The words which come out of our mouths are not only components of a language; they are the reflection of our inner world. Linguists, when explaining the need for a language, consider it a cultural, social, and psychological phenomenon. Language and its subsequent parts are always seen as a mode to communicate, to convey our message to others, to understand theirs and to continue social life, if not nourish it. This approach has made language only a tool to communicate, limiting the focus on how language shapes us and how it changes our perception of ourselves and the world around us.
This investigation would go sine qua non without the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, also known as the Theory of Linguistic Relativity, presents the idea that one experiences the surrounding world based on the structure of its language, providing that the language we speak has the power to expand and limit our cognitive thinking. An example of this would be how the English language and Western culture state time as money, while the Irish proverb presents time as a storyteller. In this case, observing time as a capitalist metaphor tends to segmentise it. Rather, in Gaelic, time is presented as a continuous lived narrative. This is not limited to the use of metaphors only, but it also plays an insignificant role in how we tend to cooperate with the world around us.
Another example would be of stating emotions in languages. In English, we usually go by the phrases that present our emotions as a part of our static identity, as instead of saying ‘I am having sadness,’ we go by ‘I am sad,’ projecting our spared emotional state as a static identity instead of a fraction. This begins to present our emotions as our sole identity. The effect goes above the emotions and day-to-day activity to our ideal perception of the world.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis goes beyond suggesting that the way we speak changes the way we think. It tends to suggest the idea that, as words are the medium to identify ourselves, our surroundings, recurring phenomena and the world eventually begin to shape our perceptions. We conceptualise our world through language, and if we lack this ability, should we be able to single it out otherwise? The hypothesis has been considered a stratagem within the realm of linguists and modern language debate, but it has not lost its relevance entirely.
The modern language crises provide a new lens for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to be analysed. Media saturation, cyber influx, and over-influence of web programs have altered the language landscape of users altogether. The influx of slang usage, texting, and almost no real connection has given rise to a new yet already present panorama of emotional negligence. Nowadays, most of our conversations with others are through texting. If texting is hackneyed by slang and our chats are becoming shorter because of the sparsity of geek-speak jargon, are we losing emotional depth too? If you stop telling others what is bothering you, does it actively stop bothering you? The answer to such a question is not a one-liner, as human emotions, interactions, and patterns are complicated. But these patterns are guided by cognition, and cognitive thinking is constructed through words, and words are a language. Thus, providing that our conscious realm is a prisoner of the language.
Language limits our knowledge and our ability to recognise a particular thing and makes it non-existent for us. This doesn’t imply that if you are unaware of the “words” of an emotion, you simply do not feel it. You only fail to recognise them readily or clearly pave the way for undefined and unattended thoughts. It is important to understand that the prison of the language is not fixed nor absolute, because recognising the pattern can help you consciously step out of it.
A shared language fosters a shared identity, and a shared identity cultivates a shared culture. Historical evidence has been one of the biggest advocates of how language has always been used as a tool to practise hegemony and power. In imperial strategies, ingenious languages went through massacre, and indigenous realities were broken, too. Thus, language not only plays a role in the perception of the outer world, but it also begins to employ patterns in our personal identity.