The Sapir-Whorl Hypothesis Flashcards
When referring to anything in here, what do you need to write?
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by David S. Thomson
What did Whorf claim?
Language May be shaped by the world, but it in turn shapes the world. Without the words or structures to articulate a concept, that concept will not occurs. If a language is rich in ways to express certain sorts of ideas, then the speaker of that language will habitually think along those linguistic paths.
Whorf in short
The language that humans speak governs their view of reality; it determines their perception of the world
Example of gasoline drums often cited by Benjamin Lee Whorf to illustrate his theory
Storage room at chemical plant, watchman, gasoline drums, ‘‘Empty Barrels’’, lights cigarette and throws the still hot match into one of empty barrels. English language caused this. Eng has no single word to describe this so it did not occur to watchman to think of the explosive fumes
What is known as the Saphir-Whorf hypothesis
The idea that language influences a person’s view of the world
Saphir Whorf 1940 essay “Science and Linguistics”:
“The background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each language is not merely a
reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of
ideas… We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language.’
Good quote from 1940 essay “Science and Linguistics” about linguistic systems in our minds
the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organised by our minds- and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds
Ideas developed from Whorf’s study of the Hopi language about time for Europeans
differs dramatically from languages of the Indo-European family such as English or French, particularly in its expression of the concept of time. Instead of three major tenses. Time past is made up of aniform units of time- days, weeks, months:
And the future is similariy measured out. ‘This division of time is essentially artificial since people can only experience the present
Why do Westeners think of time as real?
Their language virtually forced them to
Hopi’s idea of time
it possesses two modes of thought: the objective, that is things that exist now, and the subjective, things that can be thought about and therefore belong to a state of becoming.
Hopi and Westerners difference
The past to the Hopi, Whorf believed, is also different from the chronological time sense of the speakers of Indo-European languages. The past not a uniform row of days or weeks to the Hopi. It is rather an undifferentiated stream in which many deeds were done that have accumulated and prepared
the prosont and will continue to prepare the becoming that is ahead. EveryThing is connected, everything accumulates. The past is not a series of events, separated and completed, but is present in the present.
What does Hopi difference show
the language, once it had developed, perpetuated thein
particular and seemingly very different world view.
Limits of Saphir-Whorf
would be fruitless to go about asking people of various cultures their opin-
ions as to whether the language they spoke had determined the manner in
which they thought, had dictated their view of the world. Nobody would be
Limitation:
able to answer such a question, for a people’s language is so completely em-
Really
bedded in their consciousness that they would be unable to conceive of any other way of interpreting the world.
Near impossibility of proving or disproving Whorf’s theory.
Thomas interpretating Whorf’s theory
Whorf said that a people’s
world view was relative to the language they spoke.
In support of Whorf
studies of color-one of the very few aspects of reality that can
be specified by objective scientific methods and also is rather precisely specified by people’s naming of colors.
