THE INTERACTION OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT IN STRUCTURALIST AND COGNITIVE TRADITIONS

Abstract

The relationship between language and thought is one of the central issues in twentieth-century linguistics, psychology, and philosophy and has been addressed within various theoretical frameworks, including structuralism, American descriptivism, psycholinguistics, and cognitive linguistics. This article examines the interaction between language and thought within the structuralist and cognitive tradition, conceptualizing language as a symbolic and cognitive mechanism that mediates human experience. It is argued that early structuralist approaches, while emphasizing the formal organization of language, largely excluded mental and cognitive dimensions from linguistic analysis, whereas psycholinguistic and cognitive perspectives regard language as an integral component of mental activity closely connected with perception, categorization, memory, and social experience. The study demonstrates that language does not merely reflect pre-existing ideas but actively participates in shaping and expanding cognitive experience, functioning not as a rigid determinant of thought but as a flexible symbolic system that both enables and constrains human cognition.