Vox | The film’s premise hinges on the idea, shared by many
linguists and philosophers of language, that we do not all experience
the same reality. The pieces of it are the same — we live on the same
planet, breathe the same air — but our perceptions of those pieces shift
and change based on the words and grammar we use to describe them to
ourselves and each other.
For instance, there is substantial evidence
that a person doesn’t really see (or perhaps "perceive") a color until
their vocabulary contains a word, attached to meaning, that
distinguishes it from other colors. All yellows are not alike, but
without the need to distinguish between yellows and the linguistic tools
to do so, people just see yellow. A color specialist at a paint
manufacturer, however, can distinguish between virtually hundreds of
colors of white. (Go check out the paint chip aisle at Home Depot if
you’re skeptical.)
Or consider the phenomenon of words in other languages that describe universal feelings,
but can only be articulated precisely in some culture. We might
intuitively "feel" the emotion, but without the word to describe it
we’re inclined to lump the emotion in with another under the same
heading. Once we develop the linguistic term for it, though, we can
describe it and feel it as distinct from other shades of adjacent
emotions.
