Define language and discuss its importance to human thought, communications, and interactions. ...

ANSWER:
Language has been defined as a system for communicating thoughts and feelings using arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols. Language provides us with powerful tools for organizing and manipulating our thinking, problem solving, and decision making. Although thoughts can be represented visually as well as verbally, language extends our thinking abilities to abstract concepts like truth and beauty that would be difficult to visualize. Above all, language connects us with others. Not only can we communicate with people in our immediate vicinity, but language spans time and distance, allowing us to share the thoughts of people living long ago and in very distant places. Because of language, the thoughts we record today might reach into the future to influence the thinking of people not yet born. Language is also intimately connected to cultural values.

Language both reflects and shapes thought. Benjamin Lee Whorfs hypothesis of linguistic relativity examines the effect of having a rich vocabulary on a persons ability to think about a topic. According to Whorf, a skier who can name and identify powder, slush, and other variations of snow thinks differently about the snow than does a person born and raised in a tropical climate. Whorfs theory predicts that the use of gender-free words, such as server instead of waiter, or waitress or flight attendant instead of stewardess, would have a real impact on behavior. Researchers have shown that the use of he or him as opposed to she, her, or they in a sentence prompt leads children to produce stories about males.