Boroditsky, L. (2009). How does our language shape the way we think?.

New
York: Vintage., 116-129.
Lera Boroditsky, the author of the article, is a professor of Cognitive Science
and a language researcher who examines the correlation between mind, world
and language. Her previous academic works are predominantly devoted to
many languages, including Navajo, Spanish, German and others. Moreover,
Boroditsky’s studies concern multiple realms such as Psychology, Linguistics,
Anthropology and Philosophy.

The issue of correlation between language and mind form the core of the study.
This study was carried out in order to reveal whether our language shapes the
way we think. It is stated that ​very little empirical research was done on this
issue until recently. ​The study focuses solely on the analysis of the idea that
people who speak different languages really perceive the world differently, in
particular, grammatical level of language profoundly affects people’s thoughts.
The article suggests an example of the language used by people of an
Aboriginal community in Australia. Local people when talking about space use
the words which traditionally denote directions such as right, left, back or
forward instead of familiar to us right and left. The result of this finding is that
there proved to be a profound difference in navigational ability between locals
and English people , which is important since space is a fundamental domain of
thought. The main concept is that if people speak about the time and space
differently, they perceive them differently as well. In this work, the researcher
outlines that​time perception can be affected by language. ​
Such difference
affects not only perception of space, but also perception of time and even
emotions.
This work is concerned with the study of whether the cultural aspects of
language or the language itself might create the differences in thoughts. The
author assumes that acquiring a new language solves the question arisen. The
conducted research shows that a process of learning a new language necessarily
implies acquiring a new way of thinking. In modern linguistics, there is an
interest in gender studies. This article proposes a new approach to the analysis
of gender-linguistic studies. Although the author mentions that English has no
grammatical gender, it is suggested that grammatical gender can subconsciously
affect the way people perceive the world and their ideas of concrete objects.
There are some examples which prove this theory. For instance, in some
countries the image of death is supposed to be expressed as a woman because of
the grammatical gender and vica versa. The central idea of the article is that in
some cases language can even affect the way people choose professions and
spouses.

The author draws the conclusion that this issue is theoretically complex and
requires a comprehensive interdisciplinary study. The idea that the language we
speak shape the way we think occupies a central place in modern gender- and
sociolinguistics.