Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

have perceptions about yourself. This example illustrates how words serve as a personal function for us.
Personal functions of language are used to express identity, feelings, and options.
The of language is used to learn, discover, and explore. The heuristic function could
include asking several questions during a lecture or adding commentary to a child’s behavior. Another
example might be “What is that tractor doing?” or “why is the cat sleeping?”
of language are used to request or relay information. These statements
are straightforward. They do not seek for an explanation. For instance, “my cat is asleep” or “the kitchen
light isn’t working.”
We know a lot about a culture based on the language that the members of the group speak. 7 Some
words exist in other languages, but we do not have them in English. For instance, in China, there are five
different words for shame, but in the English language, we only have one word for shame. Anthropologist
Franz Boas studied the Inuit people of Baffin Island, Canada, in the late 1800s and noted that they
had many different words for “snow.” In fact, it’s become a myth over the years that the Inuit have 50
different words for snow. In reality, as Laura Kelly points out, there are a number of Inuit languages,
so this myth is problematic because it attempts to generalize to all of them. 8 Instead, the Eskimo-Aleut
language tends to have long, complicated words that describe ideas; whereas, in English, we’d have a
sentence to say the same thing. As such, the Eskimo-Aleut language probably has 100s of different words
that can describe snow.
Analyzing the Hopi Native American language, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf discovered
that there is not a difference between nouns and verbs. 9 To the Hopi people, their language showcases
how their world and perceptions of the world are always in constant flux. The Hopi believe that
everything is evolving and changing. Their conceptualization of the world is that there is continuous
time. As Whorf wrote, “After a long and careful analysis the Hopi language is seen to contain no words,
grammatical forms, construction or expressions that refer directly to what we call ‘time’, or to past,
present or future.” 10
A very popular theory that helps us understand how culture and language coexist is the Sapir-Worf
hypothesis. 11 Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf created this hypothesis to help us understand
cultural differences in language use. The theory suggests that language impacts perceptions by showing a
culture’s worldview. The hypothesis is also seen as linguistic determinism, which is the perspective that
language influences our thoughts.
Sometimes, language has special rooted characteristics or linguistic relativity. Language can express
not only our thoughts but our feelings as well. Language does not only represent things, but also how
we feel about things. For instance, in the United States, most houses will have backyards. In Japan, due
to limited space, most houses do not have backyards, and thus, it is not represented in their language.
To the Japanese, they do not understand the concept of a backyard, and they don’t have a word for a
backyard. All in all, language helps to describe our world and how we understand our world.
Key Takeaways
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Interpersonal Communication