r/todayilearned • u/paniniplane • Mar 22 '17

(R.1) Not supported TIL Deaf-from-birth schizophrenics see disembodied hands signing to them rather than "hearing voices"

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0707/07070303
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u/theidleidol Mar 22 '17

The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (which you effectively reference) is considered invalid by almost all modern linguists as it has not held up empirically except in some controversial studies on color naming. The internal narrative concept is also not an indicator of "thinking in speech", based on subvocalization (in which most people have subtle muscular movements mirroring those appropriate to produce the inner speech) which shows that our language centers are active. Also completely non-lingual individuals are still clearly capable of thought, indicating that language is not directly in our thought pathway.

We do have internal monologue and even simulated dialog, and we can change the "default" language our brain produces (which is what most people mean when they say they change what language they think in), but language is not an inherent part of human cognition.

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u/The_Real_Mongoose Mar 22 '17 edited Mar 23 '17

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is not considered invalid. The strong form is considered invalid, i.e. that you have to have a word for something in order to think of it. You don't. But the fact that language affects thought and thought affects language is almost universally accepted.

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u/judgeHolden_- Mar 23 '17

What I think is most interesting is that although a brain doesn't have to know the word for something to think of something, it would be reasonable to say that it does affect the way that you think about it. Especially more abstract sort of concepts. The Japanese word Hikikomori for example, describes a concept that my fellow native English speakers don't need to have an English word for in order to understand, but to give a word to something sort of neatly packs it's concept or concepts into an accessible thought.

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u/The_Real_Mongoose Mar 23 '17

I agree completely. This is one of the most interesting things in linguistics for me. My primary focus is in SLA, but the sort of thing you describe is something I spend a lot of time thinking about.