Thought behind Language

Everyday conversation requires a significant amount of thought. We carry out these thoughts so naturally and effortlessly that they lie entirely beneath our radar. A friend might ask us: “what are you going to wear tomorrow night to the dance?” A simple question, perhaps, but a significant amount of hidden thought goes into the answer.

First, we have to decipher the sentence. Then we have to remember that we do, in fact, have a dance to go to tomorrow night. Did we already choose our outfit or not? If we didn’t, then we have to imagine our wardrobe and pick out something. Perhaps we also think a bit about what we wore to the last affair that had the same group of people, lest we wear the same thing twice! Once we clear the outfit, we might think about whether it was cleaned recently or if it still has a stain from the red wine at the Jones Wedding. We follow no checklist in this process. We do not even recognize that we are doing it. It is automatic. And, miraculously, we do it all in seconds. We respond: I think I’m going to wear my black dress. The simple sentence is the punctuation of a complex web of underlying thoughts.