As I started reading this chapter, I was unconsciously relating the ideas to my ‘Language Acquisition and Development’ course. For example, I learned how language affects mentalization (ability to infer states of self and others) in individuals in that course. After reading this chapter, I connected the dots to reckon that every language in a specific culture expresses emotions and thoughts in a different way than another language in a different culture or the same language in a different culture. What I mean by this is that Turkish speakers might consider a word or phrase romantic but it might not make any sense to someone from another culture speaking a different language. An example can be ‘fıstım’ in Turkish which translates to ‘my peanut’ in English and while fıstım is a cute way to address someone in Turkish culture, it might make no sense to a non-native speaker. When we talk about mentalization, language plays an important role because mostly understanding and interpreting the emotional or mental state of another person requires a channel or medium to convey some sort of message, for example, if my boyfriend calls me by my name instead of saying aşkım or güzelim, I might think he is angry at me.
Moving on, I would again take the example of the Turkish language in its grammatical structure of a sentence. In high school, I mostly used to talk to my peers in English so I was used to the subject-verb-object structure of a sentence whereas the sentence structure in Turkish is subject-object-verb. When learning Turkish, I had difficulty understanding this structure as I am habitual in explaining the verb (action) before I mention the object, so, for example, I say ‘I was eating…apple’ in English but in Turkish, I must mention apple (elma) before eating (yiyordum) in a sentence. Now when I think about it, this difference in sentence structure also affects my memory system because in English, sometimes when I say I was eating… I take a break, think about it, and then say the object but in Turkish, I must remember what I was eating before I mention the verb ‘eating’. As simple as it sounds, it plays a huge role in the formation or development of culture. Maybe we can relate it to the fact that in Turkish culture, context (food, environment, people around) is prioritized over individual action (eating). This memory system or thought system might affect how Turkish speakers process ideas and events. The grammatical structure is not merely a structure but reinforces deeper cultural ideologies.
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