The Sapir-Whorf Theory

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is regarded to be
as the Linguisitic theory according to which the
semantic structure of a language conditions
i.e. shapes or limits the ways in which a speaker
forms conceptions of the world. In other words
it studies the relationship between language
and thought.
 The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
The theory came about in 1929. It is named
after the American anthropologists and linguist
Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Whorf.
The theory is also known as the theory of
linguistic relativity, linguistic relativism,
linguistic determinism, Whorfian hypothesis,
and Whorfianism.
 The Sapir-Whorf Theory
The Sapir-Wharf theory states that the
structure of a language determines or greatly
influences the modes of thought and behaviour
characteristic of the culture in which it is
spoken.
On the basis of their writings, however, two
proposals emerged, generating decades of
controversy among anthropologists, linguists,
philosophers, and psychologists.
Arguments vs Counter Arguments
One of Whorf’s best known arguments for linguist
determinism stems from his study of the Hopi Indians, a
Native American tribe from Arizona.

They speak a Northern Uto-Aztecan language.

Early 21st-century population estimates indicated more

than 15,000 individuals of Hopi descent.
Hopi Indians
 Arguments vs Counter Arguments
Whorf believed that the tribe spoke without using
phrases that referred to time, omitting past or future
tenses. This lack of time terminology led him to
believe that the tribe lived their life without
abiding by the concept of time at all.

However, it was later determined that Whorf’s

theory of the Hopi people speaking without tense
phrases was incorrect.
 Arguments vs Counter Arguments
Another, frequently cited example of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
comes from the observation that the Inuit Tribe has many
different terms for snow. The thinking, then, was that Eskimos
had a better understanding, or more refined perception, of snow
thanks to the fact that they had numerous ways to describe it.

This claim, along with many other Whorfian ideas, have been
discredited. argued against and rejected by linguists. For one, it
could be contended that English speakers also have a great deal of
terms for snow (sleet, slush, flakes, flurries, etc.) – why wouldn’t
Whorf attribute this same understanding of snow to European
speakers?
Inuit women and child in traditional
parkas
 Criticism
Cassanto (2012) states that neither the anthropological
linguist Edward Sapir nor his student Benjamin Whorf
ever formally stated any single hypothesis about the
influence of language on non-linguistic cognition and
perception.

As mentioned above there exist two proposals or

attitudes, generating decades of controversy among
=
anthropologists, linguists, philosophers, and
psychologists.
 Criticism
According to the more radical proposal, linguistic
determinism, the languages that people speak rigidly
determine the way they perceive and understand the
world.
On the more moderate proposal, linguistic relativity,
habits of using language influence habits of thinking.
As a result, people who speak different languages
think differently in predictable ways.
 Criticism

During the second of the 20th century, the Sapir-

Whorf hypothesis was widely regarded as false.
Around the turn of the 21st century, however,
experimental evidence reopened debate about the
extent to which language shapes nonlinguistic
cognition and perception. Scientific tests of linguistic
determinism and linguistic relativity help to clarify
what is universal in the human mind and what
depends on the particulars of people’s physical and
social experience.
 Criticism
General Overviews and Foundational Texts Writing on
the relationship between language and thought
predates Sapir and Whorf, and extends beyond the
academy. The 19th-century German philosopher
Wilhelm von Humboldt argued that language
constrains people’s worldview, foreshadowing the idea
of linguistic determinism later articulated in Sapir 1929
and Whorf 1956 (Humboldt 1988).
 The theory in the 21 century
The intuition that language radically determines
thought has been explored in works of fiction such as
Orwell’s dystopian fantasy 1984 (Orwell 1949).
Although there is little empirical support for radical
linguistic determinism, more moderate forms of
linguistic relativity continue to generate influential
research, reviewed from an anthropologist’s
perspective in Lucy 1997, from a psychologist’s
perspective in Hunt and Agnoli 1991, and discussed
from multidisciplinary perspectives in Gumperz and
Levinson 1996 and Gentner and Goldin-Meadow 2003
 The theory in the 21 century
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 .
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.