How Much Sway Does Our Language Have over Our Thinking?

Abstract

Against the backdrop of long-standing academic debates on whether language shapes thought, Manvir Singh examines the influence and controversies surrounding English as a global language, using the phenomenon of Dalits in India creating a “Goddess of English” to seek social empowerment as an entry point. He traces the evolution of this discourse from Benjamin Lee Whorf’s contentious hypothesis to contemporary “Neo-Whorfianism,” citing cross-cultural psychological experiments on color discrimination, temporal metaphors, and olfactory lexicon. Singh argues that language subtly guides—rather than rigidly constrains—cognition, much like a breeze shaping its path. He ultimately contends that although the global expansion of English raises concerns about cultural homogenization, its localized adaptations worldwide demonstrate that the relationship between language and cognition is dynamic and mutually constitutive, rather than unilaterally dominant. Language influences the frameworks through which we understand the world, while speakers continually reshape language itself.