'You Say Up, I Say Yesterday'

Lera Boroditsky scrutinized language from a social science angle. The main message delivered from this piece of writing is that language is power. The article takes a journey through the concept of language having an effect on our cognition and the way in which we perceive things and think. The author outlines how various languages allow individuals to express ideas from different viewpoints. As a bilingual this is something I can attest to. In this text the author gazes into the way in which different languages compile different words that present a different picture of the same idea. The example used in this article looks at Spanish and English, as she describes, “If one deliberately knocks the cup, there is a verb form to indicate as much. But if the act were an accident… the speaker would essentially say, ‘the cup broke itself’” (Hamilton 463). She then goes further and explains how different languages tend to play on words differently, this in turn shapes the way people perceive things.

   This idea was touched up upon on class; we investigated how many languages have individual words for ideas that need to be explained in many in another language. It is interesting to investigate the minds of people who speak a different language and see how they would comprehend an event or concept in contrast to your insight on it. Or even to think that I may perceive a something differently when thinking in Arabic as oppose to in English and how my whole outlook may change.