Language

"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.