Does language reflect reality or is it a self contained system only incidentally referring to realty?
Language's job is to function as the medium of dialogue about reality. Because this is it's job it seems that language would reflect reality because that is what it is referring to. Though this is hard to test because there is no way to see language discuss anything else besides what exists.
Language must therefore function and refer to the structure of reality. For example, the concept of a-thing v no-thing reflects the existence or nonexistence of a thing. All these concepts refer to real things and their actual relationships in the world. If this was some other universe where language could exist, language would reflect different rules existing around whatever there was in that universe.
Language's job is to function as the medium of dialogue about reality. Because this is it's job it seems that language would reflect reality because that is what it is referring to. Though this is hard to test because there is no way to see language discuss anything else besides what exists.
Language must therefore function and refer to the structure of reality. For example, the concept of a-thing v no-thing reflects the existence or nonexistence of a thing. All these concepts refer to real things and their actual relationships in the world. If this was some other universe where language could exist, language would reflect different rules existing around whatever there was in that universe.
The purpose of language is to communicate thoughts and ideas along with describe reality. Although language reflects reality many times, even back to our oldest origins language was used to paint fantasy, which may contain aspects of reality, but also contain fictional ideas. We use language to build fictional or alternate universes that don't exist in story telling.
ReplyDeleteI agree that language is a major aspect in shaping and obviously describing our reality, but, I think one's reality explains how he or she will communicate. Thus, the language that he or she chooses to vocalize is due to what he or she needs to communicate. Language is different than communication because the desire and need to communicate is based on survival and it is facilitated through language.
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