THE INFLUENCE OF THE ARABIC LANGUAGE ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARABS
I T IS AXIOMATIC that the language of any people is influenced by its psychology and culture. Few investigators, however, have ever seriously studied the converse: the influence that language itself exerts on the psychology and culture of the people who use it. The general tendency is to regard language as sufficiently flexible to adapt itself to cultures and intellects rather than so rigid as to stamp its own peculiarities upon them. But any close scrutiny of the relations between language and psychology will show that there is an intimate interdependence between the two. The exact nature and extent of this two way influence must be ascertained separately for each individual case, as they depend on a large number of factors and variables which can at best be only roughly estimated. The following discussion attempts to summarize the outstanding features of one only of this two way interaction: namely, the influence which the Arabic language exerts upon the psychology of the Arabs.