Language and Critical Thinking
Language and language diversity has a significant effect in influencing critical thinking because it shapes the individual's worldview or his/her perceptions of the realities that s/he experiences everyday. One of the most often used comparisons in order to illustrate the influence of language diversity in critical thinking is the differences in worldviews of the Eastern and Western cultures.
Looking into the basic differences in their language, Eastern societies and cultures have greater symbols representing various and subjective meanings in it. Chinese language, for instance, has many symbols or characters for every meaning or interpretation generated by the speaker/writer. This kind of language, in turn, makes the Chinese worldview subjective and varied also. Meanings in Chinese culture are embedded in language, and not explicitly expressed, thereby necessitating the individual to think about the meaning of an utterance in the context of the culture of the speaker.
As opposed to the implicit meanings inherent in Chinese language, the Western culture, through the American language example, meanwhile, adopts a more direct and explicit way of expressing their thoughts and meanings through language. Unlike the Chinese, Americans' worldview is not multilateral, but rather, unidimensional or straightforward, where a word uttered is taken to mean for its true, literal meaning.
From these examples between Chinese and American cultures, it becomes evident how their differences develops...
Language and language diversity play an important role in the critical thinking process because these components help the individual determine and identify under what category or perspective information should be assigned to. This means that given a set of concepts and perspectives that an individual has, through language, one can easily identify the kind of information given and determine whether this information is best understood and analyzed using a particular
Most anthropologists consider human language to be one of the most essential mechanisms behind the evolution of primitive human ancestors into Homo Sapiens (Wenke & Olzewski 2007), as well as behind the development of early human cooperative societies. By definition, therefore, wherever language differences exist between individuals who wish to communicate, their ability to bridge the language gap will determine whether or not they will be successful. Society is becoming
Finally, as he or she goes to express which type of furniture he or she means to buy, he or she uses "couch" to denote an informal piece of furniture and "sofa" to denote a formal one. If others have different interpretations of these two words, then they will have trouble understanding what this buyer wants to purchase. Thus, language and the diversity of language greatly impact the critical thinking
In today's global society, such understanding has become vital to communicating effectively in both the social and business worlds. Critical thinking and language can therefore not exist without each other. Critical thinking helps the participants in a conversation to understand the possible meanings in language, while language helps participants to gain clarity regarding these meanings. Language serves both an empowering and limiting function in expressing thought. The expression "there are no
The decade-old system that specifies least standards for staffing in nursing homes need to be restructured, the report says. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services must call for nursing homes to have at least one RN within the facility during all times. Based on the departments' 2001 report to Congress on minimum staff-to-patient ratios for nursing homes, the HHS should mention the staffing levels that increased with
Those same relationships often influence how we do or do not express our thoughts. Language itself, and the way it is either delivered or received, is very important to the expression of our thoughts, both one's use (and the other person's use) of language, and the context of the language either spoken or received. On the other hand, everyone has had a circumstance where some thought, feeling, perception, or experience
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