Correction: ISO Reading on Sapir-Whorf

[Chad Douglas Nilep]

Like Leila, I have assigned Whorf's "The relation of habitual thought and behavior to language", and followed it up with a brief anti-Whorfian reading.

I used a short excerpt from Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. Pinker's piece is something of a straw-argument; he treats the first two or three pages of the Whorf piece, then argues against a version of "strong linguistic determinism" that Whorf doesn't really make - at least not in "Habitual thought." 

That critique notwithstanding, I find it useful to assign Pinker for two reasons. First, it suggests 'sides' and model arguments for debate in class. Second, some undergraduates always seem to want to disagree; if they're disagreeing with Pinker, it allows them to be more open to Whorf.

I'll also mention one other piece that I haven't used but like in relation to discussions of linguistic relativity: Carol Cohn describes her own changes in thinking about nuclear weapons during fieldwork with "defense intellectuals".

Cohn, C. 1987. Sex and death in the rational world of defense intellectuals.  Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12(4), 687-718.

Chad D. Nilep
Linguistics
University of Colorado at Boulder
https://webfiles.colorado.edu/nilep/www/


---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:48:17 -0600
>From: Leila Monaghan <leila.monaghan at GMAIL.COM>  
>Subject: Re: [LINGANTH] Correction: ISO Reading on Sapir-Whorf  
>To: LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
>
>I like the first couple of pages of the original Whorf "Habitual" piece.
> Takes a bit of unpacking but it is nice for undergrads to read the original
>and the empty gasoline cans makes sense to people.
>I have paired it with
>Pullman, Geoffrey (2006) Does our language influence the way we think? in
>E.M. Rickerson & B. Hilton (eds) The 5 Minute Linguist.  London: Equinox,
>pp. 70-74.
>
>Which is a short snappy very linguistic oriented piece that basically argues
>that anyone can say anything in any language--an anti-Whorfian POV to stir
>up some debate in the class.
>
>Like the whole 5 Minute Linguist book.  60 very short readable pieces by
>linguists and a few linguistic anthropologists, and a real bargain at $12 or
>so.
>
>best,
>
>Leila
>
>On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 11:27 AM, Liz Ronkin <liz.ronkin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Sorry, I just flouted those Gricean maxims by sending the message below
>> under an earlier heading.
>>
>>
>> Can anyone suggest a terrific reading on Sapir-Whorf (15 pages-ish)
>> suitable
>> > for very bright first-year undergraduates in Introduction to Cultural
>> > Anthropology who have a mini-module on language and communication?
>> > Thanks,
>> > Maggie
>> >
>>