Language and Culture: Mentalese. A short Overview

Essay , 2007 , 5 Seiten , Note: 2,7

Anglistik - Linguistik

Mentalese: The language of our thoughts on 5 pages. A short overview.

Inhaltsverzeichnis (Table of Contents)

• Mentalese: The language of our thoughts. Speech is a translation of mentalese.
• Newspeak
• Is thought dependent on words?
• Experts assume that the government uses euphemisms to manipulate our minds.
• Philosophers argued that animals do not possess the right of conscious beings, because they lack language and as a result must also lack consciousness.
• The famous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis:
• Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf produced arguments that the language of Native Americans, such as the Hopi, led them to view the world differently from those who spoke a European language.
• The idea to argue that language and thought has the same thing is absurd, and just conventional.
• Understanding of colors
• The concept of time
• Eskimos and snow
• What if someone is not able to speak, is he able to think?
• Three other examples of a different kind, will also underline the statement that thought does not depend on words:
• The psychologist Karen Wynn has shown, "that five-month-old babies can do a simple form of arithmetic".
• The primatologists Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth discovered, that the Vervet monkeys they observed, recognize their family members.
• Many creative persons remember that their most inspired moments are not made of words but thought in mental images.
• The Turing Machine
• Deixis:

Zielsetzung und Themenschwerpunkte (Objectives and Key Themes)

This text explores the relationship between language and thought, challenging the idea that thought is solely dependent on language. It examines various arguments and evidence to demonstrate that thought can exist independently of verbal expression.

• The role of language in shaping thought
• The existence of a mental language (Mentalese)
• The limitations of language in expressing thought
• The ability of non-linguistic beings to think
• The nature of mental representation

Zusammenfassung der Kapitel (Chapter Summaries)

• The text introduces the concept of Mentalese as a language of thought, distinct from spoken languages. It explores the idea that speech is a translation of Mentalese and examines George Orwell's dystopian vision of Newspeak, a language designed to control thought.
• The chapter delves into the question of whether thought is dependent on words. It examines arguments about the use of euphemisms by governments, the perceived lack of consciousness in animals due to their lack of language, and the famous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The hypothesis proposes that the language of Native Americans, such as the Hopi, leads them to perceive the world differently from those who speak European languages. However, the text presents evidence to challenge this hypothesis.
• The text explores the role of language in shaping our perception of colors and the concept of time. It examines how different languages have varying words for colors and how the Hopi language, according to Whorf, lacks concepts for past, future, or duration. However, further research by anthropologist Ekkehart Malotki contradicts Whorf's theory.
• The chapter tackles the myth of Eskimos having hundreds of words for snow and suggests that this is an example of how cultures can be perceived as exotic and different. The text explores the possibility of thought existing without language, using examples of deaf adults who never learned language and the cognitive abilities of babies and monkeys.
• The text introduces the concept of the Turing Machine, which describes the brain as a computer with a mental representation. It discusses the limitations of this theory, such as the ambiguity of words and the lack of logical explicitness in English.

Schlüsselwörter (Keywords)

This text focuses on the relationship between language and thought, exploring key concepts such as Mentalese, Newspeak, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the Turing Machine, and the role of language in shaping perception and cognition. It delves into the possibility of thought existing independently of language, examining examples of non-linguistic beings, including babies, monkeys, and deaf adults. The text also explores the limitations of language in expressing complex thought and the potential for mental representations to transcend linguistic boundaries.

• Hochschule: Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Englisches Seminar)
• Veranstaltung: Linguistik I,2
• Note: 2,7
• Autor: Anonym (Autor:in)
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2007
• Seiten: 5
• Katalognummer: V414052
• ISBN (eBook): 9783668650060
• Sprache: Englisch
• Schlagworte: Mentalese, Linguistik, linguistics, grammar, speech, language, thoughts, newspeak, oldspeak, saphir-whorf hypothesis, saphir-whorf, time, color, colors, eskimos, snow, the turing machine, deixis, synonymy, culture