Rationale

I plan on writing either an opinion column or an article as a response to the speech

given by Lera Boroditky on “How language shapes the way we think”.
The video talks about how people speaking different languages think differently. For
instance few languages, such as French, have gender for most objects and nouns. This
makes the speaker of the language have masculine or feminine views towards the object
based on its gender, whereas an English speaking would be gender neutral with the same
objects. I want to look at how different languages can affect the boundaries that people
create to differentiate themselves, and how this could contribute towards problems in
society as people tend to have different perspectives on different things. Having different
perspectives for the same thing can also be beneficial to the research field, and how many
different languages are dying every second due to the dominance to the English language.
I want to talk about how English has become a crucial language in the entire world,
dominating all the other languages that exist, and the effects that this could. I want to
discuss how English has evolved into the language it is today and why it is considered so
important. How other languages and the people speaking those languages are affected due
to the supremacy of the English language will also be talked about.
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Suprabhat Rapolu
 The role of language in decision making

Language is a crucial part that contributes to the making of a particular culture, and
culture can majorly effect the way a person thinks and his decision making. Different
cultures have different ideologies and perspectives about things in the world. What is
considered to be right in one culture can be wrong in another. What makes language and
culture special is that they both are right in their own ways and respect each other’s culture.
Different languages carry different syntaxes with them and specific logic rules that affect
how a person looks at the world. Each language has its own level of importance towards
components of language such as time, tense, and gender which can change the speaker’s
perception about the idea being developed. For instance, a certain phrase such as “sun of a
gun” could be used as a complement for one in a language such as English, but if the same
would be literally translated into Chinese, the person towards the other end of the
conversation might be offended.
There are several ways in which languages differ through syntax. In languages such
as English, there is a different name for most colors which help to describe and differentiate
colors. But in other languages, all the colors wouldn’t have their own names. For instance, in
in Japanese, all the shades from green to blue are labeled “ao” (青). When someone tries to
imply to a certain color of something, such as a green apple, the listener might confuse this
for the other shade of the color, and might understand it as a blue apple. In such cases, the
only way of being sure what color is being talked about is to verify with the subject being
discussed. Another case could be with Russian. The Russians have a different name for dark
blue, Siny, and for light blue, Goluboy. This shows us how contrasting languages can be in
terms of language discrepancy and syntax. The people of the particular language, Russian,
would also find the shades of blue to be very contradicting, and tend to be very particular
when making decisions involving shades of blue as that’s how their language and culture
had trained their mind to be, whereas for an English native speaker, it wouldn’t really make
a huge difference while dealing with shades of blue, because it is still just blue for the
English speaker.
Language also contributes as an attitude developer. Languages that talk about the
time and tense have speakers who are money spenders, whereas languages that do not
mention time and tenses in general terms have speakers who save their money. This tells us
that according to the language that one speaks, there are a few things key and few things
neglected. This can vary from one language to another. This things that are of priority in the
language are as a result also prioritized in their culture and can change their attitudes and
mindsets about such subjects. Another major aspect of language that affects attitudes and
behavior is gender. Most languages spoken all around the globe carry some sort of gender
with their grammar. Languages such as Spanish and French have different prepositions for
different objects that have gender. Unlike English, a mostly gender neutral language, a lot of
languages label certain objects with masculine or feminine with or without a certain
reasoning. The speakers of the language would also tend to carry the gender biased mindset
which their language has implemented in them.
Another area where language plays a very important role is in business and
international trade. International communication is very crucial in the world that we live
today, where every corner of the globe is connected together. Business should be able to
communicate their message very clearly to their target audience and other members of the
business in different parts of the planet. For the business to deliver their message and get
past several language barriers, they should be ab le to understand the different ways of
expression in other languages and the language syntax and grammatical discipline that the
language follows and change their message so it suits the language being translated into. As
a literary translation could change the context of the message and might not be taken by
the customers their targeting and the other business members, this brings the need of
localization of businesses.

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