36.2026, Books: Linguistic Relativity: Pelletier and Nefdt (2025)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2026. Tue Jul 01 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.2026, Books: Linguistic Relativity: Pelletier and Nefdt (2025)

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Date: 30-Jun-2025
From: Oxford University Press [Rachel.HAVARD at oup.com]
Subject: Linguistic Relativity: Pelletier and Nefdt (2025)


Title: Linguistic Relativity
Subtitle: An Essential Guide to Past Debates and Future Prospects
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Oxford University Press
           http://www.oup.com/us
Book URL:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/linguistic-relativity-9780197799833?utm_source=linguistlist&utm_medium=listserv&utm_campaign=linguistics

Author(s): Francis Jeffry Pelletier and Ryan M. Nefdt

Hardcover (9780197799833)
Paperback (9780197799840)

Abstract:

The concept of linguistic relativity (or Whorfianism) has its roots in
the linguistic anthropology of Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin
Whorf in the early twentieth century. However, questions over the
relationship between natural language and human cognition go much
further and deeper. Unfortunately, linguistic relativity has about as
many misinterpretations as it does labels (linguistic relativity,
linguistic relativism, linguistic determinism, Whorfianism,
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - weak and strong).
The idea that language determines thought through an environmentally
constrained feedback system is at the heart of most concepts
associated with linguistic relativity. The real philosophical
questions, however, only seem to present themselves at a level beyond
the trivial truism that linguistic structure has an effect on thought,
i.e. different languages might encode environmental information
differently resulting in variation in things like processing times,
measured in psycholinguistic experiments.
These questions are important for a number of related disciplines, yet
the concept itself is one of the most misunderstood in modern
anthropology, sociology, philosophy of language, linguistics, and
cognitive science. This book contributes much needed clarity to a
theoretical landscape at the center of insights into what makes us
human, both linguistically and cognitively.

Linguistic Field(s): Philosophy of Language




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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2026
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