Linguistic relativism

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Linguistic relativism is the idea that differences in language are related to differences in cognition of the language users. It is an idea implied from Linguistic determinism, and subject in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

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[edit] History

[edit] Sapir Whorf

Linguistic relativism began as a question posed by Franz Boas in the 1900s, with his work with the Inuit tribe. Could a culture’s evolution be described with the evolution of their own language? Furthermore, could language be used as a tool to describe the difference between cultures? Boas’s work was continued by Edward Sapir, a student of his and also the later mentor to Benjamin Whorf. This is when linguistic relativism became popularized through the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Whorf was not always interested in the field of linguistics. He was originally a mechanical engineering student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later took the job of ‘fire prevention engineer’. He first became interested in linguistics at his workplace. He noticed that workers would behave more cautiously if asked to move ‘full’ fuel drums, and carelessly around ‘empty’ fuel drums. However the term ‘empty’ implied that it was simply out of fuel, not that there weren’t still gasoline vapors lingering in the drums.

Later in life, Whorf studied the Hopi Indians of Arizona. He noticed there were distinct differences between English and Hopi languages. Western culture puts a heavy emphasis on time and discrete time intervals, like a camera. Whereas Hopi seems to reference an event or happening, much like a story. Hopi also makes no distinction of time in verb tenses; ‘has happened’, ‘is happening’, ‘will happen’ are all one word.

[edit] Modern theory

Present day Linguistic relativists continue to explain differences in culture through language. Present day theorists include John Lucy and his study of the Yucatec Mayan language and Boroditsky's study of Mandarin Chinese. Whereas earlier lingustic relativists had put an emphasis on vocabulary to explain differences in culture (Intuit words for snow, Dani color matching), modern linguists tend to study sentence structure or word placement.

[edit] Criticism

While Linguistic relativism is recognized in linguistics, it is merely a hypothesis and is not widely accepted.

[edit] Eskimo vocabulary hoax

In a 1940 article, Whorf said Eskimo languages had about 7 different words for snow, because of the constant exposure to snow and snowfall conditions and the utility role it played in their culture. Whorf had expanded on this idea by his predecessor Franz Boaz. This number was inflated in further studies, until a recent study moved to discredit the myth and its relation to Linguistic relativism explaining the much smaller number of words shared by the Eskimo tribes was about the same as its English speaking counter parts.

[edit] Color cognition

In the 1970s, Eleanor Rosch held a study between Dani and American participants to play a color memory-matching game which included 40 colors. The Dani language was limited to the simplest categories for color, light and dark. The participants were shown a color, and then 30 seconds later asked to choose from a list of colors. The scores between both cultures’ participants were similar, and both groups seemed to make the same type of errors, showing more of a physiological error than a cultural, linguistic error. This contradicted a study a few years earlier by Berlin and Kay, Whorfists believed the more evolved English language would effect participant's cognition as well.


[edit] External Links

[edit] See also


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