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Abstract
Language reflects thought, which itself is influenced and moulded by language. It is essential both for expressing and working out ideas. Many great speakers use language as a game to trap their opponents, while others may view language as more purely functional and straightforward. Precisely, language alone makes abstract thought and concepts possible. The relationship between thought and language may seem baffling, even pointless, in a chicken-and-egg sort of way for many second-language speakers. In a wider sense, gestures often count for more than words. In situations of frustration and tension, the same applies. The expression makes the need for description redundant. Yet, once we are aware of the communication, we start to conceptualize and respond to it, but as soon as we do so, language creeps back in. the relation of a word to the object it denotes is not merely one of identity with that object as its referent –as seems apparent in a statement ‘The Evening Star is the Evening Star’—for how otherwise do we explain the statement ‘The Evening Star is the Morning Star’? There is also a word’s sense in virtue of which it has that relation to its referent. We can then see how a word or proposition may have more than one sense according to its context and thus it is one particular sense that bears the reference to its referent(s) for each occasion of use. In other words, depending on the context, a single word can refer to a range of different things, or a range of words can refer to a single thing. Thus, although there is no simple identity of word and referent, the essential feature of words is that they do have a sense that relates to a referent—there is still a linking of object and word.