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Abstract
It is an intriguing idea to realize that one's particular language has the shaping influence on thoughts directly. Understanding this concept can facilitate in deciphering the cultural outlook and psychological mechanism of societies that speak any language(s); more elaborately, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (SWH) of linguistic relativity and determinism tries to account for the manner in which language may influence thoughts. From a pure linguistic position of SWH the shift now indicates language learning, both first and foreign, as a revealing strategy for uncovering the interplay of languages. This qualitative inquiry bases itself on these reformulations of language and thought, so to relate SWH to the needs and concerns of cultural content, discourse processes and cognition. The plan is to join two distinct traditions of research: firstly, the focus of cognitive anthropologists on discursive/ group cognition, and secondly, the linguistic tradition of ethnographic research on interactional nature of language. This research is inclined to figure out the application of this newer outlook of SWH, in an experimental framework of communication gap filling and discursive practices by Pakistani ESL (English as a Second Language) learners.
Keywords: linguistic relativity, ESL, bilingual cognition, communication strategies
Introduction
Language is an essential mode of expression of our experiences. It allows us to turn our thoughts into meaningful words. We converse with each other through so many diverse and dynamic languages, which have so many variations among them, that of grammar, pronunciation, morphology, etc. Different speakers of equally different languages try to encode and account for the world around them. But does language possess the potential to influence thoughts?
Much of the time language is involved in thinking. Yet there are cases of common instances when one senses and experiences many notions, which find inadequate verbal expression. This can be understood by analyzing the child language acquisition process. For instance, after knowing that a cat is a non-human and four-legged creature, the child may see a bird and a cow and would invariably call them mono billi, meaning a cat in Urdu, thinking that both should be counted as the same. Hence, different language systems work on different classifications of concepts too.
A common and classic consensus appears to be that language and thought are distinct in character and exist...