CH .10

There is no doubt that the differences in language go beyond the frontiers of speech. Some scientists are very interested in investigating how these differences can affect people’s perception and understand how they can influence their cognitive processes. According to Whorf’s proposal, the variances between several types of languages interfere in the way that people think about the message content, influencing their communication. These differences are known as linguist relativity, which can be exemplified as the low probability that a native American has to understand the use of the Portuguese word “Saudade,” for example. As long as this word has no effective term to be translated into English, according to Whorf hypothesis, the American person will not make accurately sense about this word, as a Brazilian has and consequently, this world would be better interpreted and used by people who speak Portuguese than English. Maybe an English speaker will think that other usual word from his knowledge network, like "Homesick" could make the same sense. But in fact, both people would be ending on reasoning about different situations, restricting each person to a limited way to think about these words, as far as  Brazilian vocabulary does not have any word which means "Homesick" to them.

The differences between terms used to convey a thought or idea eventually affect how people perceive things, like cultures who have a vast vocabulary to distinguish colors, for example. Possibly they are more capable of realizing the little differences are between hues, becoming more alert to small details and developing better memory about color references than other cultures that have less vocabulary in this area. This evidence suggests that in some extent, our language has an impact in people’s cognition because each particular language determines the way that we create concepts of the external world and internalize it in our minds. Studies in this area corroborate the value of linguistic relativity to shape our cognitive capabilities.

However, we must consider a different proposal that indicates that the effects of the attention over what you hear through language, has more significant influence in the cognitive process of effective communication.  The data collected from different studies in this area get evidence that the structure of each language interfere in what you pay attention, and also affecting your thinking and memory.  It can be exemplified taking into account some differences between English and Portuguese, for example. In Portuguese it is common to use different names to express the diminutive of the words, like a door (porta), adding the suffix  “inha”  (portinha) in most of the words.  Sometimes, the whole structure of the word must change (portinhola) if I am talking about a door that is smaller than the small one. To get the same understanding in English, it is necessary to acknowledge that if I want to make a difference between door sizes, I only need to name them as  “door” and “little door” to emphasize the size differences.  

Besides the differences in language, I can accomplish the same understanding and reason about how to minimize the perceptual differences as soon as I am able to learn a different way to think about the same thing. It proves that my previous concepts in Portuguese are not unchangeable but still can aggregate new perspectives from other experiences that I have in the way.  Our experiences, tend to create a bias that shapes the way that we are thinking about what is heard, making connections that can help us to interpret different things that we pay attention in many ways.