WHORFIAN THEORY AND

LANGUAGE

Introduction
Language is such a powerfull toll in the human nature . Many
claim that is this characteristic that really distinguishes from
other animals such as primates .
The acquisition and development of language could be traced
back in our achestors past . Enviroment influences and survival
demands made the brain develop more and that how we
managed to develop speech and other ways of communication .
Psychology always had a big enigma regarding the influence of
language to cognition and human rational mind. Many theories
have been proposed .
This presentation will focus on the WHORFIAN theory by
describing its main points and various findings from research
and experiments on this area of psychology ( psycholinguistics).

Whorfian Sapir theory

Whorf was a linguistic student in 1950 USA.
According to him language influences the ways that
members of a culture see the world
He made research on native americans and language .
Developed the theory of Language Relativism .
2 versions
(Eysenck (2005).

Strong version
Language Determinism
Strong hypothesis claims that language determine
totally cognition and perception and limits their
understanding .
This means that every language operates strictly in
this constraining range of abilities .
People with different languages think differently .
Several experiments on colour categorisation ,
spatial abilities and memory were conducted with
diverse results .
Eysenck (2005)

Research and evidence of

strong theory

Research by Hoffman ,Lau and Jonhson (1987) on english and

chinese bilinguals on description of persons showed evidence for
the strong hypothesis .
They had to read descriptions of persons and then to decribe them
freely
The results were that both cultures used different ways to describe
the persons and mainly used cultural stereotypic adjectives and
thus chinese and English people made different conclusions .
Eysenck (2005)

Experiments on spatial reasoning

Differences on spatial reasoning and understanding
through languages
Pedderson et al (1998) made an experiment with
spatial tasks .
Two categories relative system ( up ,down , left , right
) and absolute system ( north,south east ,west ).
Participants had to do some spatial tasks by using
either system .
Results : participants choice determined by spatial
understanding of their language.
Eysenck ( 2005)

Experiments on Colour
Categorization
Strong Hypothesis calims that exist
basic colour categories which are
universal .
People know only colours that they
have a words in their language .
Categorical Perception : People
understand better colours which are
in different categories than the
same.
Robertson et al (2000)

Robertson at al (2000)
Robertson et al (2000)
Tested English participants and
Berino natives
English have colour categories of
blue and green Berino have
different .
Participants were presented with 3
stimuli colours and had to select the
most similar
Results : Each group answers was

Evaluation
The results of Whorfian hypothesis are
conflicting .
Today a more relative model is followed .
Determinissm theory too constraining
not flexible .
Research showed also weaker influence
of language.
Enviromental influences very strong on
language

Enviromental influnces
One should bare in mind that since language has been an evolutionary
adaptation achievement by the humans this means that environment of the
person asks big influence on the actual development of the particular
language .
A person from Africa might find it difficult to understand snow white colour
because the person has never seen snow for example.
Another environmental influence is the example of the people of Solomon
islands in the south pacific. Their culture has coconut in great esteem .So
these people have 9 words for coconut
The same happens in asia cultures who have different names for rice
because they are really depend their nutrition mainly on rice whereas in
europe we usually have on word for rice
And the brain works with ways that try to be cost effective meaning the
brain trys to produce mental products whethever they might be by working
with the most fast efficient way

References
1) Eysenck M, Keane M (2005)
Cognitive Psychology Students
Handbook , Psychology Press .