Language takes Freedom.
We do not live in a country, we live in a language.
-Emil Cioran
Language, by its structure, provides the cognitive feature for understanding the world around us. When it’s formulated, evolved by the different syllables and the immediate necessity for conceptualization and categorization of an object through word, it is merely done by human activity. It, then, acquires a particular taste and went on stimulating the particular feature of creativity as long as literary or scholarly endeavors are concerned. This taste become the integrally associated with the structure of the very language. A kind of emergent-ism; in which the texture of that language cannot be dissolved into or could be emphasized by it parts but that is something which has been made up by the linguistic structure separate from itself. A form of wetness which emerges from the very structure of water — texture of language emerges from very structure of the language. This texture, somehow, set the trend of the next generations. Structure is already designed, texture is been uploaded to it, now the frequency of literature written into that language wouldn’t provide the people with particular kind of creative framework.
In order to really get sense of it, we need to get rid of the notion of “innate language” theory which emphasized upon that children are endowed with universal grammar(anti-chomskyan) because this idea was motivated by “acceptance for others” and ignores the influence of evolutionary process of development of languages. The way of understanding is to take functional linguistics as the mechanism. The basic assumption of functional linguistics is that language is the way because it is used for the communication and structures of language are formed due to their functionality. The fundamental argument for it is that humans tend to use short words as this is efficient, therefore, functional.
Along-with functionalism, linguistic relativity should be considered in the form of Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. The hypothesis claims that individual thoughts are determined by the language or languages the individuals speaks. The pioneer Sapir himself tries to explain it in the following paragraph:
“Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached… We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.”
Defence of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The relativism of language has dozen of arguments, but, the modern one can be formed by concept of metaphors in languages. In the book, “Metaphors We Live By”, Lakoff and Johnson give us thought that metaphors are not central to only poetry or poetical expression though language itself cannot function without metaphors. Human conceptual systems are formed by metaphors. Metaphors are not just description of words, they are also modes of thinking. The human conceptual system find relations with the abstract through the metaphors. To understand the utility of metaphors, we need to look up into the definition of the metaphors according to Lakoff and Johnson. According to them
Metaphor, in essence, is “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, p.5).
The kind of arguments, they give for it, can be understood through the metaphor of war with the argument themselves.
The concrete experience of war are usually employed to describe the abstract notions of arguments. Attacking is raising objection against the the argument, defending is maintaining the opinion, and giving up one’s opinion is surrendering.