How Words Shape Your Thoughts!
One
The renowned English writer George Orwell wrote a famous novel, 1984. The setting of the novel is a completely dystopian city ruled by a tyrannical government. There is no freedom of speech, no freedom of thought. CCTV cameras are installed everywhere, even in every bedroom. With these, everyone, every citizen, is under constant surveillance.
The most notable and diabolical trait of this tyranny is that it controls language. To control language, it has reduced the number of words in its constructed language. Sentence structures are extremely simple, and the use of technical terms is almost non-existent. For example, if we say "it feels very cold today," we might also say the opposite—"it feels very hot." But in Orwell’s tyrant-constructed language, one would not say it that way. Instead, they would say "it feels un-cold today." In other words, there is no separate word for the feeling of heat; new terms for different sensations are not being created.
Many of you might think, "Well, that sounds pretty good. Why bother giving a separate name to each emotion, each object, and each action? If we can just prefix everything with 'un-' for the opposite meaning, mental pressure decreases and life becomes simpler."
True, and yet, not true. Our brains are active precisely because they are taxed—it has to process and make sense of things. If we stop introducing new words, cannot construct complex sentences and settle only for easy ones, our brains grow lazy and gradually become less active.
This is exactly what happened in Orwell’s novel. When the tyranny put such strict controls on language, the intellectual capacity of ordinary citizens declined. When citizens were told, "What you saw is false; only what Big Brother said is the truth," everyone started believing Big Brother. Their brains had become so inert.
Two.
To many, such scenarios may seem like pure fiction or fantasy. However, the scientific community has proven through multiple experiments that our capacity for thought is closely tied to language. One significant piece of evidence is the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. [1]
According to this hypothesis, the thoughts within our brains shape how we perceive the world. Whom I support in the Russia–Ukraine war, or whether I return home after completing my PhD abroad—these decisions are all processed in the brain. And this thought process fundamentally depends on the language we use. The sentences “Gaza’s Hamas fighters” and “Gaza’s Hamas terrorists” do not have the same impact on our minds.
In one study, it was observed that certain African tribal communities use words like “north-south” instead of “left-right” for navigating. Their sense of direction is superior to those who use "left" and "right." In fact, if someone gets lost in a jungle, using cardinal directions instead of left and right increases their chances of finding their way out. In another study, the different shades of blue has different names in the russian language. And due to that, it affected the Russian speakers such that they could see the difference in the shades of blues much quickly than other language speaker. [2]
Three.
People usually think in their native, maternal language. For Bengali speakers, understanding science through a Bengali book comes much more naturally than through an English book. No matter how proficient we become in foreign languages, we do not actually think in those languages when grappling with ideas and concepts.
When we read a book, every sentence evokes imagery in our minds and prompts us to think, helping us grasp the theme and come up with questions. But when reading a foreign language book, our brains first translate every word into our native tongue, then form mental images. This process takes more time, reducing the chances of new questions or intuitions forming.
It’s important to clarify that I keep mentioning the mother tongue because these points are globally relevant. Furthermore, not everyone in Bangladesh speaks only Bengali. There are over forty languages spoken in Bangladesh, with about 3% of the population using these other mother tongues.
As I said before, people think in their mother tongue, and the specific words they use determine how deeply they can grasp scientific concepts. However, the problem is that there are hardly any scientific books in Bengali in our country. Around 20 to 25 years ago, the Bangla Academy made a commendable initiative in memory of the language martyrs, publishing a series of Bengali books by renowned authors like Subrata Barua, Jamal Nazrul Islam, and Harunur Rashid. But in the last 15 years, we haven’t seen similar efforts.
Even if we cannot write original books, we should at least translate quality texts into Bengali. The Arabs were able to spark the scientific renaissance in the Middle Ages largely because they started translating Greek texts. While translating and reading these works, countless new discoveries and improved theories emerged. Even today, Japanese and Germans translate massive numbers of books with government funding.
Four.
Although Bengali has a rich vocabulary, there is a huge shortage of scientific terminology. Some existing technical words fail to evoke any imagery in the mind. Words that don’t conjure a mental image will inevitably vanish—they become meaningless. For example, “tomobostu” is a Bengali technical term for “dark matter” used in some high school physics textbooks, but just by seeing the word, one cannot guess its meaning.
Translating technical terms directly from English can also be impractical. For example, Dr. Muhammad Kudrat-E-Khuda once used the phrase ‘‘ongar-dwi-omlojan’’ as a Bengali equivalent of “carbon dioxide.” He coined this term about half a century ago, but since it fails to evoke any image in people’s minds, it has virtually disappeared.
Nowadays, many advocate for using a single universal scientific term instead of creating local equivalents. For instance, just as a girl named Tisha is called Tisha everywhere in the world, “photoelectric effect” should be referred to as such universally—from America to Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, or Uganda. Creating a distinct local name like “tarit-alok kriya” (for photoelectric effect) may not be necessary.
Five.
Everything written so far primarily relates to the effective dissemination of science, not necessarily scientific research itself. Science communication is about generating public interest in science—writing popular science books, organizing school programs, holding seminars, etc.
Scientific research, on the other hand, is about conducting scholarly investigations. There is an ongoing debate about whether research papers should be written in Bengali. Since opinions on this are nearly evenly split, I encourage my readers to investigate the matter further according to their own interest.
References
- Gerrig, R. J., & Banaji, M. R. (1994). Language and thought. In Thinking and problem solving (pp. 233-261). Academic Press.
- Winawer, J., Witthoft, N., Frank, M. C., Wu, L., Wade, A. R., & Boroditsky, L. (2007). Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences , 104(19), 7780-7785