKhE19oWj4CAqNWFBbCd7zjfdK6m4DTQ=h900' alt='Bk English Language Handbook Level 1' title='Bk English Language Handbook Level 1' />Contemporary Metaphilosophy. What is philosophy What is philosophy for How should philosophy be done These are metaphilosophical questions, metaphilosophy being. LnlYX_nBnmgc77e2UsbaLMBgSpAP2z__tEBsDGmnGTXkVujDh-6SqVpSPxAW31sN0-k=h900' alt='Bk English Language Handbook Level 1' title='Bk English Language Handbook Level 1' />In the Sophist he expresses the idea that thought and speech are the same only the former, which is a silent inner conversation of the soul with itself, has been given the special name of thought. In the Philebus he describes the process of thought as a writer within us who may use words well or badly. In the dialogue with Cratylus he warns against trying to learn things through the medium of names rather than from the things themselves. He finds erroneous conceptions in the names of several important things, and rejects the kind of sophistry that would establish the truth about things by discovering it in the etymologies of their Greek names. Cratylus, it should be noted, represents a whole school of thinkers who had been led astray by this kind of sophistry. In the Phaedo, just before he drinks the cup of hemlock, Socrates urges his friends never to say that they have buried him, for they bury only his body, and to use words wrongly is not merely an error in itself it also creates evil in the soul. Aristotle also touches upon problems caused by language here and there in his works. The first few paragraphs of his treatise on logic Organon are a discussion of verbal ambiguities and forms of speech. In the last book of this treatise On Sophistical Refutations he focuses on problems of language in his discussion of fallacies. He warns that even in his inward thoughts a man is liable to be deceived, when he examines a matter on the basis of words, 6 and he describes six kinds of logical fallacies that commonly arise from the use of ambiguous words and phrases. These fallacies are exposed by drawing careful distinctions that resolve the ambiguity chap. Here Aristotle clearly focuses on the problem of thinking being ensnared in words. Logical fallacies of this kind which Aristotle calls, sophistries connected with diction are just as common in polemical writings of our day as they were in ancient Greece. The reality and importance of this linguistic effect on thinking has never been disputed, and it has been discussed by logicians in all ages. At the beginning of the third century of the Christian era we find Tertullian a prominent theologian writing about the inseparability of thought and language. In his treatise Against Praxeas written about A. D. 2. 15, Tertullian deals with the question of how the Logos word of God can be spoken of as something proceeding from God and yet also be called God Himself cf. Johns Gospel. He explains that it is because the very thoughts of God are framed in discourse, the Word being none other than the objectified form of Gods thoughts.