Ensayo De Teoria Del Conocimiento Sobre El Lenguaje

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TOK ESSAY
“The vocabulary we have does more than communicate our knowledge it shapes what we can know”. Evaluate this claim with reference to different areas of knowledge.

I can understand the claim presented as being referred to vocabulary but in order to address it, I first consider necessary to discuss some issues regarding language as a whole. To make reference to language implies toadmit all types of communicational forms, but when referred only to vocabulary, what we can communicate verbally or written, the possibilities of communication narrow down, excluding other ways such as images or gestures that we so commonly use. The linguistic studies that establish the importance of language in our thinking processes are many, but for the purpose of this paper, I consider theSaphir Whorf theory the most significant. This theory, that was quite a breakthrough when it was first published, consisted in the idea that our language determines the way we understand the world and defines how reality is conceptualized and memorized. It is a controversial theory that has been seriously challenged, but since it coincides with what the title claims, it deserves attention.
In thetests carried out by Saphir and Whorf, speakers of diverse languages throughout the world were interviewed and studied. The interesting data collected showed how, for example, in some languages such as Spanish, German or French, objects are designated with a male or female article to make reference to them, so that the speakers associate certain objects with masculinity of femininity, creating aform of gender prejudice over objects. This would prove that what we know about such objects is shaped by the linguistic tools that our language provides us with. It is well known the experiment that Saphir and Whorf conducted with Japanese-American bilingual women. When questioned in both languages, even if the questions were the same, they would answer differently. According to Saphir and Whorf,this proved that each language provided them with a different categories of thought, thus causing that, when speaking English, they could say things that their Japanese language would not let them even conceive, and the other way ´round.
This theory was very much questioned due to the few really sound pieces of evidence to support it (it was extremely difficult to avoid subjective elements in theresponses of the individuals), and it was argued that if this claims were to be entirely true, the ability to learn new things would be limited by language, it also would mean that certain languages would have fewer possibilities than others to generate particular types of knowledge. The danger of such a claim is that it implies a prejudicial attitude regarding native speakers of differentlanguages and their capabilities to learn.
There are other facts that suggest that there is a close connection between what we know and our vocabulary, such as the way in which colour is perceived, although in this case it works the other way ‘round. It has been observed that natives in the Amazonas can differentiate a lot of tones of the color green that other people cannot, for which they havedistinct names. The same happens with the Inuit of Northern Canada and the color white. This extremely refined perceptive ability, which allows these peoples to identify a wider range of hues of green and white than most people in the world derives from the fact that they live in an environment almost entirely dominated by these colours ,thus making it essential for them to adapt their perception andtheir language to their surroundings. What they get to know about their environment, then, is heavily influenced by this enhanced perception and the richness of their vocabulary.
Another example could be the way in which different languages are used to give directions, for some speakers the natural way of directing someone is towards their location, this are called “egocentric coordinates”, but...