“Language has the function of forming thought. W V Humboldt, a German philosopher and linguist, pointed out that people usually see communication as the primary function of language. However, people must have the content for communication before they start to communicate, and the formation of this content is closely associated with language, or to be more specific, people use language to express thought, yet language is, at the very beginning, involved in the formation of thought, just as he said, ‘language is the formative organ of thought’.” [8]
“Humboldt said that if the sole function of language is to express and convey thoughts and feelings, then language will not be absolutely necessary for human beings, because they can also use other symbols or means to express themselves (though not so effective as language).” [9]
From the above it can make a conclusion that language is not only the function for human to express and communicate but also has the function for humans to form thought. The extent of nearness between language and thought may be exaggerated, but it points out rightly the notion that the two interact with each other. He believes that language incomes from spirit and then reacts upon spirit. Moreover, he put the studies into the specific cultural background and views that no nation can avoid injecting their subjective consciousness into their language to form a special "worldview" in the language, which would in turn restrict people’s language usage. That is to say the language what people saying contains the thinking action. Followed by this view, we may get the idea that different people speak differently because they think differently, and they think differently because their languages offer them different ways to express the surrounding world. The most important part is the language can provide sorts of thinking ways in this paper.
2.3.2 The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Humboldt’s view on the inseparability of language and thought is later picked up by Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf in the United States.
The complement must be the most famous theory on discussing the relation between language and thought in this field. Since its inception in the 1920s and 1930s, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has caused controversy and spawned research in a variety of disciplines including linguistics, psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and education.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis claims that the structure of the language one usually uses influences the manner in which one thinks and behaves. When he was working as a fire insurance risk assessor, he noticed that the way people behaved toward things was often dangerously correlated to the way these things were called. For example, the sight of the sign ‘EMPTY’ on empty gasoline drums would prompt passersby to toss cigarette butts into these drums, not realizing that the remaining gasoline fumes ‘EMPTY’ evoked a neutral space, free of danger. “Whorf concluded that the reason why different languages can lead people to different actions is because language filters their perception and the way they categorize experience.” [10]
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