Does Your Language Shape How You Think?

[Buckner, Margaret L]

I'm glad you brought that up, Dave.

I wonder whether Guy Deutscher ever read the entirety of Whorf's writings.  On one hand, Deutscher says "In particular, Whorf announced, Native American languages impose on their speakers a picture of reality that is totally different from ours, so their speakers would simply not be able to understand some of our most basic concepts..."  He later says "Whorf, we now know, made many mistakes.  The most serious one was to assume that our mother tongue constrains our minds and prevents us from being able to think certain thoughts."   This is hyperbole, perhaps an overinterpretation of a few phrases from Whorf's writing that were taken out of context.

On the other hand, Guy Deutscher says ..  "in the last few years, new research has revealed that when we learn our mother tongue, we do after all acquire certain habits of thought that shape our experience in significant and often surprising ways." Which is, in fact, EXACTLY what Whorf said.  So, the rest of the "anti-Whorf" evidence in the article is actually pro-Whorf.

Deutscher is following a long line of linguists who claim that Whorf made claims that Whorf never made (at least they don't appear in his writings).  Some anthropologists and linguists are still teaching the "weak" vs. "strong" versions of the "Sapir-Whorf" hypothesis.  Deutscher's article would have been just fine without the introduction.

All Whorf really said was that we should become aware of the "ruts", the habits, of our own language by learning other languages in order to really appreciate the variety of ways of talking about, and thinking about, the world.  What's wrong with that?


Margaret Buckner
Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology
Missouri State University
901 S. National Ave.
Springfield, Missouri 65897
(417) 836-6165
mbuckner at missouristate.edu




On 8/30/10 4:57 AM, "Dave Pearson" <dave_pearson at SIL.ORG> wrote:

Guy Deutscher's article in yesterday's New York Times, "Does Your Language Shape How You Think?" is a stimulating challenge to the linguacentric assumptions that each of us make.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html

Dave


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