Language can influence thinking, reasoning, problem solving, and social stereotypes. It allows us to manipulate symbols rather than objects. It directs our attention, as the advertising industry knows very well. It allows us to create detailed plans for the future--we can think ahead in abstract terms. Finally, although the extent to which linguistic differences between cultures results in different ways of thinking and perceiving remains an open question, we can conjecture that language is a powerful social tool for cultural transformation.
Educators, parents, child psychologists, and all socially conscious citizens would do well to heed Benjamin Lee Whorf's (1897-1941) view that language shapes thought. If the young mind is especially malleable, it would appear that language issues relevant to parent-child communication, peer-peer communication, identity, and cultural influences in general, should be vastly important. Whorf's view that "We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages" has currently been adapted to the more modern view that "language has a powerful influence on cognition" (cited in Wade and Tavris, 1990, p. 304).
It is for the above reason that child psychologists should be especially interested in the implications of language use in, and with, the young; after all, formative cognitive structures serve as the future schemata for adult perception. The fact that humans process language similarly enables researchers to conclude that the linguistic differences among cultures are largely irrelevant, at least to the discussion here.
Miura and her colleagues (1989, cited in Wade and Tavris, 1990, p. 304) set out to prove that linguistic differences can help explain why Asian children tend to outperform English-speaking children on tests of numerical ability. As Wade and Tavris (1990) write, "In many Asian languages, names of numbers reflect a base-10 system: the label for 12 is 'ten-t...