Language and Cognition

Cognitive psychologists’ perspective

Human lives revolve around their language. Different experimentations continue to shed light concerning the relationship between thought and language, as well as how children/humans acquire language. Through observations, researchers have been able to record data on how speech is developed during a child’s early years, the first two to three years. Evidence has shown that experimentation has helped uncover the speech acquisition process and identity factors which allow a child to know different speech sounds in their language. Evidence or investigations by psychologists suggest that the language spoken by people control or reflect their cognitive or mental processes. Through experimentations, they have been able to determine a relationship between thought and language, providing valuable insights for psychology dissertation help.

To show how language is acquired in a child’s early life, Roy (2009) found that language is naturally acquired. Language is constantly used by people in their daily lives hence it makes it easy for a child to acquire it. Roy’s (2009) observation of his son’s early life provided evidence which can enable us to appreciate our linguistic capabilities to acquire language naturally during early childhood. Roy’s (2009) research suggest that a baby’s environment and their conversations with parents/caregivers influence their early utterances and ability to acquire speech through unique feedback loops.

Research by Parncutt (2006) take us deeper by saying that a foetus, long before its birth, can not only hear but also respond or react to sound. Parncutt (2006) suggests that this also marks the period when humans start to learn how to perceive speech. According to this researcher, foetuses start hearing sounds between week 16 and 20 of conception. This study is supported by Kuhl (2000) who says that this period of hearing and reacting to sound is what gives new born babies the ability to recognize their caregivers’ (mothers’) voices. Kuhl’s (2000) laboratory experiment shed more light on how babies begin to tune in to certain specific characteristics of the language or sounds they hear. According to Kuhl (2000), age affects people’s ability to acquire language. This author says that children acquire language much better compared to adults. Noam and Chomsky (2002) supports Kuhl’s findings by claiming that language acquisition is innate in human beings. Hyland Bruno, Jarvis, Liberman and Tchernichovski (2020) support Noam and Chomsky’s (2002) findings through an experiment with birds read in isolation. This experiment demonstrated that rearing the isolation affection the birds’ ability to acquire the species-specific tunes and songs. The experiment demonstrated how important it is to expose children to language for them to learn and acquire it.

In a study by Kirkbride and Smith (2021), they ask whether speakers from different languages think uniquely or differently. These researchers looked into the relationship between thought and language. They agree with the work of Whorf (1956) who came up with linguistic relativity. These theorists believe that the language spoken by people reflect their view of the world and how they think about it. In other words, an individual’s mother tongue determines how they think. According to this argument, speakers of a particular language have no ability to entertain the thoughts which come naturally to speakers of different language because they think differently. According to Whorf (1956), language enforces a tyrannical hold on people’s orientation or view of their world.

To further demonstrate that speakers from different languages think uniquely or differently, evidence have been produced to show how language effects on people’s colour discrimination. According to Kirkbride and Smith (2021) basic colour terms differs across languages for instance between twelve (Russian) and two (Dani language in New Guinea). Through cross-cultural variation, researchers have been able to show how language affect people’s colour categorization and discrimination. For instance, Goldstein eta al. (2009), researchers who support linguistic relativity, claim that knowing or mastering colour terms improves recognition. To investigate this claim, Franklin et al. (2005) and Roberson et al. (2004) compared the development of colour discrimination and categorization in English and Himba toddlers. These researcher found that a language which the children are brought up or raised in affect their colour categorization. They noted a rapid divergence in colour discrimination between the two groups of children from the start of learning first colour terms. In a study conducted by Winawer et al. (2007), (based on the Dual-task paradigm which assumes that when two task or activities depend on same process, performance suffers because of interference where the opposite case is also true), they found that linguistic differences can result in different colour categorization or discrimination. By testing Russian and English speakers, they found that Russian speakers had a category or colour discrimination advantage over the other group of children. From the experiment, they concluded that linguistic representations often meddle in people’s objective perceptual thoughts and decisions. This researchers’ findings suggest strongly that people’s cognitive processes such as colour categorization is often affected by their specific language. Similar findings were made by Thierry et al. (2009) who suggest that language-specific categorization or distinctions often take place before conscious categorization. These results show that linguistic differences have a significant impact on people’s performance of non-linguistic activities.

Other researchers also believe that people’s language affects their abstract concepts. For instance, Boroditsky et al. (2011) claim that people globally represent time by relying on space, that this they use metaphors related to space when talking or thinking about time. For example, long winter, a long meeting or a short holiday. In their investigation, these researchers determined that Mandarin-speakers were highly likely to vertically conceptualize time than the English-speakers, even in non-linguistic activities. Therefore, they concluded that there is a difference in how people from different languages and cultures think of time and that this unique thinking approach of time is based on their linguistic experiences. Boroditsky et al. (2011) found that English- and Mandarin-speakers thought of time differently also because of their usual or habitual way how their cultures perceive or portray time. This evidence is supported by McGlone and Harding (1998) who claim that how the different ways in which people conceptualize time affect their perception of the world.

The evidence by Winawer et al. (2007) suggests that language meddles in people’s cognition and as has been illustrated by Thierry et al. (2009), this begins during a child’s early phase of cognitive processing. These evidences shed light on how Studying language can help us to better understand human experience. For instance, we understand how children acquire language and how this language influence how they see and interpret information concerning the things they see in their surroundings in the world.

Social psychologists’ perspective

Discursive psychology (discourse analysis) provides a different theoretical perspective to cognitive psychology in understanding how studying language and comprehending human experiences. This approach concentrates on the performative dimension of language and is interested in how people’s experiences are constructed in their language or talk. Based on this approach, psychologists examine how individuals construct or develop their account and the impact this has (Davies and Horton-Salway, 2021).

Discursive psychology has been critical in understanding the concept of identity. In this regard, literature indicate that identity is negotiated and constructed through text and talk in action (discourse). Discursive psychology can be understood at macro levels (the influence of social, political and historical on people’s formation or development of different identity categories) and at micro levels or local interactions to show how identity is generated. Discursive psychology is particularly important in showing how experience is developed or constructed through text and talk. In this regard, it is important to first of all understand what identity is. According to Johnston (1973), identity is constructed or understood as something an individual does or is done to them, instead of something that they are. Identity is variable and fluid and is imbued, spread or diffused with sociocultural power discourses. According to Mohanty, (2003, p. 190), identity constructed or developed in discourse varies as interactions (like moving to another country) also vary. In discursive psychology, psychologists step from real experience account contents to examine how individuals construct or develop their accounts and the impact that this causes. The macro approach basically focuses on the social, political and historical influences on people’s formation or development of different identity categories. One of the main factors under macro approach of looking into identity is the influence of power (the ability to influence people or things or be impacted by them). According to Davies and Horton-Salway (2021), power is a key player in social coordination and that power distribution also influences people’s identity significantly.

According to Wetherell (2011), discourse assessment can be used at varying contextual level. At a micro-level, for example, psychologists may use ethnomethodology and conversation analysis principles. Thy concentrate on the way identity is negotiated and worked up in conversations in local interactions. The analysis using this approach focuses on issues of ethnicity, class, and gender categories. Davies (2014) provides us an example of how identity is constructed at a micro-level to form a category referred to as ‘a single mother’ among parents with children suffering from ADHD. In this example, a parent with an ADHD child complained of how other parents accused her of being a ‘bad’ mother. According to Stokoe (2009), categories like mother or single parents are culturally sanctioned and standardised relational pair terms which reflect a heteronormative view of what good parents or families should look like.

Macro-level analysis, on the other hand, look at social practices and how discourse in certain historical periods control what is meaningfully said and known. According to Foucault (2006), the knowledge which individuals draw upon on a daily basis in their conversations changes through historical time and vary based on their cultural and social settings. Macro analysis mainly concentrates on the larger political and historical constructions of knowledge narratives, dominant discourses and meaning. Therefore, different identity categories come to life through discourses of certain historical periods. An example is the treatment and definition of sanity and madness by medicine, law and the church. This condition has been understood differently, for instance in religious discourse, it has been linked to evil spirits, while moral discourse related it to a morality failure. The various types of knowing influenced the types of identities produced. For instance, while religious fraternities identified mad individuals as sinners, psychiatric discourse referred to them as patients (Davies and Horton-Salway, 2021).

The other approach to identity is a blended approach or the critical discursive psychology (CDP), created by Wetherell (2007), a method that has been useful in evaluating issues of masculinity, mothering identities, ageing and older women. This approach acts as a bridge between micro and macro contexts of looking at how identity is constructed. This approach provides an understanding with regard to how culturally available knowledge enables meaning making within local interactions. Within the CDP perspective, two analytic theories, including interpretative repertoires and subject positions play a key role in understanding how different identities are produced. Interpretative repertoires are the culturally available and familiar ways of conversing concerning certain phenomenon. For example, teenage mothers often draw on two resources as speakers to assume their identity, one emphasising on parental responsibility while the other one on the autonomy or freedom of young adults ability to make their choices as they talk or consult with doctors. The two identities are used to stop being seen either as irresponsible (being identified as a bad mother) or as nagging (Silverman, 2001). Subject positions, on the other hand, are the identity slots which are made through interpretative repertoires. For instance, with regard to breastfeeding, mothers who do this are labelled as ‘good or natural mothers’ while those who do not considered ‘bad or selfish mothers’. Both subject positions and Interpretative repertoires are flexible resources which can are deployed within local interactions to form identity (Callaghan and Lazard, 2012).

Medical categories or classifications also occur in part because of discourses and social-constructive processes. Evidence show how medical categories or classifications are neither stable, objective nor neutral entities but are formed discursively based on historical contexts. According to Horton-Salway (2011), medical categories knowledge shifts depending on dominant discourses at specific historical times. An example is ADHD. The perspective of critical discursive psychology from ADHD analysis highlighted two main repertoires including a psychological and biological repertoire. These repertoires resulted in different subject positions or identities for children suffering from the condition. At some point, parents with ADHD stricken children were identified as irresponsible parents, at some point, the children were identified either as ‘abnormal’ or naughty (Horton-Salway, 2011).

Dig deeper into Self-Acceptance and Emotional Health Impact with our selection of articles.

ADHD category is an example of condition in the medical filed that has underwent gendered disproportionate diagnosis. This led to gendered identities and raised questions about whether it was an instance of general medicalization of girl’s marginalisation or masculinity. Some of the gendered identities linked to the ADHD category included ‘blameworthy mothers’ and ‘naughty boys’. Unlike the broader medical and other contexts which drew on negative subject positions, some parents resisted this and instead drew on positive subject identities like ‘expert parents’. These examples show many and flexible resources which have been used to construct both variable and fluid identities, to form either negative or positive identities.

References

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