The Influence of Language on Thinking

Will you see the world differently if you encode your perceptions in different languages? This is the controversial question posed by the linguistic-relativity hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, the language we use shapes our perception of the world. How we think the world is is how we see the world. On the other hand, opponents of this view maintain that language isn't the cause of our ways of thinking. Instead, think- ing itself, based on responses to particular environments, shapes language. This could explain why the Eskimo (Inuit) people have many more words for ice and snow than we'll ever find in American English.

In fact, there's considerable research, mainly from anthro- pology, that supports the linguistic-relativity hypothesis.

However, your text maintains that research opposing that hypothesis is more convincing to most researchers, which, in fact, does seem to be the case. However, your challenge, should you ever become a psycho-linguistic researcher, would be to revisit both sides of the controversy.