What's in a Word? (REVISED for 10/7)

  The Newsweek article "What's in a Word?" had many examples of different cultures perceptions of language.  The question being posed is does language construct our view of the world?  I defiantly think that it does.  The article gives an example of the Viaduct de Millau bridge opening in France.  The French saw the bridge as large and powerful; the Germans saw the bridge as beautiful, elegant, and artful.  The reason the French saw the bridge the way they did is because in their language bridge is a masculine word.  In contrast, in German the word for bridge is feminine.  Clearly language shapes perception in this case.  I believe that language shapes the way we look at things in all circumstances.  In English, we do not give masculine and feminine identity to objects in the ways that other languages do, but there are more examples of how language shapes our perceptions.  For example, if a professor came up to me and said that my paper was "right on target" I would understand that this is a metaphor that my professor was using to say that my paper was well written.  Someone who did not understand this metaphor (with any linguistic background) would not understand the professors' message at all and would probably think in a more literal sense.  Language shapes our perceptions because we as a society agree on things such as metaphors, sayings, slang, profanity, and general words or phrases.  I believe by knowing that language shapes our perceptions we need to keep in mind that everyone is constantly perceiving things a little bit differently.
  In American society we use our language to define our world in a variety of ways as well.  For example, when you are reading about the war our country is currently in, government representatives will commonly pick certain words to alter your perceptions on a situation.  "Friendly fire" sounds a whole lot better than "we killed 50 of our own soldiers".  Hearing "friendly fire" is more acceptable to us.  These expressions mean the exact same thing but we choose certain words in order to alter perceptions or to paint a picture the way we want it in someone's mind.  Framing is a perfect example of this, by definition framing is a process whereby communicator's consciously or unconsciously act to construct a point of view that encourages the facts of a given situation to be interpreted by others in a political manner.  Framing is an art, because it is literally painting an image with words.  We see framing everyday in so many situations.  For example, you are watching TV and a commercial for Wal-Mart comes on, what image do you get from what you see?  You see the perky smiley face, happy employees, and satisfied customers.  Wal-Mart wanted you to see them that way, and to adapt to that perception of Wal-Mart so that next time you go shopping that is where you want to go.  As we talked about in class, another example would be the pro-choice pro-life debate about word selection.  If we called it pro-abortion and anti-abortion would that give it a different meaning?  I certainly think it would.  Language defines our world everyday whether it be by culture, media, framing, or environment, you can be sure that you see the world the way you do because of language.