Humanity is unimaginable without language; it is entrenched in all the various cultures of the world. Some might even claim that language shapes culture, determining the development of the reason through the acquisition of the mother tongue by a child. Moreover, it can be argued that languages are a lens through which people perceive other people via communication. However, the role of language in shaping worldview should not be overestimated since there are other factors that influence this process.
Language is not just a tool for communicating ideas between persons; it has more functions. As such, language is used by humans during their reflections on world phenomena. The conclusions in such considerations depend on the limits and possibilities of the syntax, lexis, and morphology of the language that a thinker applies. Moreover, returning to the communicative purpose of language, it is argued that, for example, worldviews of monolingual and non-native bilinguals differ because of the experiences that the language creates (Ortega, 2018). Yet, language acquisition and further use are determined by the material reality and its multiple facets. For example, if people were to shift from a mechanistic worldview to an ecological worldview, they would at first start using new lexical items denoting their ideas. Then, if these ideas are implemented, they would describe the new material objects of their world in the languages, such as technologies. So, language influences worldview and at the same time is impacted by its speakers and their surroundings.
To conclude, the question about the role of language in shaping the worldview is ambiguous. On the one side, there are particular variances in people that speak different languages or even numbers of languages. On the other side, language depends on its speakers who live in physical and cultural realities, which constantly change. Thus, it could be stated that language shapes the human mind, yet it is not the one factor that participates in this process.
Reference
Ortega, L. (2018). Ontologies of language, second language acquisition, and World Englishes. World Englishes, 37(1), 64–79.