Language as an Exemplar of Cognitive and Psychological Concepts
According to psychologists and linguists, language is an essential indicator of the mental processes going on in the mind of an individual. As the child grows, its intellectual development can be measured by analyzing their word acquisition and sentence construction progress. Even in adulthood, some psychological aspects such as mental disease or psychological disturbance are detected by analyzing the way a person speaks. According to psychologists and linguists, the use of language involves many complex processes, which explains why it is usually used as an important indicator of the mental and intellectual status of an individual. It is also generally believed that language differentiates humans from other species, which marks an essential intellectual growth for the human race. Therefore, language is the most important indicator of psychological and cognitive development among humans.
It has generally been understood among scientists that there is a close relationship between the use of language and an individual’s mental well-being. From early history, scientists who were interested in knowledge about the functioning of the mind of people studied the relationship between psychology, language use, and the culture of the people (Anderson, 2010). There exists much psychological research trying to establish the relationship between language and human cognition. Early findings from the research of linguists and psychologists established a relationship between language and the thought processes of man (Palmer, 2009). Most of the research findings also showed that the intellect could be measured by analyzing the language development and use by an individual. Children with high intellectual ability developed language use faster. Therefore, it is correct to say that language is an exemplar of man’s cognitive and psychological concepts.
Furthermore, language development requires a mix of complex processes within the human mind. To communicate well, one requires attention, concentration, organization, and creativity. Language is a creative process where an individual will be required to use new sentences that have never been produced before. This is only possible if the cognitive aspects of the individual are functioning well. Sadykova and Shelestova (2016) explain that language classes are an important source of data on children’s intellectual strength. Specifically, they state that coming up with creative language activities in children and analyzing how well they respond to them can give important indications on their creative power. Therefore, the use of language by an individual is an indication of how organized their mental processes are. An organized mind will result in well-structured speech patterns and vice versa.
To many people, language is simply a communication vehicle that is meant to pass information from one person to another. However, a critical assessment of language use shows that language does much more than just pass information. It is also the vehicle in which ideas are organized, and the human mind can only form ideas through language. Words are representatives of items and ideas, and sentences and phrases represent how these ideas are related. Unal and Papafragou (2016) argue that while it is well known that language involves interaction with visual and non-visual processes, the depth and complexity of these interactions are often not well known. Ual and Papafragou (2016) add that language determines how one visualizes everything they know. Even when one is not speaking, he still relies on language to form ideas and concepts about the world around them. Furthermore, they add that there are complex relationships through which such interactions occur. A study of these relationships can greatly aid in understanding how the human mind relates to the environment in which they live. According to these ideas, language is more than just a tool of communication. Instead, it is also complicated though the system helps people make sense of the world around them.
Furthermore, language affects all the thinking processes of man, including non-linguistic communication. There are many items and processes that the human mind interacts withy daily, and the first major way the human mind tries to make sense out of what would have been a confusing word is selection. The human mind is said to be organized if it can select the items or ideas that it seeks to work with, and in so doing, it becomes accustomed to the world around it. The quicker the mind can select or sort the many items and processes around it, the more intelligent. Furthermore, such selection or sorting, which sometimes happens subconsciously, is only possible by associating those items or ideas with the descriptions used to introduce them to the person the first time (Anderson, 2010). In this sense, language becomes a means through which the intricate world is encoded and decoded by the mind. The mind can select which processes or ideas are important to it by encoding them and deemphasizing those that are not important by decoding them (Unal and Papafragou, 2016). Therefore, even when one is not speaking, he still entertains thoughts about the world, making language a powerful mental processing tool. If educationists well understand this idea, much emphasis would be put on the content of lessons and the methods of delivery, as to how the mind conceptualizes an idea determines the prominence that it will put on that idea or item.
Furthermore, the cognition of speech itself and the ability to make sense of it depends on many conditions. The way people understand the same speech pattern sometimes differs depending on these conditions. Also, the ability of people to remember what they have heard or seen differs from one person to another, or in some cases, the same person may remember some things better than others because of the linguistic environment in which they were made and the level of interest one has in a given topic (Anderson, 2010). Also, people’s ability to recognize and choose colors, numbers, spatial frames of reference, and navigation is determined by many factors (Unal and Papafragou, 2016). Further studies have shown that introducing the same idea using different languages also affects remembrance and reproduction. Therefore, this strongly suggests that language is the primary carrier of ideas, and that language determines the thought processes of man.
Furthermore, ideas are not formed in a vacuum. Instead, how one understands his environment is primarily influenced by culture. Different cultures shave different ways of representing the same concepts, making people perceive language use differently. Language is the primary carrier and conveyor of culture, making language the main aspect of cultural representation. For example, in American society and many western countries, a dog is a pet, loved, and appreciated by almost all society members. Communicating the concept of a dog to such a society elicits feelings of appreciation and positive response. On the other hand, in the Muslim world, a dog is a vile creature disliked and associated with adverse reactions. To people from such a community, introducing a dog’s idea elicits adverse reactions and repulsion from the listeners. This is an example of the same word, representing the same idea in visual terms, causing different reactions because of the cultural differences. In this case, the reactions are caused by the cultural orientation that the people received early on and learned to associate the items with. According to Renzl (2007), ideas and linguistic interpretation are inherited from culture, and that the first language determines the way an individual interprets words and sentences. This association between language further strengthens the idea that language is not just a means of passing information, but that the messages carried by words are products of learning and association.
Finally, the idea of language as an exemplar of cognitive and psychological processes becomes evident when knowledge creation is considered. When analyzing the relationship between language and mental processes, it should not be assumed that language is only used to pass around already existing knowledge Alone. Instead, it should be remembered that humans create new knowledge and new ideas all the time, and as they interact, these ideas come by. Also, the ideas and knowledge generated in this manner are passed from one person to another using new sentences and phrases. The construction of knowledge depends on how individuals perceive the world and how they interact with it. Through the creation of knowledge, words that have always been associated with old meanings also acquire new interpretations, meaning that the mind, in some cases, can think beyond the meanings that it was originally given about certain words (Renzl. 2007). For example, the word ‘browse’ originally meant the habit of a goat looking for food; now, few people would think of this original meaning of the word. Instead, many would associate the word by looking for information on the internet. This meaning originates from the humans’ mind’s ability to process the existing knowledge and create new knowledge even when using already existing words. Therefore, the association of the mind with meaning is a complex and creative process and suggests that even for known, old, known meaning, the mind does not just recall information, but goes through a processing stage to decipher the meanings associated with a word.
A goodness of fit analysis shows that most of the research findings prove that language is an exemplifier of cognitive and psychological concepts. According to available research, from history, findings show that language has historically been used as an indicator of intelligence and the mind’s normal functioning (Anderson, 2010; Nelson, 1996). Also, linguists and psychologists have established more precise relationships between language and intellectual power. Language is a unit of thought and not just a means of passing over existing knowledge, as seen above. Furthermore, the assumption that language only passes around existing knowledge has been dispelled because many ideas are original creations that have not existed before. When they occur, the creators must come up with words to describe them. Finally, language is the main carrier of culture, and the meanings associated with words and phrases depends on how the mind has been cultured to associate meanings with those words. This explains why the same word carries different meanings depending on the cultural associations that people in that community associate with it. This dispels the idea of words simply carrying fixed meanings, which people recall when they hear them. Instead, it shows that putting meanings to words is a creative process involving the environment, learning, and connotation.
Language is not just a means of passing information, as many people believe, but a complex process that highlights the human mind’s functioning. Speech originates from the mind, and the human mind forms concepts using the words. Also, the ideas that the mind conceptualizes can only be described using words. The communication process is an essential indicator of how the individual thinks and how they perceive the world. Also, culture is language-specific, and the meanings of words are determined by culture. Therefore, the concept of language is more complicated than many people think. It has seen it is an indicator of complex mental processes that take place for speech to occur, and for the human mind to make meaning of that speech. These findings are an essential indicator of the need for educationists to put more meanings to both content and context when teaching language and develop creative ways of communication as this will determine the retention and recall of information by students.
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