Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The Sapir-Whorf HypothesisSapir (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.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Whorf (1941)

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.

The Sapir-Whorf HypothesisHistory The idea was first clearly expressed by

19th century thinkers, such as Wilhelm von Humboldt who saw language as the expression of the spirit of a nation. The early 20th century school of American Anthropology headed by Franz Boas and Edward Sapir also embraced the idea.

Trudgill peter

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis can be divided into two basic components

a) Linguistic determinism:

b) Linguistic relativity:

Language detemines thought One well-known example Whorf used to

support his theory was the number of words the Eskimo Language has for ‘snow for example ‘apun’ snow on the ground ‘qanikca’ hard snow on the qround ‘ etc.

Arabic has many words for different kinds of camels,in Chinese there is only one term luotuo and in English there is camel

Whorfian Perspective

The Whorfian perspective is that translation between one language and another is at the very least, problematic, and sometimes impossible.

.  One such example is of the Punjabi word “joot.” 

Supporting Evidence

Linguistic relativity is valid and has influence on thought and perception.

Language does exert great influence on patterns of thinking and therefore on culture

Hopi language v/s Western languages

Grammatical structure difference

Criticism

Fromkin view, Noam Chomsky and 

Steven Pinker have criticized him for not being sufficiently clear in his formulation of how he meant languages influences thought, and for not providing actual proof of his assumptions.

Criticism

One of Whorf's central arguments in his paper on language determining thought was that the Hopi terminology for time gave the Hopi a different and unique understanding of how time worked, distinct from the typical Western conception of time. Pinker (1994) argues that Whorf had never actually met anyone from the Hopi tribe and that, the Hopi conception of time was not so different from the traditional Western understanding of it.

criticism

The problem of translatability: May not have the exact word but are

able to express their ideas and thoughts using other words or word combination.

Thank You