Akira was born to a Japanese-speaking mother and an English-speaking father and is fluent in both languages. When she took a per
sonality test in Japanese, she showed a different sense of self than when she took the same test in English. According to Benjamin Whorf, this difference is caused by:
Benjamin Lee Whorf claimed that the structure of the language we speak determines our world view, thought and even our cognition. In oder words the way you interprete the world depends on the language you use to think.
There are two versions of this controvertial theory: the strong version, that says language determines thought and that linguistic categories and the way the are combined limit and determine our cognitive categories; the weak version claims that linguistic categories and usage have influence to some extent on thoughts and decisions.
This principle was first widely accepted in the begining of this the 20th century, but lost acceptance with Noam Chomsky's formulated arguments against it.
