linguistic relativity - eszterházy károly university

Linguistic Relativity

The Whorfian Hypothesis


Linguistic Determinism & Linguistic Relativity


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Linguistic Determinism & Linguistic Relativity

Linguistic Determinism

“Your first language determines the way you perceive and think about the world.”


“Speakers of different languages perceive and think about the world differently

BECAUSE their first language is different.”

(Note the scare quotes around both claims!)


The Whorfian “Hypothesis”


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1 The Whorfian “Hypothesis”

“We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories

and types we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because

they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a

kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and

this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up,

organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we

are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way—an agreement that holds

throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language.

The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, BUT ITS TERMS ARE

ABSOLUTELY OBLIGATORY; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the

organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees.” (Whorf

1956:213–214)

Be very, very, very CAREFUL!

FALSE CLAIMS; some elements true but irrelevant, therefore NO

ARGUMENTS for the claims; equivocal style




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2 A quick look at what is wrong with Whorf’s “hypothesis”

“We dissect nature [metaphor] along lines laid down by our native languages. [no

evidence] The categories and types we isolate from the world [incoherent; not

isolated, but mentally constructed] of phenomena we do not find there because

they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a

kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and

this means largely by the linguistic systems [no evidence] in our minds. We cut

nature up,[metaphor] organize it into concepts,[obscure metaphor/incoherent] and

ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement

[incoherent; cognition is not a matter of agreement] to organize it [incoherent

metaphor] in this way—an agreement [metaphor] that holds throughout our speech

community [speech confused with language] and is codified in the patterns of our

language. [language does not “codify” cognition!] The agreement is, of course, an

implicit and unstated one, [language is not a matter of agreement at all!] BUT ITS

TERMS ARE ABSOLUTELY OBLIGATORY; we cannot talk [speech confused with

language] at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data

which the agreement decrees.” [incoherent; language is not a prescriptive data

classification system!]




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3 What is wrong with Whorf’s “hypothesis”—a closer look

“We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages.”

No, we don’t.

We don’t “dissect nature.” You dissect nature when, e.g., you cut a mountain in

two—but that is rare, and that is not what Whorf means.

“We dissect nature” — can only be taken as a metaphor. Interpreted

benevolently, it can be regarded as a metaphorical description of an aspect of

cognition: We construct concepts and project them on to “nature”, the world out

there, as we perceive it (e.g., color concepts). (NB there are no colors “out there.”)

But: Cognition ≠ Language!

Nonlinguistic creatures (such as dogs etc.) perceive the world and “dissect” it.

There is such a thing as animal cognition. Dogs, e.g., don’t have language, but

they have minds, which allow them to understand things. Dogs know things about

the world and can feel pain, although they cannot talk about their knowledge or

pain. You don’t need to know the word for pain to know that you are in pain when

you are in pain.




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“categories and types we isolate from the world of phenomena”

“The categories and types we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find

there because they stare every observer in the face” — tricky sentence!

Correct, although in part incoherent. Categories and types indeed “don’t stare

every observer in the face.” Correct. But it is not because of this that we “do not

find [them] there.” We don’t find them there at all simply because they are not

there.

We don’t “isolate” categories and types “from the world”, because they are not in

the world. Categories are not isolated from the world but constructed in minds.

Once they are mentally constructed, the same mind that has constructed them can

project them onto the world as it is perceived by it. When a mind projects

concepts onto the world it “pretends” or “believes” that “they’re out there.”

That is what we do with the “laws of nature.” Laws of nature are mental

constructs, elements of a hypothesis. Once constructed, they are attributed to the

world out there, as though they were out there or as though they were properties of

the world out there. That’s how a physical hypothesis is a hypothesis of the world

out there.




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“Categories and types,” etc. are conceptual constructs, not physical objects or

physical properties of physical objects. They are not “isolated from the world of

phenomena,” but instead they are constructed in the mind. So indeed, they don’t

“stare every observer in the face.”




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the “kaleidoscopic flux of impressions… has to be organized by our

minds… largely by the linguistic systems in our minds”

“largely by the linguistic systems in our minds” — Very tricky, because equivocal!

What is meant by linguistic systems — in the plural?

a. a language, such as English, Hungarian, etc. — Different linguistic

systems are different languages.

b. Subsystems of Language: Syntax and the Lexicon as components of the

Faculty of Language

If the term linguistic system is a synonym of a language—the relativistic

interpretation (!)—then Whorf is wrong, unless he offers evidence, which he

doesn’t, because he cannot, as there isn’t any.

If the term linguistic system is a synonym of language (without the article!), then it

is not the relativistic view at all! Quite the contrary — it is the universalist view of

Chomsky and Hinzen. On the universalist view, general principles of syntax are

universal. And the structure of thoughts such universal syntactic principles

construct is also universal (cf. Hinzen 2007). This would refute Whorf’s idea

completely.




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Propositions are a universal category of thought. E.g., ‘John is a farmer’ is the

same thought — F(j) — everywhere, regardless of its linguistic form. If Hinzen

(2007) is right, such propositional thoughts are constructed by linguistic syntax.

This syntax is not Hungarian syntax or English syntax, etc., but it is the syntax of

natural language (without an article!).

Whorf’s formulation of the idea is very tricky, because it may be equivocal to the

modern reader, even if it was unequivocally deterministic and relativistic for

Whorf himself at the time.




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Two different types of linguistic determinism (Whorf’s and Hinzen’s)

What emerges from the discussion of the ambiguity of the term linguistic system in

Whorf’s usage is that we may distinguish between two different types of

linguistic determinism—one is Whorfian, the other is Hinzenian.

Whorfian linguistic determinism is this, repeated:

“Your first language determines the way you perceive and think about the world.”

Hinzenian linguistic determinism is fundamentally different:

Universal properties of language determine universal (propositional) aspects

of thought.

Whorfian linguistic determinism predicts linguistic relativity.

Hinzenian linguistic determinism precludes it.

Linguistic relativity is the logical consequence of Whorfian linguistic

determinism.

Linguistic relativity is inconsistent with Hinzenian linguistic determinism.

Whorfian linguistic determinism (LD) is relativistic; Hinzenian LD is universalist.




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3.1

“We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we

do…”—More or less correct.

Indeed, we do construct structured (or, if you like, “organized”) conceptual

representations of the world out there (“the kaleidoscopic flux of impressions”);

we attribute properties to things, where both the “properties” and the “things” are

mental representations, projected (by the mind) onto the “flux of impressions”,

which creates an “aboutness” relation between mind-internal representations and

the world external to the mind. (Philosophers sometimes call that relation

“intentionality”, which has nothing to do with human intention in the conventional

sense.)

“…largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way…”

No!

Cognition is not a matter of agreement. “This way” (in which “we cut nature up

[and] organize it into concepts”) is not dictated by any agreement; we do it the

way we do because the human cognitive faculty is the way it is.




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“…an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in

the patterns of our language.” —Hopelessly incoherent.

Nothing at all is “codified” in the patterns of a language. Patterns of a language,

such as the English passive construction, e.g., do not codify any agreement at all

about the manner in which the world is to be dissected.

The words of a language do not codify that either. Neither structure, nor the words

prescribe anything about the way the world ‘ought to’ be cut up. There is nothing

in any language that stops any of its speakers from having a new thought, not yet

“codified” by their language, and coining a new word for it. Quite the contrary:

language offers the means to do that.

It is regularly necessary in science to coin new words for new concepts (see Merge

in minimalist syntax, binding, c-command, etc. in GB, exaptation in evolutionary

biology, gerrymandering in politics, etc.)…

and ordinary behavior in children (pik—a four-year-old Hungarian child’s word

for ‘draw pictures’; “Az Internet megbízhatatlan, mert nincs rektora” —

constructed by an eight-year-old [the same child who invented the word pik when

she was 4]).




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“…speech community…patterns of our language” — possible signs of confusion:

mistaking speech for language. Speech ≠ Language.

“we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification

of data which the agreement decrees” — Complete confusion.

“Talk”/speech confused with language.

Language does make speech possible, but it does not prescribe or decree anything

about it at all.

Language is not a matter of agreement, least of all an agreement that decrees the

“classification of data.”

Language is not a data classification system. It is a symbolic system.

Whether a porcupine is vertebrate or not, mammal or not, rodent or not, herbivore

or not, etc. is not a question of language, least of all a question of whether a

language does or does not have a word for it.




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4

Whorf: epistemological / cognitive relativity is caused by linguistic relativity

“We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all

observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the

universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be

calibrated” (Whorf 1956:214).

No two observers are ever led by the same physical evidence to exactly the same

“picture of the universe”, even if they speak the same language in the conventional

sense. And conversely, an English speaker’s “picture of the universe” may be just

as close to a Hungarian’s as it is to another English speaker’s.

Szent-Györgyi’s first language was Hungarian. But that did not prevent him from

thinking about human physiology in ways many other biochemists did in the

English-speaking world, where he eventually moved. Vitamin C, which he

discovered, is no more Hungarian than it is English; it is neither.




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5 Counterarguments against the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

5.1 If people’s thoughts “were represented entirely in natural language,” they

would never “have thoughts that are difficult to express” (Wolff and Holmes

2011:254, see also Pinker 1994).

5.2 People understand ambiguous expressions like “Children make nutritious

snacks.” If each thought was encoded in a different sentence, i.e., if each sentence

encoded a different thought, then there would be no such thing as an ambiguous

sentence (Wolff and Holmes 2011:254, see also Pinker 1994).

5.3 “If people thought entirely in words, words expressing new concepts could

never be coined because there would be no way of imagining their meanings”

(Wolff and Holmes 2011:254).

5.4 Infants, without adult language, and nonhuman primates, without any natural

language at all, “are capable of relatively sophisticated forms of thinking” (Wolff

and Holmes 2011:254).




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5.5 If all thoughts were encoded in words, we would never have had Einstein’s

theories of relativity, Maxwell’s electromagnetic fields, etc., because they

originated not in verbal but in geometrical thinking (Pinker 1994:70–71).

This much is (more than) enough to refute the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis.

Much less is enough:

5.6 “… there is no scientific evidence that languages dramatically shape their

speakers’ ways of thinking” (Pinker 1994:58).

5.7 Whorf’s arguments, when he offers any at all, are, at best, circular.

“Whorf did not actually study any Apaches; it is not clear that he ever met one.

His assertions about Apache psychology are based entirely on Apache grammar—

making his argument circular. Apaches speak differently, so they must think

differently. How do we know that they think differently? Just listen to the way

they speak!” (Pinker 1994:61)




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5.8 Color terms

“Eyes… contain three kinds of cones, each with a different pigment, and the cones

are wired to neurons in a way that makes the neurons respond best to red patches

against a green background or vice versa, blue against yellow, black against white.

No matter how influential language might be, it would seem preposterous to a

physiologist that it could reach down into the retina and rewire the ganglion cells.”

(Pinker 1994:62)

5.9 Time and Hopi people

A Hopi speaker “has no general notion or intuition of TIME as a smooth flowing

continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at an equal rate, out of a

future through a present into a past” (Whorf 1956:57).

“the Hopi language is seen to contain no words, grammatical forms, constructions

or expressions that refer directly to what we call “time,” or to past, present, or

future, or to enduring or lasting” (Whorf 1956:57).

Both statements are entirely false.




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“In his extensive study of the Hopi, the anthropologist Ekkehart Malotki…

showed that Hopi speech contains tense, metaphors for time, units of time

(including days, numbers of days, parts of the day, yesterday and tomorrow, days

of the week, weeks, months, lunar phases, seasons, and the year), ways to quantify

units of time, and words like “ancient,” “quick,” “long time,” and “finished.” Their

culture keeps records with sophisticated methods of dating, including a horizon-

based sun calendar, exact ceremonial day sequences, knotted calendar strings,

notched calendar sticks, and several devices for timekeeping using the principle of

the sundial. No one is really sure how Whorf came up with his outlandish claims,

but his limited, badly analyzed sample of Hopi speech and his long-time leanings

toward mysticism must have contributed.” (Pinker 1994:63)




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5.10 The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax

“Contrary to popular belief, the Eskimos do not have more words for snow than do

speakers of English. They do not have four hundred words for snow, as it has been

claimed in print, or two hundred, or one hundred, or forty-eight, or even nine. One

dictionary puts the figure at two. Counting generously, experts can come up with

about a dozen, but by such standards English would not be far behind, with snow,

sleet, slush, blizzard, avalanche, hail, hardpack, powder, flurry, dusting, and…

snizzling.” (Pinker 1994:64)

How it all started

Earliest reference to “four lexically unrelated words for snow in Eskimo” by Boas

(1911:25–26). (Martin 1986:418)

“In 1911 Boas casually mentioned that Eskimos used four unrelated word roots for

snow. Whorf embellished the count to seven and implied that there were more. His

article was widely reprinted, then cited in textbooks and popular books on

language, which led to successively inflated estimates in other textbooks, articles,

and newspaper columns of Amazing Facts.” (Pinker 1994:64)




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100 by 1984 in the New York Times (February 9, 1984):

“…citing Whorf in reference to a “tribe” distinguishing “one hundred types of

snow”” (Martin 1986:420).

“…even if there were a large number of roots for different snow types in some

Arctic language, this would not, objectively, be intellectually interesting; it would

be a most mundane and unremarkable fact... Utterly boring, even if true.” (Pullum

1989:278–79, also cited in Pinker 1994:64–65)

“…the more you think about the Eskimo vocabulary hoax, the more stupid it gets”

(Pullum 1989:279).

5.11 Mentalese (Pinker 1994) or the Language of Thought (LoT)

“People do not think in English or Chinese or Apache; they think in a language of

thought. This language of thought probably looks a bit like all these languages”

(Pinker 1994:81).




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6 Some obvious commonplace facts Whorf failed to consider

Bilinguals

How does a Hungarian–English bilingual speaker, with two different languages in

his mind, see the world?

Language acquisition

How does a one-year-old baby, without the words of adult language, see the

world?

Nonhuman animals

Does a horse, a chicken, or an orangutan have no representation of the world at all,

as they have no language at all?




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7 The language and thought question vs. linguistic relativity: Two

DIFFERENT QUESTIONS not to be conflated/confused

1 Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (LRH)

2 The relationship between language and thought (L&T)

These are two very different questions! Question 2 does not even relate to

Question 1. 1 is independent of 2: if 2 is true, 1 is still wrong.

LRH is not about L&T!

The two questions must not be conflated or confused.




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7.1 The linguistic relativity question

Do “people who speak different languages think differently”? (Wolff and Holmes

2011:253)

Note the plural in “languages” and “differently”

Does a speaker’s mother tongue determine the way they see the world?

Note the singular and specific in “a speaker’s mother tongue”

This is a question about how or whether PARTICULAR LANGUAGES determine

their speakers’ view of the world (not about how language relates to thought).

For example, does a speaker of Hungarian, an agglutinating Finno-Ugric language,

see the world differently from a speaker of English, an analytic Indo-European

language, as a consequence of the differences between Hungarian and

English?

The answer in the LRH to these questions is YES. — WRONG!

None of these questions is a question about “LANGUAGE and THOUGHT.”

Note the noncount abstract nouns language and thought.




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7.2 The Language & Thought question (L&T)

L&T: How do principles of language relate to principles of thought/cognition?

The meaning of language in this context: “natural language”; the human faculty of

language; universal principles of the construction and interpretation of linguistic

expressions in (any) natural language.

Nobody denies that language and thought interrelate.

Nobody knows exactly how language and thought interrelate.

For example, Chomsky and Hinzen partially, though markedly, disagree:

Chomsky: Argument structure (AS) is conceptual structure. AS is dictated by

conditions imposed upon language by the Conceptual-Intentional interface (C-I)

(cf. Chomsky 2005).

Hinzen: Propositional thought is made possible by syntax (Hinzen 2007).

“…propositional thought and language are deeply entangled, to the extent even of

being non-distinguishable” (Hinzen 2007:7).




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It is tempting but wrong “to regard language as the external ‘cloth’ in which inner

thought is ‘wrapped’… as a way of ‘dressing up’ (and indeed partially obscuring)

the logical and semantic structure of an expression” (Hinzen 2007:51). Instead, the

syntactic computational principles of language create propositional thoughts

(along with their structured linguistic expressions, the CPs). This is not a

Whorfian idea! (cf. Hinzen 2007:53)




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Quotes from Wolff & Holmes (2011) illustrating conflation/confusion of LRH

and the Language and Thought problem

(Even Wolff and Holmes get confused sometimes about the difference between

LRH and the Language and Thought problem.)

LRH:

“The central question in research on linguistic relativity, or the Whorfian

hypothesis, is whether people who speak different languages think differently.” (p.

253) – LRH

“Linguistic determinism holds that differences in language cause differences in

thought.” (p. 254) – LRH (‘strong variant’ of LRH)

No trouble so far, but…




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Note the noncount abstract uses of the terms language and thought below;

these questions are completely independent of and unrelated to LRH:

“ways in which language might impact thought” (p. 253) – Not the LRH

“possible effects of language on thought” (p. 253) – Not the LRH

“the idea that language determines the basic categories of thought” (p. 253) – Not

the LRH

“language may induce a relatively schematic mode of thinking” (p. 253) – Not the

LRH

“the view that language has a profound effect on thought” (p. 253) – Not the LRH

“interactions between language and thought” (p. 253) – Not the LRH

“ways in which language might have significant effects on thought” (p. 253) –

Not the LRH

“the language–thought interface” (p. 254) – Not the LRH




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Is the LRH a hypothesis at all?

The short answer: No, it isn’t.

Why not? Because it does not have the properties of a hypothesis. It does not have

the properties that we require of a hypothesis. What are the conditions that a

system of thoughts must meet for that to be considered a hypothesis? What are the

hallmarks of a hypothesis?




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Hallmarks of a hypothesis

Any hypothesis is constructed from propositions or statements. Such statements

are, of course, further constructed from concepts.

Three kinds of statement by function, role, and relation

claim

conclusion

assumption or premise

A claim is a statement whose truth needs to be derived or demonstrated.

Assumptions or premises are elements of an argument or derivation, which

leads to a conclusion.

A hypothesis is a complex argument. An explanatory hypothesis is one that

yields the explanandum as its conclusion.

Definitions

A definition gives you the meaning of a concept. Its standard logical form is a

biconditional. (if p then q, and if q then p; p if and only if q; p iff q)




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Summary

The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis is a group of untenable, uncorroborated

claims, not supported by any evidence at all.

For most of them, Whorf does not even make an attempt to construct a cogent

argument or cite relevant evidence.

Whorf’s general argument for LRH is circular.

Whorf’s discussions that surround his claims about how a speaker’s mother tongue

determines the way they see the world are either wrong or not even relevant at

all.

Whorf’s empirical assumptions (about Hopi, e.g.) are false.

Whorf failed to consider some obvious commonplace facts, such as bilingual

speakers, child language acquisition, or nonhuman animals.

Any and each of these considerations (language acquisition etc.) immediately

refutes LRH.




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References

Boas, Franz. 1911. The Handbook of North American Indians. Washington, DC:

Smithsonian Institution.

Chomsky, N. 1993. The minimalist programme for linguistic theory. In Hale, K. &

J. Keyser (eds.), The View from Building 20: Essays in Linguistics in Honor of

Sylvain Bromberger. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press 1–52.

Chomsky, N. 2005. Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry 36:1–22.

Hinzen, W. 2007. An Essay on Names and Truth. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Martin, Laura. 1986. “Eskimo Words for Snow”: A case study in the Genesis and

decay of an anthropological example. American Anthropologist, New Series,

88:418–423.

Pinker, S. 1994. The Language Instinct. Penguin.

Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1956. Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings

of Benjamin Lee Whorf (ed. by John B. Carroll). Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT

Press.




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Wolff, Ph., and Holmes, K. J. 2011. Linguistic Relativity. Wiley Interdisciplinary

Reviews: Cognitive Science 2: 253–265.

linguistic relativity - eszterházy károly university

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