"Language is the mother, not daughter, of thought." So said Karl Kraus , Polemicist Austrian early twentieth century. Without doubt, did he mean something else than what this post claims. This paradox does the thinking that more interesting. I do not really remember how, recently, we came to wonder if the thought existed before language. In other words, can we think outside of language? The discussion
is apparently a philosophical and a there is already stuck with (I love this Agreement paradoxically singular with "many," as he is with the plural " less than two!) . It can be shown that what characterizes the human mind (consciousness, thought, imagination, manipulation abstractions) depends fundamentally on language acquisition. There is thus no conscious thought outside of language. However, there is no denying that words do not always allow to formalize the thinking and that we sometimes think without being able to translate such feelings into words. Ultimately, philosophers agree to think and express the thought that if, in its entirety exceeds well the language, conscious thought, in turn, exists only through language.
Beyond the philosophical question, there are many certain physiological or neuropsychological dimension. Several studies were conducted, particularly with aphasia who lost the language, without losing the thought, which postulates the existence of nonverbal thinking. Ultimately (I'm not trying to reach here) , it seems that all thought relates in one way or another to a language.
A recent study in this respect seems rather subjugating (See Le Soir, January 21, 2011, p. 31). Maude Beauchemin and Maryse Lassonde (Hôpital Sainte-Justine, Montreal) about 126 electrodes placed on the heads of newborns (is that the torture of children?) to analyze the reactions of the brain deal with different words, including those of the mother. The study shows that a newborn immediately interprets the voice of his mother as a draft communication processed by the left hemisphere of the brain, whereas the same word spoken by another person is treated first by the right hemisphere, then left, then right again.
When these babies hear the voice of their mother, information Not only is treated as a draft language, but also creates an initial response: the central part of the cortex, motor area of the floor, also ends with "light".
Beyond the fundamental role of the mother in the construction of language and thought, this study shows that from the earliest moments of his life, the child thinks interacting with the language and communicate through thought. It's a little history of the egg and the chicken. No egg, no chicken. Without chicken, no egg. Without thought, not language. Without language, no thought.
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