Language & Worldview

The idea surfaces from time to time that language shapes psychology and worldview, rather than the reverse. I'm inclined to think this is an overestimation based on misapprehension of how language speakers perceive units of meaning. A simple example provides insight:

What does he look like?

To native speakers and to advanced second language learners, this phrase only means what physical features and attributes does he have. It is not a request for a comparison. Yet, this is a point of confusion for beginning English learners. Because, when read literally, it is a request for a comparison. So, they often--quite naturally--respond accordingly: "He looks like a bear."

This isn't to say that a comparison isn't within the set of possible answers. To be sure, comparison is one means of describing physical attributes and features. But this is different than thinking that the question requires a comparison as an answer or is limited to comparisons as answers, a word-by-word reading of which it would be logical to conclude. 

In other words, the whole phrase is 'chunked', as it were, to consist of meaning quite different than the sum of its parts, just as, at some point when learning to read, you stop noticing the silent 'k' in words like 'knife' and 'knee' and 'chunk' all of the letters in your mind as a single unit of sound.

A language-shapes-psychology approach might overparse this to conclude that English speakers, at some subconscious level, are engaging in a comparison, and that comparisons are an accentuated element of an English language-shaped view of the world. Based on the above, I would hesitate to conclude such a thing.