Language: A Toolbox for Sharing and Influencing Social Reality

Abstract

The key role of language is often neglected in explicitly formulated theories of cognition, affect, and social behavior. Implicitly, though, the relationship between language and mind is at the heart of psychological science. Two major research programs-linguistic universals and linguistic relativity-originate in opposite philosophical positions, assuming either that language reflects the mind's ideas and free will or that language differences govern and restrict the mind. However, modern psychological research was able to begin illuminating the power and richness of linguistic influences only after the priority debate was given up and language and cognition were treated as integral parts of the same process. Beyond the confines of referential communication, conceived as cooperative transfer of symbols referring to common world knowledge, some of the most intriguing phenomena are detached from referential bonds, reflecting unintended, emergent, or even random outcomes of verbal interaction. Indeed, the effectiveness of verbal priming may be actually contingent on language users failure to understand the primes referential meanings and implications.