Language is not only a tool for communication; it is also a cognitive environment and a social resource through which people organize experience and construct identity. Recent research shows that linguistic experience can shape attention, self-evaluation, and decision-making, while also influencing how speakers understand belonging, heritage, and professional selfhood. At the same time, cognitive science has been criticized for relying too heavily on English-speaking participants, which narrows the scope of conclusions about human cognition 1. This article offers a brief integrative review of post-2020 research on the relation between language, thought, and identity. Drawing on studies of bilingual cognitive reserve, bilingual attention, multilingual language attitudes, heritage language identity, self-evaluation in bilingual adults, and language-based clustering in organizations, the article argues that language should be understood as a dynamic system rather than a neutral code 2-6. The evidence supports a moderate position: language does not mechanically determine thought, but it can shape habitual cognition, emotional distance, and social self-understanding. In multilingual lives, speakers continually move between linguistic frameworks that affect how they think, judge, and present themselves. This makes language central not only to linguistics but also to cognitive science and identity research 1-6.
Ceyhun et al. (Wed,) studied this question.