Does language shape the way one sees/perceives reality? why?

What is reality? In general, reality is the state of things that actually exist, rather than as they may appear or may be thought to be. In its largest definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. In contrast existence is often restricted solely to being (compared with nature). Then, we have to know the types of realities thatexist. There are two kinds. The first one is referred to as “general reality”, which is formed from the power groups, because these groups say what is the real world to all. The second one is called “subjective reality”, this is created by each individual in their own mind.

From my experience, everybody doesn´t have the same perception of reality. For example, my boyfriend (who is from Asturias)and I (I’m from Gran Canaria) decided to paint the walls of our bedroom one colour, which he said was purple and for me it was lilac. This made me question, why do people have different perceptions about the “same reality”?

This is a topic that has been studied by professionals of the philosophy of language, anthropology and psycholinguistics who nowadays they continue to study this topic.Therefore, I want to address the topic by beginning with the theory of philosophers, which has a lot of influence on the matter.

Many thinkers have impeded that great differences between languages lead to great differences in terms of perception of the reality, the experience and the thought. They support that every language contains a vision of the world so that every language has differentvisions of reality, in such a way the speakers of different languages think about the world in different ways. This is know as “linguistic relativity”, which is rooted in the theory of the German philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1838), who proposed that language was connected with the psychological processes of perception and conceptualization. First, language was the instrument of thought, usedas a cognitive tool, and then, a system of transmission of information (communicative system). He proposed that language wasn’t a representative system of conformed ideas, but rather his function was essentially to form and develop ideas.

For Humboldt, there was diversity of human languages, which influences the mental development of humanity. He believed that there are two reasons for thediversity of languages: the variability of an individual’s perceptions and the different characteristics of the nations and cultures. The variety of perceptions is produced by the differences between physical environments. For example, people from the South Pole and people from the tropics, because they live in different surroundings where they correspond themselves with different experiences. But,such variety is also produced by different cultures. Such a variety of characteristics is concerned by two cultures having different perceptions of the same reality, in other words, they emphasize different characteristics of the same idea or object. According to him, these different cognitive options have caused the differences between the semantic-conceptual systems of the languages.

Based onthis theory, Edward Sapir and his disciple Benjamin Lee Worhf developed this theory, known as the Sapir-Wohrf hypothesis, and also as the Wohrf hypothesis. These anthropologist-linguists were defenders of the Humboldt thesis, which they would then make into a scientific proposal.

E. Sapir supported Humboldt’s idea that language isn’t the product of the mind, but it is prior to thought and thatlanguage is necessary to develop the thought.

They thought that the “real world”, in other words, the vision of reality was made up by the formal aspects of the language. For them, people assimilate their experiences by means of their grammar. Thus, the grammar of every language guides their speakers to a different vision of the reality. For example, they studied and compared the Amerindian...