On the Nature of Meaning and Untranslatability

Abstract

The nature of meaning has long been the focus of the study of the philosophy of language. In this paper, the relationship between language and the mind is talked in a detailed way by mentioning Saussure’s account of meaning and language that people see the world according to the structure of the language they have learnt. And the development of Saussure’s idea by Sapir and Whorf, linguistic determinism and its weaker version, linguistic relativity is stated especially by relating it with the notion of untranslatability. Then an instance of a loss or distortion of translation is quoted to defend untranslatability.