Language & Thought ( The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis )

Presentation made by the students :

FELLAH Brahim.

Historical Overview: The relationship between language, thought and reality has

occupied philosophers, linguists, anthropologists and psychologists for centuries.

Dating back to Plato and his theory of forms, in which Plato described the idea of thought and language having meaning as stemming from abstract definitions or concepts called “forms” and which all the “entities and qualities designated thereby can be subsumed” (Gill, 1997:132).

Along with the standard western thought Plato ultimately describes language as being based on reality. Similarly John Locke of a more recent time describes the relationship between reality and language:

Our senses, conversant about particular sensible object, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things according to those various ways wherein those objects affect them. And thus we come by those ideas we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet and all those which we call sensible qualities; which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they from external objects convey into the mind what produces those perceptions (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book 2, chapter 1).

Locke exemplifies in this statement what many philosophers and psychologists felt about how we think and how we perceive reality and how that is then reflected in our language.

Contrary to these common beliefs among philosophers concerning language, a well-known German scholar and diplomat from the 18th century, Wilhelm von Humboldt equated language and thought as inseparable, as language completely determining thought, in a hypothesis known as the Weltanschauung (world view) hypothesis (Brown, 1968). Humboldt also emphasized “profound semantic” differences between languages which lead to varying “cognitive perspectives,” an idea commonly known as cultural relativity (Wierzbika, 3).

Although little attention was given to this extreme view at the time, this same idea drew much interest and criticism in the 1930’s in the emergence of a hypothesis known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (Linguistic Relativity).

BiographyEdward Sapir: Benjamin Lee Whorf:

Edward Sapir(1884-1939):

American anthropologist-linguist; a leader in American structural linguistics

Author of Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech

Born in Lauenberg, Germany.

Pupil of Franz Boas, teacher of Benjamin Whorf

B. Lee Whorf (1897-1941):

He graduated from the MIT in 1918 with a degree in chemical engineering and shortly afterwards began work as a fire prevention engineer (inspector).

Although he met, and later studied with Edward Sapir, he never took up linguistics as a profession.

Whorf's primary area of interest in linguistics was the study of native American languages.

Mold & Cloack TheoriesTo understand the S-W Hypothesis, it helps to be aware of the existence of two

opposing ideas about language and culture:

1)- Cloack theory: Language reflects reality: People have thoughts first, then put

them into words. Words record what is already there. All humans think the same way, but we use different words to label what we sense.

2)- Mold theory:Language determines our thought: The vocabulary and grammar (structure) of a

language determine the way we view the world (“worlds shaped by words”).

* - The S-W Hypothesis is in line with the Mold theory.

The Sapir-Whorf HypothesisIntroduction :

In linguistics, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis states that there are certain thoughts of an individual in one language that cannot be understood by those who live in another language and that the way people think is strongly affected by their native languages.

It revolves around the idea that language has power and can control how you see the world. Language is a guide to your reality, structuring your thoughts. It provides the framework through which you make sense of the world.

This hypothesis was rooted in Sapir’s study of Native American Languages, which later drew the particular attention of Sapir’s student Benjamin Lee Whorf.

What caught the attention of many scholars and non-scholars alike and has stimulated comparative research among many different languages was a paragraph that Sapir read to a group of anthropologists and linguists in 1928:

“Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society… The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached “(Salzmann, 1993:153).

 

This statement and similar ones by Whorf, attempting to illustrate that language is the medium by which one views the world, culture, reality and thought have aroused an intense desire in not only scholars but also for non-scholars to validate of disprove this hypothesis.

Most researchers today currently argue one of the following two positions in relation to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis or Linguistic Relativity:

Language heavily influences thought (strong version),or Linguistic Determinism.

Language does not influence or partially influences thought (weak version), or Linguistic Relativity.

 

Linguistic Determinism and Linguistic Relativity

Linguistic DeterminismLanguage entirely

determines the range of possible cognitive processes of an individual.

It is now generally agreed to be false,but weaker forms of correlation are being still studied by many researchers often producing positive empirical evidence for a correlation.

Linguistic Relativityspeakers of different

languages perceive and experience the world differently, that is, relative to their linguistic background.

Which says that the resulting cognitive systems are different in speakers of different languages.

CRITICISM of the hypothesis

Criticism of S-W Hypothesis

If one is to believe the strong version of linguistic determinism, one also has to agree that thought is not possible without language. What about the pre-linguistic thought of babies? How can babies acquire language without thought? Also, where did language come from? In the linguistic determinist's view, language would have to be derived from a source outside the human realm because thought is impossible without language and before language there would have been no thought.

Linguistic Determinism - Criticism:Merits and drawbacks-

Yet another problem with the hypothesis is that languages and linguistic concepts are highly translatable. Under linguistic determinism, a concept in one language would not be understood in a different language because the speakers and their world views are bound by different sets of rules. Languages are in fact translatable and only in select cases of poetry, humor and other creative communications are ideas "lost in the translation."

Linguistic Determinism - Criticism:Merits and drawbacks-

The HOPI language: Benjamin Whorf, like Sapir studied

Native American languages. Whorf sites several examples form the Native American language, Hopi, to support his hypothesis that thought is strongly based on language. According to Whorf the Hopi language does not contain any words, grammatical constructions or expressions that refer to the English concept of ‘time.’ Whorf goes on to explain that it is possible in the Hopi language to express the world or reality in ways other than what many languages refer to as ‘time.’ The Hopi view of reality is specific to the language and can only be best expressed if one is familiar with the language (Carroll, 1956:57).

Linguistic Determinism - Criticism:Merits and drawbacks-

Brown (1958) and Lenneberg (1953) pointed out that Whorf never met an actual Indian, so his assessments of their character must be somewhat vague, and also that his translations of Hopi sentences were done to seem as different as possible, to emphasise the ‘different system of thinking’.

Linguistic Determinism - Criticism:Merits and drawbacks-

A common argument for the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is the perception of color across languages. According to the hypothesis, if one language categorizes color differently than another language, then the different groups should perceive it differently also. In a study done in the 1970’s a group of researchers studied the difference in perception of color in English compared with a small tribe from Papua New Guinea called Berinmo. The Berinmo were given a sample of 160 different colors and asked to categorize them. The Berinmo not only had less categories, they did not differentiate between the English colors blue and green, however, they did draw a category between colors in their language nol and wor which in English would both be perceived in the category of yellow. The researchers found that the Berinmo speakers were better at matching colors across their nol, wor categories than across the English blue and green categories and English speakers were better at matching colors across blue and green than across the Berinmo nol and wor (Sawyer, 1999). According to the researchers by showing that the color perception of the two language groups is dependent on the categorization in the language the results support the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

Linguistic Determinism - Criticism:Merits and drawbacks-

In the later 1960s, two American scholars, Brent Berlin and Paul Kay conducted a large cross-linguistic investigation of basic color vocabulary, which involved 98 languages in the world. The most striking finding in this research is that color' word systems in different languages are not like what has been assumed by the Sapir and Whorl hypothesis, being culturally determined and hence absolutely different from one another. Contrary to this assumption, Berlin and Kay showed that different languages might well undergo a universal evolutionary process of development which, in turn, made the basic color system in one language different from that in another only in terms of the stages of their evolution.

Linguistic Determinism- Criticism:Merits and drawbacks-

One infamous example Whorf used to support his theory was the number of words the Inuit people have for ‘snow.' He claimed that because snow is a crucial part of their everyday lives and that they have many different uses for snow that they perceive snow differently than someone who lives in a less snow-dependent environment. Pullum has since dispelled this myth in his book The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax (1991). He shows that while the Inuit use many different terms for snow, other languages transmit the same ideas using phrases instead of single words.

Linguistic Determinism - Criticism:Merits and drawbacks-

Studies that supported Linguistic Relativity

In 1954, Brown and Lenneberg tested for color codability, or how speakers of one language categorize the color spectrum and how it affects their recognition of those colors. Penn writes, "Lenneberg reports on a study showing how terms of colors influence the actual discrimination. English-speaking subjects were better able to re-recognize those hues which are easily named in English. This finding is clearly in support of the limiting influence of linguistic categories on cognition" (1972:16). Schlesinger explains the path taken in this study from positive correlation to support for linguistic relativity: "...if codability of color affected recognizability, and if languages differed in codability, then recognizability is a function of the individual's language" (1991:27)

Linguistic Relativity - Criticism:Merits and drawbacks-

Kay and Kempton's language study (1984) found support for linguistic relativity. They found that language is a part of cognition. In their study, English speakers' perceptions were distorted in the blue-green area while speakers from Tarahumara–who lack a blue-green distinction–showed no distortion. However, under certain conditions they found that universalism of color distinction can be recovered.

Linguistic Relativity - Criticism:Merits and drawbacks-

Peterson and Siegal's "Sally doll" test (1995) was not intended to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis specifically, but their findings support linguistic relativity in a population who at the time had not yet been considered for testing–deaf children. Peterson and Siegal's experiment with deaf children showed a difference in the constructed reality of deaf children with deaf parents and deaf children with hearing parents, especially in the realm of non-concrete items such as feelings and thoughts.

Linguistic Relativity - Criticism:Merits and drawbacks-

Wassman and Dasen's Balinese language test (1998) found differences in how the Balinese people orient themselves spatially to that of Westerners. They found that the use of an absolute reference system based on geographic points on the island in the Balinese language correlates to the significant cultural importance of these points to the people. They questioned how language affects the thinking of the Balinese people and found moderate linguistic relativity results.

Linguistic Relativity - Criticism:Merits and drawbacks-

Studies that disputed Linguistic Relativity:

Berlin and Kay's color study (1969) found universal focus colors and differences only in the boundaries of colors in the spectrum. They found that regardless of language or culture, eleven universal color foci emerge. Underlying apparent diversity in color vocabularies, these universal foci remain recognizable. Even in languages which do not discriminate to eleven basic colors, speakers are nonetheless able to sort color chips based on the eleven focus colors.

Linguistic Relativity - Criticism:Merits and drawbacks-

Osgood's common meaning system study found that "human beings the world over, no matter what their language or culture, do share a common meaning system, do organize experience along similar symbolic dimensions" (1963:33)

Linguistic Relativity - Criticism:Merits and drawbacks-

In his universalism studies, Greenberg came to the conclusion that "agreement in the fundamentals of human behavior among speakers of radically diverse languages far outweighs the idiosyncratic differences to be expected from a radical theory of linguistic relativity" (1963:125).

Linguistic Relativity - Criticism:Merits and drawbacks-

Davies' cross-cultural color sorting test (1998) found an obvious pattern in the similarity of color sorting behavior between speakers of English which has eleven basic colors, Russian which has twelve (they distinguish two blues), and Setswana which has only five (grue=green-blue). Davies concluded that the data showed strong universalism.

Linguistic Relativity - Criticism:Merits and drawbacks-

CONCLUSION In his introduction to Whorf's body of work, John Carroll

suggests a reason why so much attention and controversy surround the theory of linguistic relativism. Carroll states, "Perhaps it is the suggestion that all one's life one has been tricked, all unaware, by the structure of language into a certain way of perceiving reality, with the implication that awareness of this trickery will enable one to see the world with fresh insight" (1956:27). The world is getting smaller with the diffusion of computers and new communications technology. Interaction between members of different cultures is becoming easier and more prevalent. On a global scale, the hypothesis could be taken as a possible rationalization why foreign nations fail to communicate successfully. Awareness of linguistic relativity, however, should lead to a better understanding of cultural diversities and help to bridge intercultural communication gaps.