2.2.1 How Words Shape What We Know Notes

Language Frames Thought and Understanding

1. When newspapers call the same person a "freedom fighter" or a "terrorist," they're not giving you two descriptions of one person.
2. They're creating two completely different people in your mind.
3. Same actions, same motivations, but your brain now has two contradictory knowledge files about who this person is and what they represent.

Words Control What Questions You Can Ask

Language controls knowledge by determining what questions seem reasonable to ask.

1. If you call unemployment "a temporary economic adjustment," you're likely to ask questions about market cycles and policy tweaks.
2. If you call it "systematic job elimination," you're likely to ask questions about corporate power and wealth inequality.
3. Same unemployment numbers. Same economic conditions. But the language frames create completely different research agendas, policy discussions, and social responses.

Example

• "Climate change" replaced "global warming" in public discourse not because scientists got more accurate.
• It happened because "global warming" made people ask narrow questions about temperature data, while "climate change" made people ask broader questions about environmental systems.

Translation Exposes Knowledge Blind Spots

When ideas move between languages, they often break. This breakage reveals how much knowledge is actually built into word choices.

1. The German word "schadenfreude" has no direct English equivalent.
2. English speakers have to use multiple words to express what Germans capture in one concept.
3. This goes beyond vocabulary and suggests that German-speaking cultures have developed more sophisticated knowledge frameworks for understanding the psychology of taking pleasure in others' misfortune.

Example

• Japanese "ikigai" gets translated as "life purpose," but that misses the point entirely.
• "Purpose" in English carries goal-oriented pressure, you're supposed to achieve something.
• "Ikigai" is much more about finding sustainable intersection between what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what pays you.
• English speakers trying to understand ikigai through "purpose" therefore end up with self-help advice about finding your passion.
• Japanese speakers thinking about ikigai end up with practical wisdom about balancing competing life demands.

Technical Language Creates Knowledge Tribes

Professional vocabularies create tribal boundaries around who gets to participate in knowledge creation.

1. Medical professionals describe patient experiences using diagnostic categories.
2. Patients describe the same experiences using everyday language.
3. These aren't two ways of saying the same thing but two knowledge systems that often don't communicate well.

Emotional Language Shapes Logical Thinking

Words carry logical implications that shape rational analysis.

1. "Toxic" originally described poisonous substances with clear cause-and-effect relationships.
2. When applied to human behavior, it imports that same logical framework, suggesting that harmful people or environments work like poisons that contaminate everything they touch.