Introduction To General Linguistics: Support The Statement (Essay Sample)

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1.0  INTRODUCTION   1.1  History Language is more than just a means of communication as it pervades our social life and influences our culture and even our thought processes. Culture is the result of the creativity and thinking of each member in language community, whereby our thoughts are our brains’ responses of what has happened today, the present and the future (Rahardi, 2001). The information that we have obtained through observing are then processed into information that we wish to convey. The relationship between language, thought and culture is deeply rooted. When compared, language and culture are two different sides of a coin, but they cannot be separated because language is a reflection of the culture and thought of the speakers. In fact, language and thought are the elements that help build a culture.   1.2  Agree with the Statement I agree with the statement above due to the reason that just as language pervades social life, the elements of social life constitute an intrinsic part of the way language is used. Even though language is regarded by linguistics as an abstract structure that exists independently of specific instances of usage, any communicative exchange is situated in a social context that constrains the linguistic forms the speakers use. The language that we individually use may be influenced or constrained by our ethnic and cultural background, but this does not change the fact that how we define social situation, our perceptions of what others know, think and believe, and the claims we make about our own and others’ identities will affect how we use our language. It can be observed that a human’s language ability is not only depended on the natural capabilities of its brain but rather, its social environments and the patterns of language that the people around us use.   1.3  Article Support the Statement The article below supports the statement above by stating that as the AIs (artificial intelligences) are acquiring human-like language abilities, they are also absorbing the deeply ingrained biases concealed within the patterns of language use. This statement can be found in the 3^rd paragraph of the article. This indicates that the AIs adapted to their social environments, mainly the patterns of language used by the people around them, in which they also absorbed the biases as a result of the language acquisition. In the 5^th paragraph, computer scientist and co-author, Joanna Bryson claimed that the AIs are prejudiced because they are learning from us, showing that we humans are the same, in terms of adapting to our social environments and acquiring our language from the patterns of language used by the people around us.   Despite the influence of our ethnic and cultural background, we still manage to depend on our social environments and acquire our languages from the patterns of language that the people around us use. This is further solidified in the 6^th paragraph, stating that the AIs unlike humans, cannot consciously counteract learned biases. Humans are able to do so because we have thought processes, social awareness and other factors driven by moral ideas to help counteract these biases. Even if we do not display our acquisition of the patterns of language used by other people, it cannot be denied that we humans are the most adaptive species by the fact that we “copy” or “imitate the patterns or behaviours of the people around us without noticing that we are doing it unconsciously.   1.4  Definition of Linguistic Determinism and Relativity Linguistic determinism (stronger version) is a concept that postulates human language limits and determines human thought patterns and knowledge (Dalpe, 2013). It is defined as a range of views in which our thinking (or worldview) is seen as being determined or shaped by language, whereby we cannot see things another way as our language determines how we see the world. This concept makes an assumption that human mentality is reflected and limited by language, as well as the language’s ability to make cross-cultural connections (Lucy, 1992). Since each language possesses a hidden history of the culture and place in which it originated, no two languages can conceptualize or describe the world in exactly the same way. This concept is not testable as it makes bilingualism and translation impossible. An example of this is the Eskimo language....