Rethinking Linguistic Relativity

The natural inquisitive spirit which moves through time and history wich has given shelter to a heap of broken images, namely thoughts, and also has printed its resemblance with such diverse forms as art, language, culture, societies, violence and eventually history itself, cannot be understood without a linguistic point of view, precisely to bring more light in its counterpart, a non-linguistic point of view and the world it explores. Since language is the principal source of information in scientific discourse, but we need to understand the concepts, items and people that language makes reference to, polarities or contrasts between different views of the same picture, such as relativistic vs deterministic, form vs meaning, learning vs acquisition, language vs thought (and reality), among many others have arise from the necessity of discover The Relation to Habitual Thought and Behaviour to Language by Benjamin Lee Whorf (1939).

Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science, 2000

Language Learning, 2016

This Special Issue of Language Learning presents an interdisciplinary state-of-the-art overview of current approaches to linguistic relativity. It contains empirical and theoretical studies and reflections on linguistic relativity from a variety of perspectives, such as associative learning, conceptual transfer, multilingual awareness, perceptual learning, semantic priming, and neurophysiology. This introduction presents the context and rationale of the Special Issue.

台灣科技大學應用外語系 摘要 班傑明沃爾夫提出不同語言使用者，會因為他們各自語言的語法系統 與用法上的差異而產生不同世界觀的議論，該項議論受到伊瑞克廉尼伯、 諾曼杭士基、史蒂芬平克等人的批評，他們認為沃爾夫提出語言影響思維 的論點的時候，並沒有把他的意思表達得很清楚，也沒有提供實際的證據 支持他的假說。 本研究重新探討語言相對論，從英文與華語的分析工作中尋找具體實 例，針對華語與英文對於主詞、造句法、主題、詞序、文法要求等結構用 法上的不同要求與偏好，加以比較。 初步的分析結果已顯示許多語言使用上的差異之間的確存在有連帶的 關係，而華語與英文對於不同結構的偏好與這兩種語言的使用者對相同事 物的觀點確實很不一樣。 關鍵詞：語言相對論 薩皮爾沃爾夫假說 語言類型 語法限制 翻譯式 語言 原文干擾 雙語語料 Abstract Benjamin Whorf's account for the ways in which "differences in grammatical systems and language use between languages affected the way in which their speakers perceived the world" has been criticized by scholars such as Eric Lenneberg, Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker because they believed that Whorf was "not sufficiently clear in his formulation of how he meant language influences thought, and for not providing actual proof of his assumptions". In this study, linguistic relativity is revisited by finding concrete evidences from comparing how Chinese and English are different in their selectional restrictions of sentence subjects, sentence construction preferences, topicality usage, parts of speech, word order, communication strategies, and so on. Some preliminary results of the study have already provided us enough proofs to believe that the differences in various aspects of the language use are interrelated and the use of different formal or structural preferences does illustrate that the viewpoints of Chinese speakers are different from those of English speakers.

Farzad Sharifian, ed., Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture, 2014

Course covers an introduction to the problematic of the linguistic relativity. Emphasis was made on the experimental investigations from the end of XXth to the begininng of XXIst centuries. But also there is careful consideration of the linguistic relativity refolmulation according to modern definitions of «language» and «thought». One can find here the history of the problem. Course program includes the most important researches of the linguistic relativity and also a lot of particular researches. Course consists of 6 parts. The first part deals with the history of the problem and reformulation of the main thesis. In the next five parts there is consideration of particular domains of thinking and perception influenced by language: space, time, motion, color, gender, number etc. In the final part there is discussion about research perspectives, connected with nontrivial grammatical categories and the specificity of the Indoeuropean worldview. Every part has a list of references. It seems that course is urgent because of lack the detailed reflection on modern western investigations in Russian studies.

Si nce its conception, the Whorfian Principle of Linguistic Relativity has been subj e cted to a barrage of criticisms on its clai m that no two languages are i de ntical as to represent the same soci al and physical reality. The vi ew of this paper is that the merits of the theory far outwe igh its flaws. In view of this, the paper reexamines the Principle in the light of later language theorie s, and the impact that i ts conclusion could have on the various ini ti atives towards domesti cati ng the teaching of English Language i n ESL countries like Nigeria. The recognition given to di fferentiated Englishes based on concentric circles of culture and spatio-te mporal di stance from the inner ci rcle points to the need for a more flexi ble curriculum design for English language. Yet at all times, it is the needs of the learner which should be our overri ding focus, taking into account not onl y the logic of native l anguages , as Whorf noted, but also the logic of incorporating local cultural symbols and symbolisms in English Language teachi ng.

2013

The paper concerns the phenomenon of interdiscourse communication and views it from the perspective of Linguistic Relativity Theory. The goal of the paper is to analyse the linguistic behaviour of non-native language users, who apply the English language for instrumental purposes in interaction, which establishes in multinational discourse among interactants having different cultural backgrounds. The paper reports on some of the research results that were acquired in the period from 2011 to 2013 during the ERASMUS Intensive Programme project Cross-Cultural Competence and Interaction. The focus of the study was on analysing the linguistic and pragmatic strategies prioritised by the tertiary level Latvian and Lithuanian interactants for whom the English language served as the instrument of communication in the multinational discourse community, which was constructed of students from Latvia, Lithuania and Turkey. The research findings reveal that non-native language users having the cu...

The past decade has seen a remarkable resurgence of interest in the possible influences of language on ‘thought’, i.e. relativism, the “Whorf Theory Complex” (P. Lee), or the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (LRH). On the occasion of the Whorf centenary in 1997, a number of international conferences, workshops, and symposia were dedicated to the topic. This volume presents a collection of papers from the 26th International LAUD Symposium held at Gerhard Mercator University in Duisburg, Germany, April 1-5, 1998 under the title “Humboldt and Whorf Revisited: Universal and Culture-Specific Conceptualizations in Grammar and Lexis.”

Diacronia, 2020

This paper distinguishes three phases in the popularization of linguistic relativity: the phase initiated by Benjamin Lee Whorf himself; a second phase during which linguistic relativity was formulated and tested as a research hypothesis; and the current phase during which language-relativistic assumptions have penetrated the mass media. To diagnose the spread of relativistic assumptions, 560 articles in both English and Greek print and electronic media were considered. The articles were published over the period 2010–2019. They fall, roughly, into eighteen categories. Some of the articles report explicitly on linguistic relativity research, while others presuppose language-relativistic ideas in handling issues as disparate as the effectiveness of managerial discourse, the appropriateness of political correctness, or the possibility of communicating with aliens. The large number of article categories as well as the tacit assumption of linguistic relativity in a growing number of art...