Katherine Coppe's List: Sapir-Whorf Debate

• Many thinkers have urged that large differences in language lead to large differences in experience and thought. They hold that each language embodies a worldview, with quite different languages embodying quite different views, so that speakers of different languages think about the world in quite different ways.
• But questions about the extent and kind of impact that language has on thought are empirical questions that can only be settled by empirical investigation

• Any serious discussion of the linguistic relativity hypothesis requires us to answer three questions

    
   
  1. Which aspects of language influence which aspects of thought in some systematic way?
    
  2. What form does that influence take?
    
  3. How strong is that influence?
• Different languages have different

  lexicons (vocabularies), but the important point here is that the lexicons of different languages may classify things in different ways.
• And since any child can learn any human language, the innate endowment must put constraints on which of the countless logically possible languages are humanly possible.

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• Language   also demonstrates cultural and enviornmental priorities.   Thus an eskimo might have 14 words for different types   of snow, whereas western society has numerous names   for different types of financial transaction.
• Linguistic   relativity suggests that people with similar linguistic   backgrounds tend to interpret physical evidence in one   way, whereas the same evidence can be interpreted in   radically different ways by those using different forms   of language.
• Using nouns   we compartmentalise the world into separate 'things',   whereas using verbs we see the world as a process of   dynamic movement

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• Whorf argued that patterns of grammatical structures, often the most covert ones at that, give rise not to a language prison but to a “provisional analysis of reality” and habits of mind, very much as Deutscher concludes.

• Teenagers, regardless of the language they speak, tend to be highly interested in folks of the opposite "gender" and can always tell the difference whether or not their language has a special grammatical category, a distinct pronoun, or not. Something besides language influences their thoughts and behavior.
• A doctor saw an elderly patient and, at the end of the visit, told her in parting, “Take it easy.” He meant it as an informal way of saying goodbye, nothing more. But this poor lady took it as medical advice, promptly took to her bed, and refused to get out for the next two weeks, until the doctor returned from what turned out to be an ill-timed vacation.
• We might describe this by paraphrasing Voltaire’s famous statement (“I think, therefore I am”), as, “I speak, therefore I think.”
• The point is, sometimes thought influences language.  Sometimes language influences thought.  Sometimes other things influence both thought and language

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• It’s important to keep in mind that just because the Sami have more words for snow, it does not mean that non-Sami speakers do not understand what “one or two inches of new snow on top of snow” means.
• the small change in vocabulary may have an immense influence in your attitude towards the world.

• Linguistic relativity is the claim that human behavior and perception   is influenced by language.
• f people say the following, does it mean that they think less   of women than men?  
   
  1. Whoever she is, the secretary here doesn't know her job.  
  2. Whoever he is, the manager here doesn't know his job.
• If people use the 'generic' he, does it mean that they are prejudiced   against females?

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