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Are you what you speak? Psychology, languages and brain

Throughout the years different theories about the effect of languages over personality, culture, social relationships and brain have been developed. Many of them are counterparts and many of them are related.

It is a believed that speaking a certain language; English, for example; produces a different type of thought that speaking French, Italian, Portuguese or viceversa. This ides is based on the "Whorfian hypothesis" or "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis". It was formulated by Edward Sapir, American linguist, and his disciple Benjamin Whorf. This can also be called linguistic relativism or determinism. The linguistic determinism is the weak hypothesis, i.e. it establishes that although language does not determine thought, it drives it. Whereas linguistic determinism, the strong hypothesis, holds that language completely determines the way in which the speaker thinks, interprets or o contextualizes the world in which he lives.

According to a study published in 2010 in the magazine Psichologycal Science, the language we speak may influence on our thoughts. The study was carried out in bilingual speakers of Arab and Hebrew and determined that speakers respond more positive in Arab than in Hebrew.

The main critics to this theoty are Noam Chomsky's innatist theory or linguist universalism. The fisrt one establishes that language is a common activity to all human beings. The latter establishes the existence of a semantic universal system.

Bibliography

Association for Psychological Science. "Person's language may influence how he or she thinks about other people." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 13 July 2010.