I came late to this thread, so I may be going over old territory.

Isn't there a middle ground between "thought is determined by language" and
"language and thought are completely separate"? Surely the categories chosen
by a language at least *influence *the way we think. For example, with the
word "uncle," English labels four very different relationships with the very
same term (father's brother, mother's brother, father's sister's husband,
mother's sister's husband). As a boy, I considered all of my uncles to be
equally close relations. Would that have been the case if, say, we had
different terms for blood-related uncles and uncles-by-marriage?

Juliet claimed that "that which we call a rose by any other name would smell
as sweet." That's one of many things she got wrong. Would it really smell as
sweet to us if the plant were called the "skunk cabbage weed"? Advertisers
and politicians devote untold effort to naming products and programs because
they believe names matter. Think of "the death tax," "Operation Iraqi
Freedom," "the Patriot Act." People in opinion polls respond differently
depending on what the thing is called. You get different results if you ask
people if they're "pro-life" or if you ask if they're "anti-choice." Words
have connotations, and connotations affect our responses.

Certainly we can have thought and opinions without language. Of equal
certainty, names and labels for things affect our responses to them.

Dick Veit


On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Robert Yates <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Colleagues,
>
> I started my first reply on the metaphor string to suggest that there is
> an alternative view from the one that language “structures our thinking.”
>  I believe that language and thought are completely separate.
>
>

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