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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is closely linked to the ethno-linguistic research of the American school of anthropology, which can take pride in its number of leading scholars, all more or less formed or influenced by F. Boas. The anthropological and linguistic interest in the life of the American Indians is understandable within the framework of the social problems posed by the existence of numerous and varied Indian communities in the United States. From this stem the first attempts to transcribe and understand the languages of the Indian tribes which by no means can be separated from later theoretical research. On this practical basis an especially active school of anthropology was founded and has developed. It collected the empiric materials on the basis of which the theoretical generalizations of what is now called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis were built.
* This article is taken from a work to be published on the role of language in the process of knowledge.
1 E. Sapir, "Conceptual Categories in Primitive Language," Science, vol. 74, 1931.
2 E. Sapir, "The Status of Linguistics as a Science," in Selected Writings of Edward Sapir, University of California Press, 1958.
3 E. Sapir, "Status of Linguistics as a Science," loc. cit. p. 162.
4 B. L. Whorf, "The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Lan. guage," in Language, Thought and Reality, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1956, pp. 135-137.
5 "Such examples, which could greatly be multiplied, will suffice to show how the cue to a certain line of behavior is often given by analogies of the linguistic formula in which the situation is spoken of, and by which to some degree it is analyzed, classified, and allotted its place in that world which is ‘to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group.' And we always assume that the linguistic analysis made by our group reflects reality better than it does." Ibid., p. 137.
6 B. L. Whorf, "Science and Linguistics," loc. cit. pp. 213-214.
7 "We seem, then, perhaps reluctantly, forced to admit that, apart from the reflection of environment in the vocabulary of a language, there is nothing in the language itself that con be shown to be directly associated with environment. […] If this be true, and there seems every reason to believe that it is, we must conclude that cultural change and linguistic change do not move along parallel lines and hence do not tend to stand in a close causal relation." E. Sapir, "Language and Environment," in Selected Writings…, p. 100.
8 "It was found that the background linguistic system [in other words, the grammar] of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual's mental activity, for his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of his mental stock in trade." B. L. Whorf, "Science and Linguistics," loc. cit. p. 212.
9 The principle of linguistic relativity was also taken up by Korzybski well before Whorf. Also the representatives of the current called "general semantics" (for example, Anatol Rappaport and Arnold Horowitz, "The Sapir-Whorf-Korzybski Hypothesis," ETC, vol. VIII, No. 3, pp. 346-363), speak frequently of the Sapir-Whorf-Korzybski hypothesis. G. A. Brutian as well ("K filosofskoi otsenkie tieorii lingvistitcheskoi otnositielnosti," Istoriko-filologuitcheskii Journal Akademii Nauk Armianskoi SSR, Erevan, 1961, No. 2, 13, pp. 169-183), indicates Whorf borrowed from Korzybski. This does not seem very likely to me, First, because Korzybski's ideas became known only during World War II. Second, because even then and until today they have not been taken seriously in scientific circles, because of the dilettantism of their creator and the sectarianism of his school. Third and last, because Korzybski—contrary to what is commonly believed, and particularly written in Soviet philosophical literature—manifestly tended in his philosophical interpretations toward materialism and referred to the category of things, whereas Whorf, following the tendency which he attributed to the Hopis, sympathized with the category of significations. The principle of linguistic relativity appears simultaneously in two schools—the dependence of the image of the world on the language in which this image is created—but there are also not inconsiderable differences between them. Thus while it is legitimate to link Whorf with Sapir, it is not permissible to link them with Korzybski. This error is not only imputable to Brutian, it is also characteristic of the representatives of the school of general semantics.
10 Let us do justice to Whorf : he too is not consistent in his idealism to the end. Even Zvieguintsev is wrong in this, despite his calm and objective judgment of Whorf's ideas. (W. A. Zvieguintsev, "Teoretikolingvistitcheskie predpasilki guipotezy Sapir-Whorf," Novoie v lingvistikie, Moscow, Foreign Literature Publications, pp. 111-134.) As ethnologist Whorf occasionally tended towards a clearly materialistic interpretation of the evolution of the Hopi language and culture. For instance: "In Hopi history, could we read it, we should find a different type of language and a different set of cultural and environmental influences working together. A peaceful agricultural society isolated by geographic features and nomad enemies in a land of scanty rainfall, arid agriculture that could be made successful only by the utmost perseverance [hence the value of persistence and repetition], necessity for collaboration [hence emphasis on the psychology of teamwork and on mental factors in general], corn and rain as primary criteria of value, need of extensive preparations and precautions to assure crops in the poor soil and precarious climate, keen realization of dependence upon nature favoring prayer and a religious attitude toward the forces of nature, especially prayer and religion directed toward the ever-needed blessing, rain—these things interacted with Hopi linguistic patterns to mold them, to be molded again by them, and so little by little to shape the Hopi world-outlook." B. L. Whorf, "The Relation of Habitual Thought…," loc. cit. pp. 157-158.
11 "Actually, thinking is most mysterious, and by far the greatest light upon it that we have is thrown by the study of language. This study shows that the forms of person's thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which he is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived intricate system atizations of his own language—shown readily enough by a candid comparison and contrast with other languages, especially those of a different linguistic family. His thinking itself is in a language—in English, in Sanskrit, in Chinese. And every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his conscious ness." B. L. Whorf, "Language, Mind and Reality," loc. cit. p. 252.
12 B. L. Whorf, "Language and Logic," loc. cit., p. 241.
13 Ibid., p. 242.
14 "A linguistic classification like English gender, which has no overt mark actualized along with the words of the class but which operates through an invisible ‘central exchange' of linkage bonds in such a way as to determine certain other words which mark the class, I call a covert class, in contrast to an overt class, such as gender in Latin. Havado has a covert classification of the whole world of objects based partly on animation and partly on shape. Inanimate bodies fall into two classes which linguists have styled ‘round objects' and ‘long objects.' These names, of course, misrepresent: they attempt to depict the subtle in terms of the gross, and fail. Navaho itself has no terms which adequately depict the classes. A covert concept like a covert gender is a definable and in its way as definite as a verbal concept like ‘female' or feminine, but is of a very different kind […] The Navaho so-called ‘round' and ‘long' nouns are not marked in themselves nor by any pronouns. They are marked only in the use of certain very important verb stems, in that a different verb stem is required for a ‘round' or a ‘long' subject or object." B. L. Whorf, "Thinking in Primitive Communities," loc. cit. pp. 69-70.
15 B. L. Whorf, "An American Indian Model of the Universe," loc. cit., pp. 58-59.
16 "Hopi, as we might expect, is different here too. Verbs have no ‘tenses' like ours, but have validity-forms ['assertions'], aspects, and clause-linkage forms [modes], that yield even greater precision of speech. The validity-forms denote that the speaker [not the subject] reports the situation [answering to our past and present] or that he expects it [answering to our future] or that he makes a nomic statement [answering to our nomic present]. The aspects denote different degrees of duration and different kinds of tendency ‘during duration.' As yet we have noted nothing to indicate whether an event is sooner or later than another when both are reported. But need for this does not arise until we have two verbs: i.e., two clauses. In that case the ‘modes' denote relations between the clauses, including relations of later to earlier and of simultaneity. Then there are many detached words that express similar relations, supplementing the modes and aspects. The duties of our three-tense system and the tripartite linear objectified ‘time' are distributed among various verb categories, all different from our tenses; and there is no more basis for an objectified time in Hopi verbs than in other Hopi patterns; although this does not in the least hinder the verb forms and other patterns from being closely adjusted to the pertinent realities of actual situations." B. L. Whorf, "The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language," loc. cit., pp. 144-145.
17 "Any language is more than an instrument for the conveying of ideas, more even than an instrument for working upon the feelings of others and for self-expression. Every language is also a means of categorizing experience. What people think and feel, and how they report what they think and feel, is determined, to be sure, by their individual physiological state, by their personal history, and by what actually happens in the outside world. But it is also determined by a factor which is often overlooked; namely, the pattern of linguistic habits which people have acquired as members of a particular society. The events of the ‘real' world are never felt or reported as a machine would do it. There is a selection process and an interpretation in the very act of response. Some features of the external situation are highlighted; others are ignored or not fully discriminated.
"Every people has its own characteristic classes in which individuals pigeonhole their experience. These classes are established primarily by the language through the types of objects, processes, or qualities which receive special emphasis in the vocabulary and equally, though more subtly, through the types of differentiation or activity which are distinguished in grammatical forms. The language says, as it were, ‘Notice this,' ‘Always consider this separate from that,' ‘Such and such things belong together.' Since persons are trained from infancy to respond in these ways they take such discriminations for granted, as part of the inescapable stuff of life. But when we see two peoples with different social traditions respond in different ways to what appear to the outsider to be identical stimulus-situations, we realize that experience is much less a ‘given', an absolute, than we thought. Every language has an effect upon what the people who use it see, what they feel, how they think, what they can talk about." Clyde Kluckhohn and Dorothea Leighton, The Navaho, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1947, p. 197.
18 "While these examples, and many other similar ones, seem clearly to indicate that language habits influence sensory perceptions and thought, we must not overestimate this influence. […] … it is perfectly evident that the Navaho, while they denote ‘brown' and ‘gray' by one term and ‘blue' and ‘green' by another, are quite able to discern the difference between brown and gray, blue and green. Again this may be done, should ambiguity otherwise result, by circumlocution, just as we can quite simply express in English the difference between the two Navaho words for our ‘black'.
"The fact of the matter, then, is not that linguistic patterns inescapably limit sensory perceptions and thought, but simply, that, together with other cultural patterns, they direct perception and thinking into certain habitual channels. The Eskimo, who distinguishes in speech several varieties of snow surface [and who lacks a general term corresponding to our ‘snow'], is responding to a whole complex of cultural patterns, which require that he make these distinctions, so vital to his physical welfare and that of the group. It is as if the culture as a whole [including the language] selected from the landscape certain features more important than others and so gave to the landscape an organization or structure peculiar to the group. A language, then, as a cultural system, more or less faithfully reflects the structuring of reality which is peculiar to the group that speaks it." Harry Hoijer, "The Relation of Language to Culture," Anthro pology Today, edited by A. L. Kroeber, the University of Chicago Press, 1953, pp. 559-560.
19 Dorothy Lee, "Symbolization and Value," Freedom and Culture, A Spectrum Book, Prentice Hall Inc., 1959, p. 82.
20 Examples of similar work already exist, if only in the study of H. Nakamura, The Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples, Japanese National Com mission for U.N.E.S.C.O., 1960. Documentation provided by works of this type could be utilized advantageously. However, since they are not part of the same initial project and consequently differ in the methods of research and presentation, a comparison with them is difficult and decreases their weight in the domain that interests us.
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