Language, Thought And Culture

Language, Thought and Culture for Comparing Societies
As we have mentioned in previous essays, culture deals with traditions and religion that have been hesitated from generation to generation. However, those aspects can be changed or modified in certain ways by some political statements and social organizations; even so, globalization and the influence that some cultures exercise over others. Iconsider this have been the main factor for cultures to be modified in their customs and even so in religion. But a special role is played by religion in a culture because it is the most representative aspect (J. Milton Yunger), because it makes different a culture from another. And it is possible to say that although some countries practice the same religion, it could be different, that is tosay, that two countries despite of practicing one religion, it is different in each country. As an example of this, Christians church in America tend to be different from the ones in Latin America, and even so, the way services and the cult are performed is different in some aspects, perhaps the time, the dressing, the instruments, etc. taking into account what it was exposed above, we are going toanalyze the influence of language, thought and culture in a society, and the way we can compare cultures having clear the definitions given before.
According to Valdez (1986), there are three aspects that influence a society, giving it identity, in front of another one. One of these aspects is language, this marks differences among cultures. Despite of in some countries it tends to vary from acountry to another as it was mentioned before, even if we are talking about the same language, for instance, English spoken in England is pretty different to the one spoken in south Africa. It can be differenced by some accent and expressions, and why not the pragmatic aspect of the language. But Valdez wants to mention something else in relation with language, according to his resources, cognitivedevelopment and linguistic development must go hand in hand for shaping the other, this is because at the moment of acquiring a new language, it is important to identify and deal with linguistics and cognitive aspects for understanding better an idea. As an example of this, Valdez mentions the way a product is offered will depend the way it is conceptualized by the public it is shown. That is whyadvertising world we can find a lot of examples of the use of the language for shaping, persuading and dissuading. For instance, many weasel words are used to glorify an ordinary product that is to say that we do not have shoes, but very good shoes; we do not have clothing but excellent and unique clothing. Just let us say that language plays a very important role in society because it is the“car” where ideas and thoughts are transported.
But not only language, thought is also very important when we are about to discuss the influences of some factors in a society. Generally, thought refers to any mental or intellectual activity involving an individual's subjective consciousness. Anyway, it can refer either to the act of thinking or the resulting ideas or arrangements of ideas (Wikipedia). Ifwe apply this term to culture context, it allows us to understand the ideology and the way a group of people and the way an idea is perceived. This concept of thought can be influenced in some cases by some elements of the culture, for instance, language. Valdez shows in one of his papers that communication can vary from a culture to anther because there are different languages that express ideasin a different way and of course, the way that idea is perceived. For instance, modern English is more abstract; however, Indians are more concrete because their language is more concrete in some expressions. We could infer from this idea that the way a person perceives an idea depends on the language it is shown and also, that people around the world perceives and thinks in a different way...