I need help!

[josh_rules]

I have to answer this question: Discuss the way language is used to shape ideas and themes. Could anyone give me some help

[Jassy Melson]

There have been entire books written about that question. Language is probably the main ingredient in shaping our ideas. How language does that is a subject for a book.

[The Atheist]

I have to answer this question: Discuss the way language is used to shape ideas and themes. Could anyone give me some help

Think about the way people brainstorm - you get a group of people together with a whiteboard and let them think about a problem.

The question is more appropriate to 1984, but your teacher is no doubt thinking about the pigs in Animal Farm. Think about how they changed the animals' thinking by cleverly changing the rules on the end of the barn.

If you follow down those paths, you will realise that language is the prime ingredient of human thinking.

Good luck!

[Mr. Bungle]

1984 and Animal Farm are very good examples of how language can be used as an instrument of (thought-)control!

If you are still interested try Google: language and thinking (or Wiki: language and thought).

I recently read something I thought was quite interesting:
-> The Pirahã people (an indigenous hunter-gatherer tribe of Amazon natives) don't count because they don't have words for numbers. They only have 'one' and 'many'. If you lack numbers, you lack counting - the absence of the words causes the absence of the concepts. Question: Are you able to think about abstract things you don't have words for?

(from Steven Pinker's 'The Stuff Of Thought: Language As A Window Into Human Nature.)