Excerpt from :

...... Thus, language and the diversity of language greatly impact the critical thinking process. People assign linguistic terms to objects, ideas, and abstractions, which impacts how they are characterized in a persons mind. In addition, these characterizations affect the expression of ones thoughts, limiting that expression. These expressions are limited because no two people have the exact same understanding of different words and phrases. Each word or phrase has, for each individual person, a repertoire of childhood memories, connotations, associations, etc. Thus, it is never possible to be sure that what you are expressing is what others perceive. The best example of the importance of this issue is derived using idea words, such as racism and sexism. For one person, racism may bring up memories of class history books, documentaries, and a one-time accusation of being racist. Another person might have a closer relationship with the word, a person who has many times been a victim of racism. Thus, when these two people discuss racism, they discuss different things. Their expressions are limited because they are not able to fully explain to another what they mean, as each and every word has different connotations, and even denotations, for different people.

Need this essay? If it's not quite what you're looking for there are over 50,000 more to search from, so you can find the term paper or essay that meets your needs.