More on Sapir-Whorf from Hymes via Danziger

[bryllars at concentric.net]

My thanks to Eve Danziger for putting up the Hymes letter
  - he prooves once again that he has the best sense of history around.
All this is basically obtainable in his anthology Language in Culture and Society
 - along with most of the original documents involved and similar history
and documentation of many other subjects  - and is therefore
immediately available to anyone with a fairly decent library.

It would seem to me that anyone with a serious or professional interest
in Linguistic Anthropology should have the book in their own library.
There must be used copies of the paper or the hardcover hanging about.

Thanks again for putting up Hymes' lovely letter.

Bryllars at concentric.net



At 10:28 AM 12/23/01 -0800, you wrote:
>[Folks, this came in several days ago; I was in final grading crunch so I
>wasn't timely in reading and forwarding it. -RJS]
>
>Dear Richard
>
>I have not been able to get this up on the linganth list. I
>get "Undeliverable" back. Perhaps you can help.
>
>[Another case of address aliasing/forwarding preventing postings, alas;
>I've modified the subscription list hoping to allow you (Eve) direct
>postings. Let me know if you still have troubles. -RJS]
>
>When I read your query, I remembered that Dell Hymes had
>once mentioned in my presence that in the days of the
>Hoijer conference people were referring to the "Whorf-Lee"
>hypothesis, meaning Dorothy Lee (see refs below). I found
>this interesting and asked Dell for more, telling him
>I would post what he wrote to this list. He replied:
>
>Dear Eve,
>Your recollection is right.  What I write below comes
>without having checked any sources.  When I was a
>graduate student at Indiana University (1950-54) Whorf's
>ideas came to the fore.  He had been associated with Sapir
>to some degree, and Harry  Hoijer (UCLA, a Chicago Ph. D.,
>who knew Sapir at Chicago, before Sapir went to Yale)
>chaired a conference at Chicago on the subject.  I think
>that at the conference it was called the Sapir-Whorf
>hypothesis.  Appropriately enough, since Sapir had
>articulated such thoughts.  Later, the historical amnesia
>of the profession was further corrected by noticing that
>Boas had been interested in grammatical categories, and
>that the German tradition, from which he began, had
>included people in the 19th century, and back indeed to
>before that, who wrote of language as a framework for
>cultural ideas. Eventually, Wilhelm von Humboldt became the
>preferred starting point.  But about 1950, if I have
>it right, people knew pretty much only what had been
>published in their lifetimes, it would seem.  There was
>BenWhorf, who had contributed to the volume in memory of
>Sapir.  And there was Dorothy Lee, who had published in
>IJAl (I think in 1944).  My impression is that the first
>twin name, then, was Whorf-Lee.  Probably (but this should
>be checked) in the context of Trager and Smith, who were
>very prominent at the time in developing a wider reach for
>linguistics (kinesics (Birdwhistell), paralinguistics
>(Trager)) in the US. Lee's 1944 paper in the
>American Anthropologist must have had a part in this
> "Categories of the generic and the particular in
>Wintu:', AA 456: 362-69
>and even more so, among linguists, her article in the newly
>revived International  Journal of American Linguistics,
>vol. 10:  181-87 (1944).
> Hoijer, at UCLA, was to some extent regarded as the
>'dean' of anthropological  linguistics, of linguistics in
>anthropology, but he was not a coiner of new terms. Rather,
>he saw himself as continuing what had been developed.  See
>his paper on Navajo.  Well, I got myself up to look into
>LANGUAGE IN CULTURE (Comparative Studies in Cultures and
>Civilizations No. 3, editors Robert Redfield and Milton
>Singer) (AAA vol. 56, no. 6, Part 2, Memoir 79 (December
>1954)). Harry's article is clear, rather broad,
>acknowledges precedents, focusses on Sapir and Whorf, and
>goes on to the Apachean languages.  He doesn't mention Lee,
>nor is Lee in the index at the end of the volume.
>
> A good source, I think, is John Lucy, LANGUAGE
>DIVERSITY AND THOUGHT, A Reformulation of the linguistic
>relativity hypothesis.  (Studies in the Social and Cultural
>Foundations of Language No. 12) (Cambridge University
>Press, 1992).  He takes up Lee on p. 70.  In a section
>headed:  Grammar as  a direct reflection of culture:  the
>work of Lee", John remarks on sutides which typically
>PRESUPPOSE (italics in the original) a close linkage
>betwen language and thought with (surely 'out' is missing
>at this point) concern for establishing the nature and
>direction(s) of influence, that is, few of these studies
>are directly concerned with the ligusitic
>relativity hypothesis as such.  Nonetheless, work of this
>type is frequently interpreted as relevant to Whorf's
>ideas. Many studies could serve here as illustrations of
>this approach (see references to case histories in
>Hymes, 1964b, p. 150). but the work of Dorothy D. Lee
>(1959b [1944]) is the best known, and though not explicitly
>built upon  Whorf's work, has most often been associated
>with it"  That seems right to  me.  I heard
>discussion of these things at Indiana (Carl Voegelin took
>part in the Chicago meeting) and probably with Hoijer (we
>spent 1954-5 at UCLA, having taken his Athapaskan course in
>the summer Linguistic Institute of 1953).  Although Harry
>was not much given to chatting.
>Hope this is useful.
>
>Eve Danziger
>
>