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James Granderson

Linguistic relativity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Linguistic_relativity

relativity sapir whorf linguistic determinism

shared by James Granderson on 19 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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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  • While undertaking geographical research in northern Canada he became fascinated with the Inuit people and decided to become an ethnographer. In contrast to von Humboldt, Boas always stressed the equal worth of all cultures and languages, and argued that there was no such thing as primitive languages, but that all languages were capable of expressing the same content albeit by widely differing means. Boas saw language as an inseparable part of culture and he was among the first to require of ethnographers to learn the native language of the culture being studied, and to document verbal culture such as myths and legends in the original language.
  • Boas' student Edward Sapir reached back to the Humboldtian idea that languages contained the key to understanding the differing world views of peoples. In his writings he espoused the viewpoint that because of the staggering differences in the grammatical systems of languages no two languages were ever similar enough to allow for perfect translation between them.
  • The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.
  • On the other hand, Sapir explicitly rejected strong linguistic determinism by stating, "It would be naïve to imagine that any analysis of experience is dependent on pattern expressed in language."
  • Sapir was explicit that the connections between language and culture were neither thoroughgoing nor particularly deep, if they existed at all: It is easy to show that language and culture are not intrinsically associated. Totally unrelated languages share in one culture; closely related languages—even a single language—belong to distinct culture spheres. There are many excellent examples in Aboriginal America. The Athabaskan languages form as clearly unified, as structurally specialized, a group as any that I know of. The speakers of these languages belong to four distinct culture areas... The cultural adaptability of the Athabaskan-speaking peoples is in the strangest contrast to the inaccessibility to foreign influences of the languages themselves.
  • Among Whorf's best-known examples of linguistic relativity are instances where an indigenous language has several terms for a concept that is only described with one word in English and other European languages (Whorf used the acronym SAE "Standard Average European" to allude to the rather similar grammatical structures of the well-studied European languages in contrast to the greater diversity of the less-studied languages). One of Whorf's examples of this phenomenon was the supposedly large number of words for 'snow' in the Inuit language, an example which some have later contested as a misrepresentation.[25] Another of Whorf's examples are the Hopi language words for water, one indicating drinking water in a container and another indicating a natural body of water. These examples of polysemy served the double purpose of showing that indigenous languages sometimes made more fine grained semantic distinctions than European languages and that direct translation between two languages, even of seemingly basic concepts like snow or water, is not always possible.
  • Whorf's most elaborate argument for the existence of linguistic relativity regarded what he believed to be a fundamental difference in the understanding of time as a conceptual category among the Hopi.[27] He argued that in contrast to English and other SAE languages, the Hopi language does not treat the flow of time as a sequence of distinct, countable instances, like "three days" or "five years," but rather as a single process and that consequentially it does not have nouns referring to units of time as SAE speakers understand them. He proposed that this view of time was fundamental in all aspects of Hopi culture and explained certain Hopi behavioral patterns. However, later Malotki (1983), who researched Hopi, claimed that he found no evidence of Whorf's claims in 1980's era speakers, nor in historical documents going back to the preconquest era.
  • Current researchers such as Lera Boroditsky, John A. Lucy and Stephen C. Levinson believe that language influences thought, but in more limited ways than the broadest early claims.
  • James Granderson on 19 Feb 13
     
    Wikipedia article about linguistic relativity. 
Erin Brennan

Relativism > The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) - 1 views

plato.stanford.edu/...supplement2.html

semantics Sapir-Whorf theories linguistics linguistic determinism anthropology research

shared by Erin Brennan on 20 Feb 13 - Cached
  • But the label linguistic relativity
  • linguistic relativity
  • Many linguists, including Noam Chomsky, contend that language in the sense we ordinary think of it, in the sense that people in Germany speak German, is a historical or social or political notion, rather than a scientific one.
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  • linguistic relativity
  • They hold that each language embodies a worldview, with quite different languages embodying quite different views, so that speakers of different languages think about the world in quite different ways.
  • Linguistic Diversity: Languages, especially members of quite different language families, differ in important ways from one another.
  • Linguistic Influence on Thought: The structure and lexicon of one's language influences how one perceives and conceptualizes the world, and they do so in a systematic way.
  • Our language affects how we perceive things: Even comparatively simple acts of perception are very much more at the mercy of the social patterns called words than we might suppose. …We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation (p. 210). But the differences don't end with perception: 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 worlds with different labels attached (p. 209).
  • Human languages are flexible and extensible, so most things that can be said in one can be approximated in another; if nothing else, words and phrases can be borrowed (Schadenfreude, je ne sais quoi). But what is easy to say in one language may be harder to say in a second, and this may make it easier or more natural or more common for speakers of the first language to think in a certain way than for speakers of the second language to do so. A concept or category may be more available in some linguistic communities than in others (e.g., Brown, 1956, pp. 307ff). In short, the linguistic relativity hypothesis comes in stronger and weaker forms, depending on the hypothesized forms and the hypothesized strength of the hypothesized influence
  • Questions about the impact of a variable on cognition are empirical and causal questions. Such questions can only be answered with care once we specify which aspects of an independent variable, say culture, influence which aspects of thought and what form that influence takes. Such hypotheses can vary greatly in specificity, strength, and scope. Testing a specific version of the hypothesis requires a combination of skills, including those of a good ethnographer, linguist, and experimental psychologist. A comparison of more than two cultures is needed to draw any firm conclusions. The truth of specific hypotheses may turn on issues involving the modularity of mind and the degree of modular encapsulation. If the mind is highly modular, finding an influence of one aspect of language or culture of some aspect of cognition may tell us little about the influence of other aspects of language or culture on cognition
  • The child acquires this ability on the basis of the utterances she hears and the feedback (rarely in the form of corrections) she receives. The problem is that the child's data here are very unsystematic and sparse compared to the systematic and nearly unbounded linguistic competence the child quickly acquires.
  • We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds--and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds (p. 213).
  • “at the mercy” of our language, it is “constrained” by it; no one is free to describe the world in a neutral way; we are “compelled” to read certain features into the world (p. 262). The view that language completely determines how we think is often called linguistic determinism. Hamann and Herder sometimes seem to equate language with thought, and in these moods, at least, they came close to endorsing this view.
  • zach ruch on 20 Feb 13
     
    Sapir Whorf Linguistics analysis
Brendan Raleigh

Support for Linguistic Relativity - 1 views

www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/...cats-dogs-in-press.pdf

linguistic relativism sapir whorf hypothesis cognition thinking brain thought process

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  • Brendan Raleigh on 20 Feb 13
     
    Gilbert, Regier, Kay, and Ivry use several studies done regarding the left and right hemisphere of the brain and how each hempishere is able to react to certain stimuli, especially color and animals, given the types of classification each language puts the items in. Due to the effect classification had on reaction times, the data supports the idea that language affects cognition and understanding of the word. "in an early study, Kay and Kempton (1984) found that English speakers perceive colors that cross the lexical boundary between ''green'' and ''blue'' to be less similar than do Tarahumara speakers of Mexico, who use the same word to identify both of these colors, and thus lack a lexical boundary at this position in color space" "Reaction times (RTs) were faster when the target belonged to a different lexical category than the distractors (e.g., blue among greens) compared to when the target and distractors were from the same lexical category (e.g., two different hues of green). However, this effect was only observed when the target appeared in the right visual field; RTs to targets in the left visual field did not vary as a function of the categorical relationship between the target and distractors." "RTs to targets in the left visual field did not vary as a function of the categorical relationship between the target and distractors" "The results of Experiment 2 are consistent with the hypothesis that language modulates perceptual discrimination by means of lexical categories more in the RVF than in the LVF. This pattern is disrupted by verbal, but not by nonverbal, interference, supporting the third prediction outlined in the introduction." "the disruption of Whorf effects by verbal interference strongly suggests that language affects discrimination on-line through the activation of lexical codes, rather than through a long-term, enduring warping of perceptual space."
Stephanie Hegarty

ScienceDirect.com - Cognitive Psychology - Does Language Shape Thought?: Mandarin and E... - 2 views

www.sciencedirect.com/...S0010028501907480

thought english language

shared by Stephanie Hegarty on 18 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Stephanie Hegarty on 18 Feb 13
     
    "Does the language you speak affect how you think about the world? This question is taken up in three experiments. English and Mandarin talk about time differently-English predominantly talks about time as if it were horizontal, while Mandarin also commonly describes time as vertical. This difference between the two languages is reflected in the way their speakers think about time. In one study, Mandarin speakers tended to think about time vertically even when they were thinking for English (Mandarin speakers were faster to confirm that March comes earlier than April if they had just seen a vertical array of objects than if they had just seen a horizontal array, and the reverse was true for English speakers)."
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