"Man is the animal that speaks. Understanding language is thus the key to understanding man" Thomas Szasz.
Based upon the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, it was concluded that "linguistically speaking, no human being is born free; his mind was made up for him from the day he was born by the language of his speech". To prove this theory some experiments have been conducted including one on a bilingual Japanese woman who spoke both Japanese and English. This experiment included asking the woman the same questions in both Japanese and English and comparing the results to see if they have any differences, which should be based upon the theory that the woman will answer differently to the questions because the language that she will be speaking makes up her mind about the answer. An example was giving her the same sentence in both language and allowing her to complete the sentence. One sentence was "When my wishes conflict with my family's...", in Japanese she answered "it is a time of great unhappiness" and in English she answered "I do what I want". From this we can see the differences between her answer and therefore we can say that if we understand the language of a man, based upon Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, then we can understand the man.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Perception
"We see and understand things not as they are but as we are"
Perception is an active process. We as humans observe our surroundings, we indentify, make connections and reasons for our surroundings; we do not only look at what is surrounding us. Each human has a different way of observing the things that are around them. Some people have different values of the objects that are around them; as humans we tend to only remember the things that we consider are important to us and that can differ from one person to another. Also the character of that person can affect how he observes his surroundings. For example, a poet looks at his surroundings differently than a doctor or undertaker. Therefore we can say that people tend to see things not as how the objects are, but as whom they are.
Perception is an active process. We as humans observe our surroundings, we indentify, make connections and reasons for our surroundings; we do not only look at what is surrounding us. Each human has a different way of observing the things that are around them. Some people have different values of the objects that are around them; as humans we tend to only remember the things that we consider are important to us and that can differ from one person to another. Also the character of that person can affect how he observes his surroundings. For example, a poet looks at his surroundings differently than a doctor or undertaker. Therefore we can say that people tend to see things not as how the objects are, but as whom they are.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
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