Language and thinking

Difficulties : 1) this phenomenon is both social and biological, 2) is dual in nature: static and dynamic at the same time. They are, on the one hand, a means of consolidating public knowledge and, on the other hand, they represent thought-speech activity, 3) multi-component thinking, the language is also complicated, multi-level and multi-functional.

Thinking is the mental processes of reflection of objective reality, constituting the highest degree of human cognition. Thinking provides knowledge about the essential properties, connections and relationships of objective reality. It exists in the process of knowing the transition from the phenomenon to the essence.

Researchers identify different types of thinking :

1. Sensual thinking is a reflection of reality that arises as a result of information received by a person through feelings.

2. Visual-figurative - a reflection of reality in the form of images of external reality, scenes.

3. Search (technical) - an effort aimed at finding a solution.

4. Verbal (verbal) is the most developed type, since the creation of a word is preceded by experience, knowledge of objects and the classifying work of the mind.

Problems :

1. Whether or not there is a link between thinking and language. Most clearly answered to this question by physiologists. The whole brain is responsible for thinking as a whole, and separate sections of the cerebral cortex are in charge of various forms of speech activity. At the same time there is no direct relationship between language and the brain.

You can identify brain mechanisms that are responsible for the use of any components of the language.

2. What is the nature of the relationship between language and thinking. There are two points of view:

a) language and thinking are separated. Language is a way to transmit thoughts, but not a means of its formation. Thinking is an extralinguistic factor outside the language. Languages ​​are purely national in nature.

Arguments: 1) the speed of thinking is higher than the speed of speaking; 2) everyone is familiar with the fact that it is difficult to express an idea; 3) examples of the deaf and dumb. They cannot speak, but are not at all inferior to those speaking in mental development.

b) another point of view, according to which the relationship of language and thinking is present. This is indicated by Humboldt.

The most important element of the language-thinking system is internal speech . Inner speech is speech, without sound, which accompanies the process of thinking. Inner speech is the main and universal means of mental activity and human consciousness. In inner speech, language and thought are combined into an integral complex.

Internal speech has two types:

a) silent pronunciation, in structure coincides with the sounding speech and precedes it,

b) reduced, maximally abbreviated, fragmentary, not congruent in its structure (syntactic and semantic) with speech.

More complex tasks that require hard work thoughts reinforce speech processes. Outer speech is the link between abstract thought and the material form of a language. Thanks to the inner speech, we can easily fix the idea, summarize and remember any information.

Language and thinking are closely related through inner speech. On the other hand, the relationship between language and thinking is manifested in the relationship between units of language and thinking (word and sentence; concept and judgment).

A concept is a thought about a class of objects or phenomena of reality, it is a set of distinctive, essential features that are known in the practice of communication and the activities of people, by which objects are identified and identified, their qualities, characteristics, properties, connections, relationships, etc.

A word is a concept by which a concept is designated.

The relationship of identity between word and concept is not always possible. Since not all words do not denote concepts (service, interjections), different words denote one concept (at the level of development of the semantic structure of the word).

Units of language: sentence and judgment.

Judgment is a thought in which something is either affirmed or denied. The judgment can be either true or false. The judgment corresponds in the language to a narrative sentence. A judgment always has a two-member structure: subject and predicate. The subject is what is being said, the object of thought itself. The predicate is what is stated / denied about the subject of speech.

Intonation is a universal means of distinguishing a subject and a predicate.

1. A judgment is always manifested in the form of a sentence, but a sentence is not always a subject.

2. The judgment is twofold, and the sentence is not always.

3. Does language influence thinking and thinking on language? Ethnolinguistics deals with this: language influences thinking. Language determines the nature of thinking in general. We cannot argue that language affects thinking. But we must distinguish between the logical and linguistic picture of the world. The language picture of the world is national, not the same. Language does not affect the content of thinking, but only the technique of thinking.