Does Your Language Shape How You Think?

[MJ Hardman]

Indeed.  I finally gave up trying to tell people what Whorf/Sapir/Dorothy
Lee really said.  Those who will not hear ...
One really good source on this, though, is Suzette Haden Elgin, the
Linguistic Imperative.  She shows how the distortion happened, its political
purpose, and what was really said.  The Œstrong¹ was always a Œstraw man¹.
MJ

On 8/30/10 11:17 AM, "Buckner, Margaret L" <MBuckner at MISSOURISTATE.EDU>
wrote:

> I¹m glad you brought that up, Dave.
> 
> I wonder whether Guy Deutscher ever read the entirety of Whorf¹s writings.  On
> one hand, Deutscher says ³In 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...²  He later says ³Whorf, 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.²   This is hyperbole, perhaps an overinterpretation of a few phrases
> from Whorf¹s writing that were taken out of context.
> 
> On the other hand, Guy Deutscher says ..  ³in 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.² Which is, in fact, EXACTLY what Whorf said.  So, the rest of
> the ³anti-Whorf² 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 don¹t appear in his writings).
> Some anthropologists and linguists are still teaching the ³weak² vs. ³strong²
> versions of the ³Sapir-Whorf² hypothesis.  Deutscher¹s article would have been
> just fine without the introduction.
> 
> All Whorf really said was that we should become aware of the ³ruts², 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.  What¹s 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 Deutscher¹s article in yesterday¹s New York Times, ³Does Your Language
>> Shape How You Think?² 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
>> 
> 
> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ilat/attachments/20100830/1b543226/attachment.htm>