First refs to "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis"

[bryllars at concentric.net]

The hyphenated term Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was originated by Harry Hoijer
out of irritation with all the credit going to Whorf
    This happened in the late 1950's - hardly 1992 -
and must have been discussed in a Biennial Revue article around that time
as well as in earlier publications by Hoijer - including a whole book whose title escapes
me at the moment.
  earlier publications on The Whorfian Hypothesis probably go back to the 1940's
not to mention Whorf's own publications. (He would have been the first to credit Sapir)
Whorf writing for popular consumption emphasized linguistic determinism
   (he was interested in Hopi verbs and deep notions of time - and had a not simple
notion of how conceptions were coded into language (not just a matter of simple verb
categories).
Sapir had a varying and less deterministic view most of the time.  BUT . . .
See Hymes very keen articles and introductions  on all this, including his Introduction to
the section "World View and Grammatical Categories"  in  his  Language in Culture and
Society - where one of the selections is from Boas - and goes back to the beginning of
the 20th centruy.

I found the following on the internet at CCMS Communication Studies
    via a Google search for Whorfian Hypothesis

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
.. the real world is to a large extent built up on the language habits of the group. We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.
Sapir (1956)
or Whorf:
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)
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (aka the Whorfian hypothesis) is named after the two American linguists who first formulated it. They start from the view that we all have a basic need to make sense of the world. To make sense of it, we impose an order on it. The main tool we have for organising the world is language. As you can see from the two quotations above, their view is that the language we use determines how we experience the world and how we express that experience. Hence, their view is often referred to as linguistic determinism. A quotation often found in Communication textbooks is from Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico Philosophicus:
The limits of my language indicate the limits of my world
Wittgenstein (1966)
This is often advanced in support of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. (Actually, given the context in Wittgenstein's Tractatus, I'm not at all sure that that's what he was saying, but it's a good quote, anyway!)






At 02:10 PM 12/11/01 -0600, you wrote:
>I think the best summary of linguistic relativity in Boas, Sapir, and Whorf
>is the Hill and Mannheim article in "Annual Review of Anthropology": 1992,
>vol. 21, 381-406.  They say that the "Sapir-Whorf" hypothesis crystallized
>in the 1950s and they reference several sources documenting the history (p.
>385).
>
>At 10:19 AM 12/11/01 -0800, Richard J Senghas wrote:
>>OK, Linganth folks:
>>
>>At the risk of raising heat, I'm trying to locate the first **explicit**
>>references to the so-called "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis" as such, and to
>>specific passages by either Sapir or Whorf that have been pointed to as
>>their own formulation and presentation of any such hypothesis, either
>>formally or informally. I've seen so many conflicting accounts that I
>>wanted to get a sense as to whether there is any consensus on this issue
>>among linguistic anthropologists.
>>
>>I know a lot of us refer to this conception as the "linguitic relativity
>>hypothesis" to sidestep this epistemological rathole, but at the moment I'm
>>interested in the historical process of the emergence of this concept as a
>>case in point on how theoretical ideas get labelled and argued, both within
>>and without the academy.
>
>R. Keith Sawyer
>
>
>http://www.keithsawyer.com/
>Assistant Professor
>Department of Education
>Washington University
>Campus Box 1183
>St. Louis, MO  63130
>314-935-8724
>
>
>