6–8 minutes
Welcome to Part 5 of a Week-Long Series on the Evolution and Limits of Language!
This article is part of a seven-day exploration into the fascinating and often flawed history of language—from its primitive roots to its tangled web of abstraction, miscommunication, and modern chaos. Each day, we uncover new layers of how language shapes (and fails to shape) our understanding of the world.
If you haven‘ yet, be sure to check out the other posts in this series for a full deep dive into why words are both our greatest tool and our biggest obstacle. Follow the journey from ‘flamey thing hot’ to the whirlwind of social media and beyond!
Pinker: The Optimist Who Thinks Language Works
Enter Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist and eternal optimist about language. While we’ve been busy pointing out how language is a jumbled mess of misunderstandings, Pinker comes along with a sunny outlook, waving his banner for the language instinct. According to Pinker, language is an evolved tool – something that our brains are wired to use, and it’s good. Really good. So good, in fact, that it allowed us to build civilisations, exchange complex ideas, and, you know, not get eaten by sabre-toothed tigers.
Sounds like a nice break from all the linguistic doom and gloom, right? Pinker believes that language is a powerful cognitive skill, something we’ve developed to communicate thoughts and abstract ideas with remarkable precision. He points to the fact that we’re able to create entire worlds through language – novels, philosophies, legal systems, and scientific theories. Language is, to him, one of the greatest achievements of the human mind.
But here’s where things get a little sticky. Sure, Pinker’s optimism about language is refreshing, but he’s still not solving our core problem: meaning. Pinker may argue that language works wonderfully for most of our day-to-day communication – and in many cases, he’s right. We can all agree that saying, “Hey, don’t touch the flamey thing” is a pretty effective use of language. But once we start using words like ‘freedom’ or ‘justice’, things start to unravel again.
Take a sentence like ‘freedom is essential’. Great. Pinker might say this is a perfectly formed thought, conveyed using our finely tuned linguistic instincts. But the problem? Ask five people what ‘freedom’ means, and you’ll get five different answers. Sure, the grammar is flawless, and everyone understands the sentence structurally. But what they mean by ‘freedom’? That’s a whole other ball game.
Pinker’s language instinct theory helps explain how we learn language, but it doesn’t really account for how we use language to convey abstract, subjective ideas. He might tell us that language has evolved as an efficient way to communicate, but that doesn’t fix the problem of people using the same words to mean wildly different things. You can be the most eloquent speaker in the world, but if your definition of ‘freedom’ isn’t the same as mine, we’re still lost in translation.
And let’s not forget: while language is indeed a fantastic tool for sharing information and surviving in complex societies, it’s also great at creating conflicts. Wars have been fought over differences in how people interpret words like ‘justice’ or ‘rights’. Pinker might say we’ve evolved language to foster cooperation, but history suggests we’ve also used it to argue endlessly about things we can never quite agree on.
So, yes, Pinker’s right – language is a cognitive marvel, and it’s gotten us pretty far. But his optimism doesn’t quite stretch far enough to cover the fact that language, for all its brilliance, still leaves us stuck in a web of interpretation and miscommunication. It’s like having a state-of-the-art GPS that works perfectly – until you get to that roundabout and suddenly no one knows which exit to take.
In the end, Pinker’s got a point: language is one of the most sophisticated tools we’ve ever developed. It’s just a shame that when it comes to abstract concepts, we still can’t agree on which way’s north.
Sapir-Whorf: Language Shapes Reality – Or Does It?
Now it’s time for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to take the stage, where things get really interesting – or, depending on your perspective, slightly ridiculous. According to this theory, the language you speak actually shapes the way you see the world. Think of it as linguistic mind control: your perception of reality is limited by the words you have at your disposal. Speak the wrong language, and you might as well be living on another planet.
Sounds dramatic, right? Here’s the gist: Sapir and Whorf argued that the structure of a language affects how its speakers think and perceive the world. If you don’t have a word for something, you’re going to have a hard time thinking about that thing. Inuit languages, for example, are famous for having multiple words for different kinds of snow. If you’re an Inuit speaker, the hypothesis goes, you’re much more attuned to subtle differences in snow than someone who just calls it all ‘snow’.
Now, on the surface, this sounds kind of plausible. After all, we do think using language, don’t we? And there’s some truth to the idea that language can influence the way we categorise and describe the world. But here’s where Sapir-Whorf starts to go off the deep end. According to the stronger version of this hypothesis, your entire reality is shaped and limited by your language. If you don’t have the word for “freedom” in your language, you can’t experience it. If your language doesn’t have a word for “blue,” well, guess what? You don’t see blue.
Let’s take a step back. This sounds like the kind of thing you’d hear at a dinner party from someone who’s just a little too impressed with their first year of linguistics classes. Sure, language can shape thought to a degree, but it doesn’t have a stranglehold on our perception of reality. We’re not prisoners of our own vocabulary. After all, you can still experience freedom, even if you’ve never heard the word. And you can certainly see blue, whether your language has a word for it or not.
In fact, the idea that you’re trapped by your language is a little insulting, when you think about it. Are we really saying that people who speak different languages are living in different realities? That a person who speaks Mandarin sees the world in a fundamentally different way than someone who speaks Spanish? Sure, there might be some subtle differences in how each language breaks down concepts, but we’re all still human. We’re all still sharing the same world, and no matter what language we speak, we still have the cognitive capacity to understand and experience things beyond the limits of our vocabulary.
Let’s also not forget that language is flexible. If you don’t have a word for something, you make one up. If you’re missing a concept, you borrow it from another language or invent a metaphor. The idea that language is some kind of mental prison ignores the fact that we’re constantly evolving our language to keep up with the way we see the world—not the other way around.
And here’s the real kicker: if Sapir and Whorf were right, and we’re all walking around in little linguistic bubbles, then how on earth have we managed to translate anything? How have entire philosophies, religious texts, and scientific theories made their way across cultures and languages for centuries? If language really was shaping our reality that strongly, translation would be impossible – or at least incredibly limited. But here we are, discussing concepts like ‘freedom’, ‘justice’, and ‘truth’ across languages, cultures, and centuries.
So while it’s fun to entertain the idea that your language shapes your reality, let’s not give it too much credit. Yes, language can influence how we think about certain things. But no, it doesn’t define the boundaries of our existence. We’re not all stuck in a linguistic matrix, waiting for the right word to set us free.
Written by Bry Willis
microglyphics
◀ Previous | Next ▶
Philosophics 