sapir whorf hypothesis examples ppt

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Examples, Definition, Criticisms

Gregory Paul C. (MA)

Gregory Paul C. is a licensed social studies educator, and has been teaching the social sciences in some capacity for 13 years. He currently works at university in an international liberal arts department teaching cross-cultural studies in the Chuugoku Region of Japan. Additionally, he manages semester study abroad programs for Japanese students, and prepares them for the challenges they may face living in various countries short term.

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Chris Drew (PhD)

This article was peer-reviewed and edited by Chris Drew (PhD). The review process on Helpful Professor involves having a PhD level expert fact check, edit, and contribute to articles. Reviewers ensure all content reflects expert academic consensus and is backed up with reference to academic studies. Dr. Drew has published over 20 academic articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education and holds a PhD in Education from ACU.

Developed in 1929 by Edward Sapir, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (also known as linguistic relativity ) states that a person’s perception of the world around them and how they experience the world is both determined and influenced by the language that they speak.

The theory proposes that differences in grammatical and verbal structures, and the nuanced distinctions in the meanings that are assigned to words, create a unique reality for the speaker. We also call this idea the linguistic determinism theory .

Spair-Whorf Hypothesis Definition and Overview

Cibelli et al. (2016) reiterate the tenets of the hypothesis by stating:

“…our thoughts are shaped by our native language, and that speakers of different languages therefore think differently”(para. 1).

Kay & Kempton (1984) explain it a bit more succinctly. They explain that the hypothesis itself is based on the:

“…evolutionary view prevalent in 19 th century anthropology based in both linguistic relativity and determinism” (pp. 66, 79).

Linguist Edward Sapir, an American linguist who was interested in anthropology , studied at Yale University with Benjamin Whorf in the 1920’s.

Sapir & Whorf began to consider lexical and grammatical patterns and how these factored into the construction of different culture’s views of the world around them.

For example, they compared how thoughts and behavior differed between English speakers and Hopi language speakers in regard to the concept of time, arguing that in the Hopi language, the absence of the future tense has significant relevance (Kay & Kempton, 1984, p. 78-79).

Whorf (2021), in his own words, asserts:

“Every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness” (p. 252).

10 Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Examples

• Constructions of food in language: A language may ascribe many words to explain the same concept, item, or food type. This shows that they perceive it as extremely important in their society, in comparison to a culture whose language only has one word for that same concept, item, or food.
• Descriptions of color in language: Different cultures may visually perceive colors in different ways according to how the colors are described by the words in their language.
• Constructions of gender in language: Many languages are “gendered”, creating word associations that pertain to the roles of men or women in society.
• Perceptions of time in language: Depending upon how the tenses are structured in a language, it may dictate how the people that speak that language perceive the concept of time.
• Categorization in language: The ways concepts and items in a given culture are categorized (and what words are assigned to them) can affect the speaker’s perception of the world around them.
• Politeness is encoded in language: Levels of politeness in a language and the pronoun combinations to express these levels differ between languages. How languages express politeness with words can dictate how they perceive the world around them.
• Indigenous words for snow: A popular example used to justify this hypothesis is the Inuit people, who have a multitude of ways to express the word snow. If you follow the reasoning of Sapir, it would suggest that the Inuits have a profoundly deeper understanding of snow than other cultures.
• Use of idioms in language: An expression or well-known saying in one culture has an acute meaning implicitly understood by those that speak the particular language but is not understandable when expressed in another language.
• Values are engrained in language: Each country and culture have beliefs and values as a direct result of the language it uses. 
• Slang in language: The slang used by younger people evolves from generation to generation in all languages. Generational slang carries with it perceptions and ideas about the world that members of that generation share.

See Other Hypothesis Examples Here

Two Ways Language Shapes Perception

1. perception of categories and categorization.

How concepts and items in a culture are categorized (and what words are assigned to them) can affect the speaker’s perception of the world around them.

Although the examples of this phenomenon are too numerous to cite, a clear example is the extremely contextual, nuanced, and hyper-categorized Japanese language.

In the English language, the concept of “you” and “I” is narrowed to these two forms. However, Japanese has numerous ways to express you and I, each having various levels of politeness and appropriateness in relation to age, gender, and stature in society.

While in common conversation, the pronoun is often left out of the conversation – reliant on context, misuse or omission of the proper pronoun can be perceived as rude or ill-mannered.

In other ways, the complexity of the categorical lexicons can often leave English speakers puzzled. This could come in the form of classifications of different shaped bowls and plates that serve different functions; it could be traces of the ancient Japanese calendar from the 7 th Century, that possessed 72 micro-seasons during a year, or any number of sub-divided word listings that may be considered as one blanket term in another language.

Masuda et al. (2017) gives a clear example:

“ People conceptualize objects along the lines drawn between existing categories in their native language. That is, if two concepts fall into the same linguistic category, the perception of similarity between these objects would be stronger than if the two concepts fall into different linguistic categories.”

They then go on to give the example of how Japanese vs English speakers might categorize an everyday object – the bell:

“For example, in Japanese, the kind of bell found in a bell tower generally corresponds to the word kane—a large bell—which is categorically different from a small bell, suzu. However, in English, these two objects are considered to belong within the same linguistic category, “bell.” Therefore, we might expect English speakers to perceive these two objects as being more similar than would Japanese speakers (para 5).

2. Perception of the Concept of Time

According to a way the tenses are structured in a language, it may dictate how the people that speak that language perceive the concept of time

One of Sapir’s most famous applications of his theory is to the language of the Arizona Native American Hopi tribe.

He claimed, although refuted vehemently by linguistic scholars since, that they have no general notion of time – that they cannot decipher between the past, present, or future because of the grammatical structures that are used within their language.

As Engle (2016) asserts, Sapir believed that the Hopi language “encodes on ordinal value, rather than a passage of time”.

He concluded that, “a day followed by a night is not so much a new day, but a return to daylight” (p. 96).

However, it is not only Hopi culture that has different perception of time imbedded in the language; Thai culture has a non-linear concept of time, and the Malagasy people of Madagascar believe that time in motion around human beings, not that human beings are passing through time (Engle, 2016, p. 99).

Criticism of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

1. language as context-dependent.

Iwamoto (2005) expresses that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis fails to recognize that language is used within context. Its purely decontextualized textual analysis of language is too one-dimensional and doesn’t consider how we actually use language:

“Whorf’s “neat and simplistic” linguistic relativism presupposes the idea that an entire language or entire societies or cultures are categorizable or typable in a straightforward, discrete, and total manner, ignoring other variables such as contextual and semantic factors .” (Iwamoto, 2005, p. 95)

2. Not universally applicable

Another criticism of the hypothesis is that Sapir & Whorf’s hypothesis cannot be transferred or applied to all languages.

It is difficult to cite empirical studies that confirm that other cultures do not also have similarities in the way concepts are perceived through their language – even if they don’t possess a similar word/expression for a particular concept that is expressed.

3. thoughts can be independent of language

Stephen Pinker, one of Sapir & Whorf’s most emphatic critics, would argue that language is not of our thoughts, and is not a cultural invention that creates perceptions; it is in his opinion, a part of human biology (Meier & Pinker, 1995, pp. 611-612).

He suggests that the acquisition and development of sign language show that languages are instinctual, therefore biological; he even goes so far as to say that “all speech is an illusion”(p. 613).

Cibelli, E., Xu, Y., Austerweil, J. L., Griffiths, T. L., & Regier, T. (2016). The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and Probabilistic Inference: Evidence from the Domain of Color.  PLOS ONE ,  11 (7), e0158725.  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158725

Engle, J. S. (2016). Of Hopis and Heptapods: The Return of Sapir-Whorf.  ETC.: A Review of General Semantics ,  73 (1), 95.  https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-544562276/of-hopis-and-heptapods-the-return-of-sapir-whorf

Iwamoto, N. (2005). The Role of Language in Advancing Nationalism.  Bulletin of the Institute of Humanities ,  38 , 91–113.

Meier, R. P., & Pinker, S. (1995). The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language.  Language ,  71 (3), 610.  https://doi.org/10.2307/416234

Masuda, T., Ishii, K., Miwa, K., Rashid, M., Lee, H., & Mahdi, R. (2017). One Label or Two? Linguistic Influences on the Similarity Judgment of Objects between English and Japanese Speakers. Frontiers in Psychology , 8 . https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01637

Kay, P., & Kempton, W. (1984). What Is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?  American Anthropologist ,  86 (1), 65–79. http://www.jstor.org/stable/679389

Whorf, B. L. (2021).  Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf . Hassell Street Press.

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Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis)

Mia Belle Frothingham

Author, Researcher, Science Communicator

BA with minors in Psychology and Biology, MRes University of Edinburgh

Mia Belle Frothingham is a Harvard University graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Sciences with minors in biology and psychology

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Saul McLeod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

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There are about seven thousand languages heard around the world – they all have different sounds, vocabularies, and structures. As you know, language plays a significant role in our lives.

But one intriguing question is – can it actually affect how we think?

It is widely thought that reality and how one perceives the world is expressed in spoken words and are precisely the same as reality.

That is, perception and expression are understood to be synonymous, and it is assumed that speech is based on thoughts. This idea believes that what one says depends on how the world is encoded and decoded in the mind.

However, many believe the opposite.

In that, what one perceives is dependent on the spoken word. Basically, that thought depends on language, not the other way around.

What Is The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?

Twentieth-century linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf are known for this very principle and its popularization. Their joint theory, known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis or, more commonly, the Theory of Linguistic Relativity, holds great significance in all scopes of communication theories.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that the grammatical and verbal structure of a person’s language influences how they perceive the world. It emphasizes that language either determines or influences one’s thoughts.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that people experience the world based on the structure of their language, and that linguistic categories shape and limit cognitive processes. It proposes that differences in language affect thought, perception, and behavior, so speakers of different languages think and act differently.

For example, different words mean various things in other languages. Not every word in all languages has an exact one-to-one translation in a foreign language.

Because of these small but crucial differences, using the wrong word within a particular language can have significant consequences.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is sometimes called “linguistic relativity” or the “principle of linguistic relativity.” So while they have slightly different names, they refer to the same basic proposal about the relationship between language and thought.

How Language Influences Culture

Culture is defined by the values, norms, and beliefs of a society. Our culture can be considered a lens through which we undergo the world and develop a shared meaning of what occurs around us.

The language that we create and use is in response to the cultural and societal needs that arose. In other words, there is an apparent relationship between how we talk and how we perceive the world.

One crucial question that many intellectuals have asked is how our society’s language influences its culture.

Linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir and his then-student Benjamin Whorf were interested in answering this question.

Together, they created the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which states that our thought processes predominantly determine how we look at the world.

Our language restricts our thought processes – our language shapes our reality. Simply, the language that we use shapes the way we think and how we see the world.

Since the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis theorizes that our language use shapes our perspective of the world, people who speak different languages have different views of the world.

In the 1920s, Benjamin Whorf was a Yale University graduate student studying with linguist Edward Sapir, who was considered the father of American linguistic anthropology.

Sapir was responsible for documenting and recording the cultures and languages of many Native American tribes disappearing at an alarming rate. He and his predecessors were well aware of the close relationship between language and culture.

Anthropologists like Sapir need to learn the language of the culture they are studying to understand the worldview of its speakers truly. Whorf believed that the opposite is also true, that language affects culture by influencing how its speakers think.

His hypothesis proposed that the words and structures of a language influence how its speaker behaves and feels about the world and, ultimately, the culture itself.

Simply put, Whorf believed that you see the world differently from another person who speaks another language due to the specific language you speak.

Human beings do not live in the matter-of-fact world alone, nor solitary in the world of social action as traditionally understood, but are very much at the pardon of the certain language which has become the medium of communication and expression for their society.

To a large extent, the real world is unconsciously built on habits in regard to the language of the group. We hear and see and otherwise experience broadly as we do because the language habits of our community predispose choices of interpretation.

Studies & Examples

The lexicon, or vocabulary, is the inventory of the articles a culture speaks about and has classified to understand the world around them and deal with it effectively.

For example, our modern life is dictated for many by the need to travel by some vehicle – cars, buses, trucks, SUVs, trains, etc. We, therefore, have thousands of words to talk about and mention, including types of models, vehicles, parts, or brands.

The most influential aspects of each culture are similarly reflected in the dictionary of its language. Among the societies living on the islands in the Pacific, fish have significant economic and cultural importance.

Therefore, this is reflected in the rich vocabulary that describes all aspects of the fish and the environments that islanders depend on for survival.

For example, there are over 1,000 fish species in Palau, and Palauan fishers knew, even long before biologists existed, details about the anatomy, behavior, growth patterns, and habitat of most of them – far more than modern biologists know today.

Whorf’s studies at Yale involved working with many Native American languages, including Hopi. He discovered that the Hopi language is quite different from English in many ways, especially regarding time.

Western cultures and languages view times as a flowing river that carries us continuously through the present, away from the past, and to the future.

Our grammar and system of verbs reflect this concept with particular tenses for past, present, and future.

We perceive this concept of time as universal in that all humans see it in the same way.

Although a speaker of Hopi has very different ideas, their language’s structure both reflects and shapes the way they think about time. Seemingly, the Hopi language has no present, past, or future tense; instead, they divide the world into manifested and unmanifest domains.

The manifested domain consists of the physical universe, including the present, the immediate past, and the future; the unmanifest domain consists of the remote past and the future and the world of dreams, thoughts, desires, and life forces.

Also, there are no words for minutes, minutes, or days of the week. Native Hopi speakers often had great difficulty adapting to life in the English-speaking world when it came to being on time for their job or other affairs.

It is due to the simple fact that this was not how they had been conditioned to behave concerning time in their Hopi world, which followed the phases of the moon and the movements of the sun.

Today, it is widely believed that some aspects of perception are affected by language.

One big problem with the original Sapir-Whorf hypothesis derives from the idea that if a person’s language has no word for a specific concept, then that person would not understand that concept.

Honestly, the idea that a mother tongue can restrict one’s understanding has been largely unaccepted. For example, in German, there is a term that means to take pleasure in another person’s unhappiness.

While there is no translatable equivalent in English, it just would not be accurate to say that English speakers have never experienced or would not be able to comprehend this emotion.

Just because there is no word for this in the English language does not mean English speakers are less equipped to feel or experience the meaning of the word.

Not to mention a “chicken and egg” problem with the theory.

Of course, languages are human creations, very much tools we invented and honed to suit our needs. Merely showing that speakers of diverse languages think differently does not tell us whether it is the language that shapes belief or the other way around.

Supporting Evidence

On the other hand, there is hard evidence that the language-associated habits we acquire play a role in how we view the world. And indeed, this is especially true for languages that attach genders to inanimate objects.

There was a study done that looked at how German and Spanish speakers view different things based on their given gender association in each respective language.

The results demonstrated that in describing things that are referred to as masculine in Spanish, speakers of the language marked them as having more male characteristics like “strong” and “long.” Similarly, these same items, which use feminine phrasings in German, were noted by German speakers as effeminate, like “beautiful” and “elegant.”

The findings imply that speakers of each language have developed preconceived notions of something being feminine or masculine, not due to the objects” characteristics or appearances but because of how they are categorized in their native language.

It is important to remember that the Theory of Linguistic Relativity (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) also successfully achieves openness. The theory is shown as a window where we view the cognitive process, not as an absolute.

It is set forth to look at a phenomenon differently than one usually would. Furthermore, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is very simple and logically sound. Understandably, one’s atmosphere and culture will affect decoding.

Likewise, in studies done by the authors of the theory, many Native American tribes do not have a word for particular things because they do not exist in their lives. The logical simplism of this idea of relativism provides parsimony.

Truly, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis makes sense. It can be utilized in describing great numerous misunderstandings in everyday life. When a Pennsylvanian says “yuns,” it does not make any sense to a Californian, but when examined, it is just another word for “you all.”

The Linguistic Relativity Theory addresses this and suggests that it is all relative. This concept of relativity passes outside dialect boundaries and delves into the world of language – from different countries and, consequently, from mind to mind.

Is language reality honestly because of thought, or is it thought which occurs because of language? The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis very transparently presents a view of reality being expressed in language and thus forming in thought.

The principles rehashed in it show a reasonable and even simple idea of how one perceives the world, but the question is still arguable: thought then language or language then thought?

Modern Relevance

Regardless of its age, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or the Linguistic Relativity Theory, has continued to force itself into linguistic conversations, even including pop culture.

The idea was just recently revisited in the movie “Arrival,” – a science fiction film that engagingly explores the ways in which an alien language can affect and alter human thinking.

And even if some of the most drastic claims of the theory have been debunked or argued against, the idea has continued its relevance, and that does say something about its importance.

Hypotheses, thoughts, and intellectual musings do not need to be totally accurate to remain in the public eye as long as they make us think and question the world – and the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis does precisely that.

The theory does not only make us question linguistic theory and our own language but also our very existence and how our perceptions might shape what exists in this world.

There are generalities that we can expect every person to encounter in their day-to-day life – in relationships, love, work, sadness, and so on. But thinking about the more granular disparities experienced by those in diverse circumstances, linguistic or otherwise, helps us realize that there is more to the story than ours.

And beautifully, at the same time, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis reiterates the fact that we are more alike than we are different, regardless of the language we speak.

Isn’t it just amazing that linguistic diversity just reveals to us how ingenious and flexible the human mind is – human minds have invented not one cognitive universe but, indeed, seven thousand!

Kay, P., & Kempton, W. (1984). What is the Sapir‐Whorf hypothesis?. American anthropologist, 86(1), 65-79.

Whorf, B. L. (1952). Language, mind, and reality. ETC: A review of general semantics, 167-188.

Whorf, B. L. (1997). The relation of habitual thought and behavior to language. In Sociolinguistics (pp. 443-463). Palgrave, London.

Whorf, B. L. (2012). Language, thought, and reality: Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. MIT press.

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Sorting Through Sophistries: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

By Gabriel Blanchard

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος ..., should they have sent a poet, really.

Language is a curious thing. Some of the curiousest things about it are some of the most unobtrusive and difficult to explain—often, though not always, because it’s difficult to use a tool on itself. The late Geoffrey Nunberg’s 2004 essay collection, Going Nucular , explored a number of linguistic quirks, some of which uncover surprisingly profound ways our language impacts our reasoning. (Others are merely entertaining, as when he gives his definition of “postmodernism” in a chapter discussing the occasionally unpredictable behavior of prefixes and suffixes 1 ; in the word “postmodern,” Nunberg says, post- appears to mean “once more without feeling.”)

Looming behind mere quirks, however, is a problem in the theory of language. This problem is widely known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis , or as linguistic relativity . It was made more familiar to the public by the 2016 film Arrival , in which a group of aliens called heptapods 2 come to the Earth to help humanity, in return for the help that they will need from humanity, three thousand years from now. The aliens’ neurology and psychology are both radically, well, alien , and so is their language, going as far as to impart, to those humans who can learn it (spoiler in orange), the ability to perceive time differently—the way the heptapods themselves do.

A Rose of Any Other Shade

Now, to be clear, a change that radical is probably not really possible for human brains, and it certainly goes far beyond what academics mean by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. That hypothesis, discussed briefly in the film, is that language does not merely express human thought, but shapes what we are capable of thinking. The theory comes in two forms, 3 strong and weak. The strong version is that language determines what we do and can think; the weak form is that language simply influences those things.

Difficulties of translation between languages abound as examples here, showing how ideas don’t quite line up between one culture and another. Many of these difficulties are fictitious, like the several hundred words the Inuktitut, a.k.a. “Eskimo,” languages ostensibly have for snow. In reality, they have around a dozen: this is more than English, but there’s no need to get silly about it. (Even English has around half a dozen words for it— snow , slush , flurries , frost , hail , and sleet all come to mind, and that’s assuming good old ice doesn’t count.)

However, there are other examples that make the point better. We’ve learnt a great deal since the 1960s about different cultures’ names for colors. 4 In particular, we’ve learnt that they tend to follow a predictable hierarchy. Most languages have at least three basic color words, and many have more, ranging up to about a dozen. What’s striking is that what colors a given language has names for can be predicted pretty reliably, just by knowing how many basic color-words the language has. If it’s three, the colors are dark/black, light/white 5 and red; if it has four, it’s those plus green or yellow; if it has five, it will have both green and yellow; with six, blue is added, and so on. 6

There are exceptions to this pattern, though. The Himba language of northern Namibia is quite unusual: it has five basic colors, so we’d expect to find black , white , red , green , and yellow . But the Himba system has, roughly speaking: blackish , off – white , red , blue-green , and brown . Distinguishing colors the way Himba speakers do may leave them puzzled by differences we’d find intuitive, but it also gives them the ability to notice variations of tone that border on invisible to us (as the experiment described in this article relates).

If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body. ... [T]he tongue ... is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. James 3.2, 8

The strong form of Sapir-Whorf underlies much of the theory of Newspeak in Orwell ‘s famous dystopia. The aim of the Party was, by controlling language, to make revolt against itself unthinkable , in the most literal sense. Fortunately, the strong form of the theory is also provably incorrect—because if it were true, we’d never have found out . Some mutuality among people, no matter how limited, is needed before you can even realize that you don’t understand each other. We can safely label the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as a fallacy.

Is that it? Are we done?

Sapir-Whorf, the Soph’t Version

Well—no. As so often, there are deceits waiting in the wings. They don’t all come from the strong form of Sapir-Whorf; some come from the very simple fact that, though we know about them in principle, we forget in practice to account for differences in perspective, or the way language and context influence our outlook. A few decades ago, the British comedy show Yes, Prime Minister exhibited the power of context—and, as if for the sake of effrontery, did so via the Socratic method! Sir Humphrey Appleby, an experienced civil servant, tells his subordinate (a man named Bernard Woolley) that, with a very few exceptions, opinion polls are not to be trusted—not even taken with a grain of salt, but not trusted at all—because the pollsters, while reporting the answers honestly, don’t have to report how they elicit answers they want. Appleby displays the technique:

HA: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers? BW: Yes. HA: Do you think there is lack of discipline and vigorous training in our Comprehensive Schools? BW: Yes. HA: Do you think young people welcome some structure and leadership in their lives? BW: Yes. … HA: Might you be in favour of reintroducing National Service [i.e., conscription ]? … Yes or no? BW: Yes. HA: Of course, after all you’ve said you can’t say no to that. On the other hand, the surveys can reach opposite conclusions. Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war? BW: Yes. … HA: Do you think there’s a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill? BW: Yes. HA: Do you think it’s wrong to force people to take arms against their will? BW: Yes. HA: Would you oppose the reintroduction of conscription? BW: Yes. [ does a double-take ] HA: There you are, Bernard. The perfectly balanced sample. 7

The Revenge of the Sophists

And our choice of words, or our acceptance of other people’s choice of words, can and does influence our thoughts, especially if we don’t pay attention to what words we choose. If we call something right-wing rather than conservative , or woke rather than progressive , or stagnant rather than unchanged , or irreligious rather than non-religious , or religious rather than Christian , or un-American rather than bad —why? As a rule, it is more important that we know the answer to this question than it is that we change one vocabulary item for another.

The canny reader may have noticed that, in that list of alternative synonyms, the first option is generally slightly negative. Is that really necessary? In a sense, yes. As C. S. Lewis points out in Studies in Words , “the human mind is generally more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define.” This is especially because we are social animals; we generally want to win the applause and welcome of this group and shock the sensibilities of that. This puts us at risk of liking and disliking things before we’ve even really done justice to what they are. And when we like or dislike something, we become increasingly reluctant to change our minds about it, even in the face of mounting evidence.

Typically, dislike is the harder of the two to interrogate and, if necessary, overcome; but liking can be an obstacle to fair judgment too. Think of pairs like refined versus educated , nobility versus landed class , devout versus practicing , loyal versus blinkered , or pristine versus unchanged .

But (you may be asking yourself) how is any of this “the revenge of the Sophists,” by any stretch? Well, we hinted at part of the answer last month, in discussing what we called “the Socratic fallacy” ; knowing something and being able to articulate it are two distinct things, which the Socratic fallacy treats as one. Several of the smarter, more honest Sophists—who did exist, by the by; they included men like Prodicus , Isocrates , and even Protagoras 8 —took a particular interest in language; they paid attention to the difference between words and meaning, and for those who taught rhetoric professionally, part of their profession involved helping their students see the impact of perspective on their ideas and arguments. Protagoras trained his students to argue both sides of every case, not because both sides were equally morally valid (he may have believed that, but if so, what little survives of his writings doesn’t indicate it), but because he expected even the wrong side in any debate to have a point . And even if, as the present author does, we prize the moral and spiritual acumen of Socrates, Plato , and Aristotle more highly than the subtlety of Protagoras, we can all the same concede that Protagoras had a point.

1 E.g., take the suffix – able . Normally it means “susceptible or amenable to,” as in words like fixable or unthinkable . So why is it part of the word comfortable ? 2 Cleverly, in the film, the two heptapods that come to the US are nicknamed Abbott and Costello . 3 Come at me, linguists. Broadly, to simplify, for the sake of a quiet life , there are two. Okay? 4 Much of the following comes from Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution , a book by anthropologist Brent Berlin and linguist Paul Kay, first published in 1969. Their thesis changed in later editions in response to scholarly critique and refined research, but the gist will do for our purposes. 5 As the number of color names increases, “dark” and “light” increasingly denote black and white . 6 Color words are “basic” if they exist in isolation, rather than being lifted from something else: e.g., “red” is basic, but “rust” is named after the substance. English has nearly a dozen basic color words: black , white , red , yellow , green , blue , brown , grey , pink , purple , and orange . (Those last three come at the end because they all began as borrowings—the first from a flower called a “pink,” the next from the famous dye , and the third from the fruit. Cyan and magenta don’t count toward our total because, as loans from Greek and French, they represent a different sort of “borrowing.”) 7 This dialogue comes from Yes, Prime Minister Season 1, Episode 2, “The Ministerial Broadcast.” The series was conceived and written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn; this text was sourced via IMDb’s “Quotes” page for that episode . 8 Pronounced prŏd -ĭ-kŭs, ī- sŏk -rà-tēz, and prō- tăg -ø-ràs. Prodicus in particular, according to some sources, actually taught Socrates.

Gabriēl Blancārdus ēditor prīnceps apud operārium Exāminis Classicæ Eruditiōnis est, atque dōmus ejus in Baltimōrā Mariaterræ.

If you enjoyed this piece, you might also like a three-part discussion from our “Great Conversation” series, going over signs in general , symbols in particular , and one of the most potent symbols in Western culture .

Published on 12th September, 2024. The tagline Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος [en arch ē ēn ho logos] is the first line of the Gospel According to St. John, “In the beginning was the Word,” in its original Greek. If you’re wondering why the author thumbnail for this post is a picture of a manticore, take a look at our pronunciation guide —you may or may not find the explanation satisfying, but you will see the said manticore at a better advantage.

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Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Jul 25, 2014

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Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Ahmet Mesut Ateş March 27, 2013 Applied Linguistics Karadeniz Technical University. Mould and Cloak Theories.

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• linguistic structure doesn
• discrete colours
• whorf hypothesis
• strong contrast
• moderate whorfianism

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Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Ahmet Mesut Ateş March 27, 2013 Applied Linguistics Karadeniz Technical University

Mould and Cloak Theories Within linguistic theory, two extreme positions concerning the relationship between language and thought are commonly referred to as 'mould theories’ and 'cloak theories'. Mould theoriesrepresent language as 'a mould in terms of which thought categories are cast.'Cloak theories represent the view that 'language is a cloak conforming to the customary categories of thought of its speakers' . Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by Ahmet Mesut Ateş

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis The Sapir-Whorf theory, named after the American linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, is a mould theory of language. Sapir (1929)Human beings do not live in the soceity alone. Language of the society predispose certain choices of interpretation about how we view the world. Whorf (1930s) We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. We categorise objects in the scheme laid by the language and if we do not subscribe to these classification we cannot talk or communicate. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by Ahmet Mesut Ateş

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis consists of two associated principle: • Linguistic Determinism • Linguistic Relativity Linguistic Determinism: Language may determine our thinking patterns, the way we view and think about the world. Linguistic Determinism is also called «strong determinism» Linguistic Relativity: the less similar the languages more diverse their conceptualization of the world; different languages view the worl differently. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by Ahmet Mesut Ateş

Whorfian Perspective vs Universalism The Whorfian perspective is that translation between one language and another is at the very least, problematic, and sometimes impossible. According to the Whorfian stance, 'content' is bound up with linguistic 'form', and the use of the medium contributes to shaping the meaning: 'it is impossible to mean the same thing in two (or more) different ways.' The Whorfian perspective is in strong contrast to the extreme universalism of those who adopt the cloak theory. Universalists argue that we can say whatever we want to say in any language, and that whatever we say in one language can always be translated into another: Even totally different languages are not untranslatable. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by Ahmet Mesut Ateş

Whorfian Perspective vs Universalism In the context of the written word, the 'untranslatability' claim is generally regarded as strongest in the arts and weakest in the case of formal scientific papers (although rhetorical studies have increasingly blurred any clear distinctions). And within the literary domain, 'untranslatability' was favoured by Romantic literary theorists, for whom the connotative, emotional or personal meanings of words were crucial. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by Ahmet Mesut Ateş

Moderate Whorfianism Moderate Whorfianism differs from deterministWhorfianism in these ways: • Patterns of thinking can be influenced rather than determined, • Language influences the way we see the world and it is influenced by that also, • Any influence should be ascribed to the variety in a language rather than the language itself (sociolect*), • Influence can be seen on the social context but not in purely linguistic form. Sociolect:the language used primarily by members of a articular social group. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by Ahmet Mesut Ateş

Advantages of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Advantages* of Linguistics Determinism: • Language does exert great influence on patterns of thinking and therefore on culture • Language may reinforce certain ideas and push them into attention Advantages of Linguistic Relativity: • There can be differences in the semantic associations of concepts • Encoding of life experience in language is not exclusively accesible to everyone but only to members of that certain social group • Linguistic structure doesn’t constrain what people think but only influence what they routinely think • Language reflects cultural preoccupations «Advantage» means in this context generally accepted or proved part of SWH. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by Ahmet Mesut Ateş

Disadvantages of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Whorf claimed (1940): if, between two different languages, one has many words for closely related objects while other has relatively limited vocabulary users of L1 should have noted perceptually characteristics of the objects. BUT this doesn’t prove English speaking people do not have the ability to distinguis characteristics. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by Ahmet Mesut Ateş

Disadvantages of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Sapir-Whorf hypothesis asserts that each language has a unique system and thus cross-cultural undertanding is impossible. BUT we have: • Perceptional universsals (different languages may express the same thought) • Cultural universal (each language has taboos, implements, slang) • Features to distinguish family and relatives (by seniority, biological bond or sex) • Languages may exhibit a shared attitude towards one thing (respect for elderly, objects of fear, concept of blasphemy) Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by Ahmet Mesut Ateş

Disadvantages of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is self-conflicting. It claims that «language determines thought» but also «there is no limits to diversity of languages». If there is no limit to diversity language cannot determine thought to a great extent to be called «determination» rather than «influence». AND many scholars indicate that human thought is universal. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by Ahmet Mesut Ateş

Disadvantages of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis • From a historical stand pint it SHOULD be society and culture that determine language because social enviroment exert great influence upon percptual ability. BUT decise factor is NOT the language. • If language determines the world view there would be NO class conscious because every member of the society would view the world same and think by the same thinking patterns. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by Ahmet Mesut Ateş

Further application of SWH There are many studies on Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis but a majority of these studies focus on these main problems: • Perception of time continuity in languages • Dividing time periodically (i.e. English) • Not dividing (i.e. Indonesian) • Dividing time by source of knowledge (i.e. Turkish) • Perception of snow • Eskimo languages vs English • Perception of colours • Universal colours vs local colours • Counting systems Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by Ahmet Mesut Ateş

Further application of SWH A study (Berlin & Kay) on colour perception which claimed that a regular, universal systemof colour categorisation existed across the world’s languages: while the number ofnames of discrete colours varies across languages, these are based on a set of focalcolours. Furthermore, research done on a stone-age cultural group in Indonesia, theDani, by Rosch Heider (1972) suggested that members of the group, despite only havingtwo colourcategories, perceived colours in much the same way as English speakers. Of course not all languages follow thepredetermined order and too little is known about a great number of the world’s languagesto be able to formulate universally valid hypotheses Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by Ahmet Mesut Ateş

References Chandler, D. (1994). The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. 27.03.2013, http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/whorf.html Delaney,M.S.(2010). Can the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis save theplanet? Lessons from cross-cultural psychology for critical language policy.Current Issues inLanguage Planning, 11:4, 331-340. LIANG,H. (2011). The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and Foreign Language Teaching and Learning. US-China Foreign Language, 9, 569-574. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by Ahmet Mesut Ateş

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• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
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The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the  linguistic theory that the semantic structure of a language shapes or limits the ways in which a speaker forms conceptions of the world. It came about in 1929. The theory is named after the American anthropological linguist Edward Sapir (1884–1939) and his student Benjamin Whorf (1897–1941). It is also known as the   theory of linguistic relativity, linguistic relativism, linguistic determinism, Whorfian hypothesis , and Whorfianism .

History of the Theory

The idea that a person's native language determines how he or she thinks was popular among behaviorists of the 1930s and on until cognitive psychology theories came about, beginning in the 1950s and increasing in influence in the 1960s. (Behaviorism taught that behavior is a result of external conditioning and doesn't take feelings, emotions, and thoughts into account as affecting behavior. Cognitive psychology studies mental processes such as creative thinking, problem-solving, and attention.)

Author Lera Boroditsky gave some background on ideas about the connections between languages and thought:

"The question of whether languages shape the way we think goes back centuries; Charlemagne proclaimed that 'to have a second language is to have a second soul.' But the idea went out of favor with scientists when  Noam Chomsky 's theories of language gained popularity in the 1960s and '70s. Dr. Chomsky proposed that there is a  universal grammar  for all human languages—essentially, that languages don't really differ from one another in significant ways...." ("Lost in Translation." "The Wall Street Journal," July 30, 2010)

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was taught in courses through the early 1970s and had become widely accepted as truth, but then it fell out of favor. By the 1990s, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was left for dead, author Steven Pinker wrote. "The cognitive revolution in psychology, which made the study of pure thought possible, and a number of studies showing meager effects of language on concepts, appeared to kill the concept in the 1990s... But recently it has been resurrected, and 'neo-Whorfianism' is now an active research topic in  psycholinguistics ." ("The Stuff of Thought. "Viking, 2007)

Neo-Whorfianism is essentially a weaker version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and says that language  influences  a speaker's view of the world but does not inescapably determine it.

The Theory's Flaws

One big problem with the original Sapir-Whorf hypothesis stems from the idea that if a person's language has no word for a particular concept, then that person would not be able to understand that concept, which is untrue. Language doesn't necessarily control humans' ability to reason or have an emotional response to something or some idea. For example, take the German word  sturmfrei , which essentially is the feeling when you have the whole house to yourself because your parents or roommates are away. Just because English doesn't have a single word for the idea doesn't mean that Americans can't understand the concept.

There's also the "chicken and egg" problem with the theory. "Languages, of course, are human creations, tools we invent and hone to suit our needs," Boroditsky continued. "Simply showing that speakers of different languages think differently doesn't tell us whether it's language that shapes thought or the other way around."

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Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Sapir-whorf hypothesis the sapir-whorf hypothesis revolves around the idea that language has power and can control how you see the world. language is a guide to your ... – powerpoint ppt presentation.

• The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis revolves around the idea that language has power and can control how you see the world. Language is a guide to your reality, structuring your thoughts. It provides the framework through which you make sense of the world.
• Linguistic determinism the language we use to some extent determines the way in which we view and think about the world around us.
• Linguistic relativity people who speak different languages perceive and think about the world quite differently from one another.
• Example 1 Gasoline barrels
• Example 2 Inuit words for snow Apache place-names (Basso reading)
• Example 3 Hopi conceptions of time
• Example 4 Color words
• Example 5 Piraha lack of number words

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