The Whorf Hypothesis

[R. Rankin]

>But being (and staying) tall as a state and growing tall(er and taller) as
a process are different affairs in real life (whatever that may be, and
which probably was a neat subject for ethnophilosophical investigations).
What comes closest to your proposal is the category of resultative, i.e. a
category denoing a state resultant from a process. Again, stative and
resultative very nicely may be kept apart in the Old World, too,

Indeed.  It seems to be the case that every language capable, using one mechanism or another, to convey all the nuances of other languages.

>This is why I wonder if speakers of these languages might be more in tune
>to nature and thinking in processes (being more fluidly verb- and
>process-oriented) and this is reflected in their language.

>It is a romantic though understandable view, . . .

To me, that sums it up nicely.  When I was a student in the early '60's the Whorf linguistic relativity hypothesis was mentioned, but understood to be unprovable.  It was essentially dropped from the linguistics curriculum (but not always from Anthropology).  Now, thanks to Post Modernism and the like, it has returned.  But there are still no tests that would enable one to prove the theory.  So, the very same theory can be totally "out" one year but be totally "in" another year, with no evidence adduced for either view really.  This fact doesn't tell us a lot about the nature of language, but it says a great deal about the state of American social science.

Taking one view allows the "scholar" to emphasize the similarities among all speakers of natural languages and denigrate his "touchy-feely" colleagues.  Taking the other view allows people to give in to romantic prejudices and popular stereotypes and feel all warm and fuzzy about essentially Rousseauesque views of natural man.  Obviously there are those who gravitate to one or the other of these extremes.  I have never felt comfortable with either one.

I have had bilingual students, especially one American girl who had been raised in Japan and was about as close to bilingualism as you can get, who insisted that she reacted to stimuli quite differently depending on the language milieu she was interacting in.  But, of course, these were subjective statements, and she couldn't really describe exactly what it was that was different.  I took her feelings and statements seriously, but couldn't verify them.

I've been a linguist for 35 or 40 years and still don't have answers to these connundrums.  But I think that, as scientists, we have to ask one or two questions.

1)  Can the linguistic relativity hypothesis be falsified?  If the answer is "no", then it is useless as a scientific theory.

2)  Can the linguistic relativity hypothesis be proved?  If not, then it's still a useless theory.  If experiments are possible, then they should be designed and performed, preferably by someone with a neutral outlook.

Otherwise we're being self-indulgent to maintain either of the polar views.

By the way, I once gave a seminar on the work of Edward Sapir and didn't find that he really supported linguistic relativity strongly.  So I tend to leave his name out of it and attribute it to Benjamin Lee Whorf.

Bob