Linguistic relativity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views
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The principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view, or otherwise influences their cognitive processes. Popularly known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, the principle is often defined as having two versions: (i) the strong version that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories and (ii) the weak version that linguistic categories and usage influence thought and certain kinds of non-linguistic behaviour. The term "Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis" is a misnomer, as Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf never co-authored anything, and never stated their ideas in terms of a hypothesis. The distinction between a weak and a strong version of the hypothesis is also a later invention, as Sapir and Whorf never set up such a dichotomy, although often in their writings their views of this relativity principle are phrased in stronger or weaker terms.
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Sapir in particular wrote more often against than in favor of anything like linguistic determinism. Sapir's student Benjamin Lee Whorf came to be seen as the primary proponent as a result of his published observations of how he perceived linguistic differences to have consequences in human cognition and behavior. Harry Hoijer, one of Sapir's students, introduced the term "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis",[2] even though the two scholars never actually advanced any such hypothesis.[3] Whorf's principle of linguistic relativity was reformulated as a testable hypothesis by Roger Brown and Eric Lenneberg who conducted experiments designed to find out whether color perception varies between speakers of languages that classified colors differently. As the study of the universal nature of human language and cognition came into focus in the 1960s the idea of linguistic relativity fell out of favour among linguists. A 1969 study by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay demonstrated the existence of universal semantic constraints in the field of color terminology which was widely seen to discredit the existence of linguistic relativity in this domain, although this conclusion has been disputed by relativist researchers.
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A main point of debate in the discussion of linguistic relativity is the correlation between language and thought. The strongest form of correlation is linguistic determinism, which would hold that language entirely determines the range of possible cognitive processes of an individual. This view has sometimes been attributed to Benjamin Lee Whorf, and to Ludwig Wittgenstein, but it is not currently the consensus that either of these thinkers actually espoused determinist views of the relation between language and thought.
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