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Annotated Bibliography

Speaking in Thought: How Language Affects Thoughts

Cameron Burkey

Professor Malcolm Campbell

Writing 1103

22 October 2019
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Hussein, Basel. “The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Today.” ​Theory and Practice in Language

Studies​, vol. 2, Mar. 2012, doi.org/10.4304/tpls.2.3.642-646, pp. 642–46. Accessed: 26

Sept. 2019

The academic article begins with a quick introduction to the concept of linguistic

relativity—the theory that language can shape the perspective of its speakers—and its

origins in German philosophy. Wilhelm von Humboldt, a Prussian philosopher known for

his linguistic analysis, government work and beliefs, and founder of the Humboldt

University of Berlin, largely brought the idea of linguistic relativity into the not yet

existing field of linguistics. However, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis really takes off under

the two men for whom it is named, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. Sapir was an

anthropologist and is seen by many as the founder of linguistics as a formal discipline. He

argued that language changed the perception of the world for its speakers and that, since

different language systems exist, people who speak these languages perceive the world

differently. Whereas Sapir believed that language can influence perception, Whorf took

the more “radical” viewpoint in his theory, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, arguing that

language actually defines the speaker’s reality. German linguist Helmut Gipper argues

the question is not whether language affects our perception of reality, but to what extent

does it do so? The article concludes by explaining Whorf’s strictly deterministic approach

to linguistic relativity “may not have been right on all accounts,” but it does bear some

merit. Language does play a role in how we think; like Gipper said, what has yet to be

established is how much it does. The author, Basel Al-Sheikh Hussein, received his Ph.D.

from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Germany and worked as an instructor of
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linguistics at the University of Takreet and an assistant professor at the Al-Isra

University, the Al- Zarka University, and the Al- Zaytoonah University. This article was

published 7 years ago which may seem like a long time but, in the world of linguistics, it

isn’t, so I believe the article to be relatively current. The article covers the Sapir-Whorf

hypothesis of linguistic relativity, which is my topic, so it is very relevant to my EIP. He

presents information found from numerous reliable sources (though none of them are

from after 2000 but like I explained earlier, linguistics is based upon a lot of old

information and 20 years is a relatively short amount of time) and thus I conclude that the

article is not only reliable but extremely useful as a general outline of the theory of

linguistic relativity.

Linguistic Society of America​. The Linguistic Society of America, linguisticsociety.org.

Accessed: 17 Oct. 2019.

For a more broad exploration of linguistics in general, I chose the website for the

Linguistic Society of America (LSA), an organization whose goal is to make the study of

language more prominent. They publish numerous scholarly journals relating to

language, some of which are ​Language​, ​Semantics and Pragmatics​, and ​Phonological

Data and Analysis.​ The LSA holds annual meetings at which over 300 papers and posters

are presented, special lectures and book exhibits take place, and other organizations

related to linguistics in America meet including the American Dialect Society, the

American Name Society, and others. Every other summer, the LSA sponsors a

month-long Linguistic Institute which gives hundreds of participants (students and

professionals alike) the opportunity to participate in courses and seminars. As a

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prominent organization in the world of linguistics, especially in America, this

organization can definitely be trusted with exploring what linguistics actually is and why

it’s important which is definitely relevant to my topic. The website should definitely be

biased towards anything that furthers language or makes it a better topic of study. This

bias, however, is not necessarily bad as the main goal of the organization is to further the

study of language.

Smith, Kerri. “Perception Coloured by Language.” ​Nature,​ 3 Mar. 2008. Doi:

10.1038/news.2008.638. nature.com/news/2008/080303/full/news.2008.638.html.

Accessed: 16 Oct. 2019.

This news article reviews a study by Paul Kay, a professor of linguistics at the University

of California, Berkeley, on when the perception of color switches from the right side of

the brain to the left side. The significance of where the brain processes color lies in where

language is processed as well: the left side. Kay found babies tend to process colors on

the right side of their brain while adults tend to process them on the left side. He

concluded that, with prior evidence from previous color-related studies, that language

could very well be the determining factor in how people process colors. Before we learn

to speak a language, our brains interpret color on the right sides of our brains. However,

once we’ve established colors’ relationships to language, our brains use the definitions of

colors that are created to categorize them, using the left side of our brain. Jonathan A.

Winawer, an associate professor of psychology at the New York University, agrees that

language is a “good candidate for the difference,” as Smith writes. He argues that there

are many differences between adults and babies, however, so it may not be a single cause
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or it could be something entirely different and it’s purely a coincidence. In another report

published in the ​Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences​, Kay and his team

found that, when presented with colors that were easier to define in their native language,

subject’s brains were more active in the parts of the brain where language was typically

processed. Colors that were more difficult to name, however, produced less activation in

these areas. Kay concludes that these results prove (or strongly suggest) that language is

an integral part of color perception, which supports the linguistic relativity theory.

Winawer once again agrees that the evidence could very well agree that language is an

integral part of perception, but he also argues that it, as with the other experiment, is not

direct absolutely proof of linguistic relativity as it relates to color perception. Smith then

explains Whorf’s hypothesis and goes into more detail about a study by Chiyoko

Kobayashi from Cornell University. Kobayashi’s study determined that fields such as

understanding others’ thought processes, called the theory of mind, are reliant upon

language. Kerri Smith has been a journalist for the Nature journal since 2006 and has a

degree in human sciences from Oxford. Her sources for this article are entirely from

academic journal articles and thus, I conclude, are reliable. She also includes the slight

skepticism from Winawer to remain unbiased on the subject and present opposing

viewpoints for a more whole view of the subject matter. The article was published in

2008 which is relatively recently so I believe it to be current. I conclude that this article is

reliable and I plan to use it in my extended inquiry project as it helps support the

argument that some aspects of perception may be influenced by the language we speak,

though it isn’t as strong as some previous philosophers argued.

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