The Importance of Language and Different Worldview
I am in the faculty of Education, specifically pre-kindergarten to grade 5, and some of my classes revolve around the topics that we discussed in the first week of classes. In ECE 325, an educational class based on experiential learning for young children, we explored how children can learn and develop a different understanding of the world based on the people present around them and their environment growing up. Some of my classes are also based on how to create an anti-bias classroom for children that is learning English as an additional or second language, and I think this is important because the central theme for this week's lecture is how languages shape our culture and how we think.
My family came from the Philippines and I was only 8 years old when my family decided to move to Canada to create a brighter future for the family. I have a brother who is 5 years younger than me; we perceive the world differently because unlike him, I had more time to learn more about our culture, language, and celebrate different customs. The article that stood out to me the most is “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” by Guy Deutscher, because it talks about how languages differ from one another and how the way we understand or depict a certain word could imply different meanings to other cultures and languages. With my brother growing up in Canada, he mainly spoke in English, he could only understand our mother tongue, so oftentimes there are some misunderstandings and miscommunication between my parents and my brother because of the language barrier or their different understandings of the words they use. This article also introduced a theory based on Whorf, saying “our mother tongue restricts what we are able to think.” (Deutscher, G. 2010), I can speak and understand Tagalog and English and rather than think of my mother tongue as something that restricts me from thinking certain things, I think it has allowed me to have more knowledge. Looking back on my early years in Canada, I had thought the same way because I simply did not understand the things that my peers deemed normal or simple. I was not able to comprehend what was being taught because I was not familiar with the methods used. Not only did I have to learn at the same level and speed as my classmates, but I also needed to get used to the new environment and process all of these things at the same time, which could be overwhelming for a child. This is not because I was stupid or was not capable of understanding, but the lack of understanding I have on the foreign language and I realized that I will never be able to catch up to my peers unless I learned the language used. Feeling incompetent for not learning at the same pace as the rest of my peers, shows how much power language holds and shapes my relationship with not just everyone around me but the environment I live in as well. Before I realized it, this new culture and language had become part of my identity, like being in two completely different worlds, because every culture and language is distinct and could impact the way we view the world.
As discussed in our lecture on, Language, Meaning Making and Communication, each language is defined as “a system of communication that makes use of symbols (words,gestures,and sounds) which are then organized according to a set of rules in order to convey information.” (ANTH100, May 7 Lecture) Each individual is capable of using this system to make sense of our world and communicate with others. However, having these different systems is what other people who speak two different languages might find difficult to understand each other. Before I thought that language is what brings people together, but it is more complex than that, everyone has to be open to the idea of learning new things and that languages should be viewed equally. Edward Sapir would think of language used only for communicating but it holds much more, it is a big part of our culture; our identity can also indicate a person's social position and more. What intrigued me the most in this lecture was the video on Linguistic Relativity, I think it is interesting to see how there can be different perceptions of time. It talks about how we perceive time to be not absolute and that once we pass a certain time period it is gone and in the past. As mentioned in the video, I perceive time in a more linear fashion, the way I view time is based on the amount of work I get done or the amount of physical activity I do; the busier I am, the faster I think time is passing by and having nothing to do makes time pass slower. It always makes me wonder why we feel that way about time, as someone who is a full time student that works long hours, I always feel like I should constantly be moving so on my rest days I tend to think that time is moving slower because of the lack of things I do. Time is just one example that demonstrates how each culture and language can have different understanding, another example is how we see colours or how we give direction.
Overall , this week's lecture definitely encouraged me to think more about how I perceive the world and made me want to learn about how others perceive it. There are still many things I do not understand, but the more I learn, the more questions I have and I think that curiosity and being open to learning new things is key to breaking the barrier between different cultures and languages. Constantly thinking about not just how you view the world but how others view it as well can lead towards a brighter future that connects everyone together.
Resources
ANTH 100, Language, Meaning Making, and Communication, May 7
Deutscher, G. (2010, August 26). Does Your Language Shape How You Think?
Retrieved May 9, 2020, from
Arrival's Linguistic Relativity and Time Perception Are Awesome. (2016). Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QAujmYORLA