Thought and Language: Relationship and Reality

Posted on Feb 24, 2025 in Social sciences

There are three positions that can be held about the relationship between thought and language:

Ideas are based on language and depend on it: This position is defended by Edward Sapir, Benjamin Whorf, and Basil Bernstein.
Thought is language: This stance was proposed by Max Müller and Karl Marx, and also defended by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Language is a system of signs, and they do not necessarily have to be spoken or written.
Language is based on thought and depends on it: This position is advocated by Jean Piaget and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Thinking is an innate faculty, but it can be developed and refined.

The human language is conventional: words do not come naturally from things. Even onomatopoeic words have a conventional relationship with reality.
Human language is symbolic because it uses signs to represent the things signified.
Speech is, to some extent, subjective. Words express realities through conventions accepted by everyone, but the words are spoken by someone. They are not out there, floating in the air with an independent life, but are said by a person depending on how that person knows the reality that is presented.

The linguistic turn questions the analysis of language and its possible relationship to knowledge.

The analytic movement developed in three stages:

Logical Atomism: Took logic as the ideal model of scientific language. Its best representative is Bertrand Russell.
Logical Positivism: Developed the logical analysis of language and its implementation. It was promoted by the Vienna Circle.
Analytic Philosophy: The role of philosophy is the clarification of language. It analyzed language in its various uses. The most prominent representative is Ludwig Wittgenstein.