Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

From RationalWiki
Jump to: navigation, search
We will control
what you think with

Language

Icon language.svg
Here's how we do it

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, more accurately referred to as linguistic relativity, posits that the language we use can influence and even control how we see the world, the categories we make, and the associations we make about those categories.

Contents

[edit] Weak and strong

It comes in two forms, the weak hypothesis and strong hypothesis, although this distinction originates with neither Sapir nor Whorf. The strong version states that language influences how we think and allows us particular modes of thought, creating our cognitive categories which in turn control cognitive processes. This is also referred to as linguistic determinism. The weak version states that our linguistic categories merely influence our thoughts, but do not create or control the cognitive processes, or restrict certain thoughts because the language terms do not exist (as in Newspeak). The there is no hard and fast boundary between the "weak" and "strong" versions of linguistic relativity; they merely open up debate as to the strength of the effect language has on thought processes. Most research into language disfavours the strongest formulations of the idea, and so remaining controversies are as to the scale extent that language does influence thought and whether experimental observations can be explained by other cultural factors.

[edit] Popular incarnations

The limitation of thought and action by the control of language is the principle behind George Orwell's "Newspeak." As Orwell explains in the appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four:

...a heretical thought - that is, a thought diverging from the principles of IngSoc - should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.

The principles of Newspeak relied on strong linguistic relativity, which does not have much empirical support as being the case. Concepts and thought are not controlled and limited by language, but they are influenced for instance in the naming of colours, language plays a key part in what colours people can describe in a single word and research suggests an order in which they are prioritised. All languages at least have words for "black" and "white", but purple and pink are often left indescribable until the language is given more terms to describe colours. This doesn't mean that the very concept of those distinct colours is impossible to think about, as the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis may seem to suggest. A language can always name colors for which it lacks specific terms with compounds or words for objects bearing that color (just as crayon manufacturers come up with names like orange-red and cornflower). If existing color terms really constrained the way people view colors, these new terms could never appear.

Political correctness attempts a similar thing; by removing racist or sexist terminology from language, replacing them with less offensive terms. Not least because language can develop to fill the gap (e.g., the euphemism treadmill), politically correct terms don't succeed in eradicating racist or sexist thoughts and attitudes.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Toolbox
support