I will begin this article by saying this is not an easy question to answer. For a start, the idea that the language we use has an influence on what we think sounds a little strange. It can get even weirder if we believe that different languages have a different effect on what we think. An often-used example to explain this is the cognition between users of English against those who speak Mandarin.
An English speaker will usually think of time as a horizontal line. This means that we move things forward from left to right or move things backwards from right to left. They envisage time as moving in the same direction; forwards left to right and vice-versa. A clue to this is the fact that English speakers read and write in the same direction.
But this is not universal. A Mandarin speaker will view time as running vertically. The past is upwards and the future is downwards. And if you haven’t guessed yet, Mandarin is usually read and written in vertical lines running from top to bottom. This connection between language and how we think of time has been taken a stage further in an experiment.
A volunteer who spoke English was instructed to press a button if a picture represented a scene from the past or the future. They were found to be able to process the information more efficiently and press a button indicating the correct answer if the buttons were placed in the same order as matched the language they used. Therefore, the English speaker was more efficient when the buttons were placed side by side. In the case of Mandarin speakers, they did better if the buttons were organised vertically.
So, are these examples proof that language influences thought? The answer is both yes and no. It is believed by many researchers that it does but is only one of the influences on our thinking processes. After all, we know young infants can think before they can speak. Finally, this connection can also work the other way around. Some scientists believe that our thoughts and culture also have a connection to the language we speak. Therefore, the final answer id still up for some debate.
John Pullen 