Hýle and noûs: notes on the impact of linguistic habits on thought

Abstract

This article seeks to reflect on the impact of language on the ways societies organize their ideas and thoughts. To this end, a review was conducted of some theoretical currents according to which the mother tongue influences how we think or feel the world, as well as currents that argue that the ways we think and feel the world determine the functioning of language. The analyses indicate that despite the discredit arising from the failure of the linguistic relativism thesis, there is, to a certain extent, a reciprocal presupposition, in which both directions of determination prove equally valid. After all, each language has its own obligatory aspects, so that its respective speakers are forced to frequent certain thoughts to the detriment of others when enunciating, until such thoughts crystallize as habits within that specific linguistic community, becoming significantly more recurrent than the non-obligatory ones.