The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers’ worldview or cognition, and thus people’s perceptions are relative to their spoken language.
Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
Linguistic relativity has been understood in many different, often contradictory ways throughout its history. The idea is often stated in two forms: the strong hypothesis, now referred to as linguistic determinism, was held by some of the early linguists before World War II, while the weak hypothesis is mostly held by some of the modern linguists. The term “Sapir–Whorf hypothesis” is considered a misnomer by linguists for several reasons: Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf never co-authored any works, and never stated their ideas in terms of a hypothesis. The distinction between a weak and a strong version of this hypothesis is also a later invention; Sapir and Whorf never set up such a dichotomy, although often their writings and their views of this relativity principle are phrased in stronger or weaker terms. The principle of linguistic relativity and the relation between language and thought has also received attention in varying academic fields from philosophy to psychology and anthropology, and it has also inspired and colored works of fiction and the invention of constructed languages.
Origins
The idea was first clearly expressed by 19th-century thinkers, such as Wilhelm von Humboldt and Johann Gottfried Herder who saw language as the expression of the spirit of a nation. Members of the early 20th-century school of American anthropology headed by Franz Boas and Edward Sapir also embraced forms of the idea to a certain extent, including in a 1928 meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, but 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, another of Sapir’s students, introduced the term “Sapir–Whorf hypothesis”, even though the two scholars never formally advanced any such hypothesis. A strong version of relativist theory was developed from the late 1920s by the German linguist Leo Weisgerber. 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 favor among linguists.
The essence of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
The meaning of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis boils down to the fact that the structure of language has a formative effect on people thinking and how they learn the world around them. According to its basic premises, people who speak different languages have differences in the perception of the main categories of the surrounding world, such as the concept of property, quantity, number, space, time, etc. No less significant is the difference in how speakers of different languages evaluate real events and phenomena. And the main difference between the hypothesis itself is the idea that people who can speak several languages are able to use several ways of thinking.
The system of language, corresponding to the theory of linguistic relativity we are considering, defines a unique classification of the surrounding world, where reality appears before a person in the form of a constantly changing stream of images and impressions.
Thus, among the main objects of the hypothesis are:
As the study progressed, the individual effects of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis managed to manifest themselves only in several areas of semantics, but, in fact, proved to be rather weak. And today, the bulk of linguistics specialists take a more restrained position regarding linguistic relativism: they, to a greater extent, support the idea that language affects some types of cognitive processes, even if this is not so obvious, but other processes are subjective in themselves, with regards to universal factors. And scientific research aims to formulate the ways of such influence, and also to determine the extent to which language generally affects the thought process.
Pros and Cons of the Sapir-Whorf theory
One of the first confirmations of the hypothesis of linguistic relativity was based on finding out the difference between how native English speakers and the American Navajo tribe perceive the surrounding reality. Through the study of the classification of language forms, it was found that Native American children used the categorization of objects based on their form much more often than the children of the Englishmen. And the scientists explained this by the fact that in the language of the Navajo tribe there is a unique grammatical dependence of verbs and forms of objects with which any manipulation is made.
In addition, the Sapir-Whorf theory was also supported by a study that was conducted with groups of children from African American families who spoke English and children from European families who also spoke English. Children from both the first and second groups did well on the task where it was necessary to make geometric shapes, although African American children belonged to low-income families and were rather vague about how to play with blocks.
But the relativistic theory also received a refutation. Scientists conducted a study of 78 languages, which showed that people who belong to different cultures and speak different languages perceive colors in almost the same way. However, despite this, some scientists suggest that the presented results cannot be interpreted as a refutation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, because the color perception of people is mainly due to the biological structure of human vision, which means that it is identical in all people.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis today
Even nowadays disputes continue on the topic of the veracity of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis between specialists interested in the theory of linguistic relativity. And to a huge extent, this is facilitated by the fact that there is no unequivocally convincing evidence that could confirm or refute this theory.
The results that have been obtained in the course of multiple studies can be perceived from different angles. Probably, it is for this reason that the ideas of linguistic relativism today do not have ardent adherents or professional followers.
Nevertheless, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, along with the interaction of language and thinking, over the years has become an object of interest in a variety of scientific fields, from philosophy to anthropology and psychology. In addition, together they became the source material for the creation of artificial languages, and also served as the source of inspiration for many works of literature.
Learn Spanish with Maestro24, change yourself and achieve your goals! Learning Spanish is your way to the next level!
Add Comment