Besemeres, Mary, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). Is there thought without language? In Marek Kuczyński (Ed.), Language, thought and consciousness: Vol. 2 (pp. 11-21). Zielona Góra: Uniwersytetu Zielonogórskiego.
We argue that the concept ‘think’ is universal, and that it has four universal frames: 1) we can say, someone thinks’, but not ‘something thinks’; 2) we can combine ‘think’ with a direct quote: ‘she thinks: “I’ll do it”‘; 3) we can say ‘someone thinks about someone or something’; 4) we can say ‘someone thinks that…’. It is not possible to use the word ‘think’ meaningfully without respecting the assumptions underlying these four frames. In ordinary speech, we are able to refer to someone thinking in images rather than words – as when someone is described as thinking ‘about’ another person. We also sometimes impute thought to animals which we perceive as in some ways similar to human beings, but only when their thinking doesn’t involve words (it is normally not possible to say: *The dog thinks: there is meat in the bag). However, apart from cases such as the above, much of our use of the term ‘think’ effectively refers to thinking with words.
On the basis of prior empirical research, our paper assumes that there exists in fact a whole set of universal human concepts, including words like ‘someone’, ‘think’, ‘feel’, ‘want’, which need no further explanation, and in terms of which more complex (often culture-specific) concepts can be explained. These universally shared concepts allow us to translate between different languages. At the same time, autobiographical writings by bilinguals affirm the presence of significant differences between languages, and suggest how individual languages help to create a distinct conceptual world. These autobiographical narratives argue, in other words, that language is closely connected with thought, and that we think in ways that are language- and culture-specific.
