sociolinguistics-linguisticrelativity

Richard S Pinner RPinner Sociolinguistics - Linguistic Relativity.docx

07/08/2009

Sociolinguistics Page 1 14-Mar-11

A rose by any other name:

A contemporary assessment of the scope of Linguistic Relativity

Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 2

The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis – History and definition .......................................................... 4 A definition of thought, culture, language and „world-view‟ ............................................................... 4 The stronger form – Linguistic Determinism ....................................................................................... 6 The weaker form of Linguistic Relativity ............................................................................................ 8

Times have changed – a different world to view ................................................................................ 11

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 13

Bibliography.......................................................................................................................................... 15


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What's in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;

Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet

If you talk to a man in a language he understands,

that goes to his head.

If you talk to him in his own language,

that goes to his heart.

Nelson Mandela

Introduction

The question of whether language shapes our view of the world has been debated over

and pondered by great thinkers for centuries. Variously associated with the names

Wilhelm von Humboldt, Franz Boas, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, the

theory that our mother tongue affects the way we see the world, that our language

influences the way we think, has been defined using several names, such as the

linguistic relativity hypothesis, linguistic determinism, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and

the Whorfian Hypothesis. Recent literature (Gumperz & Levinson 1994, Boroditsky

2006) refers to the general theory as the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (LRH). This

hypothesis is split into „grades‟ of strength, the strongest often referred to as

Linguistic Determinism. Sometimes, the weaker version is called Linguistic Relativity

(Pinker 1994, Wardhaugh 2002, Fromkin, Rodman & Hyams 2007). In this essay I

will refer to the strong form, that “the structure of a language determines the way in

which speakers of that language view the world” (Wardhaugh 2002:221-222) as

linguistic determinism. The weaker form, that “the structure does not determine the


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world-view, but is still extremely influential in predisposing speakers of a language

toward adopting a particular world-view.” (Ibid 2002:222) is referred to as the weaker

form of linguistic relativity (Fromkin, Rodman & Hyams 2007:26-27, Wardhaugh

2002, Gumperz & Levinson 1996). I will consider evidence as to which of these

forms of the hypothesis are tenable. I am particularly interested here in the

sociolinguistic implications and thus the wider context of English will feature in the

discussion. In particular, I wish to bring LRH into a contemporary setting and address

the theory in light of the modern world, in which LRH would have huge implications

if true.

Humboldt is famous for putting forward the notion of every language having

weltanschauung or „world-view‟ ([1836] cited in Slobin 1996:70). This idea was also

elaborated on by Boas, who stated that “[i]t has been claimed that the conciseness and

clearness of thought of a people depend to a great extent upon their language” ([1911]

1964:17) but those most famously associated with the theory in its strongest and

weakest forms were Sapir and especially his student Whorf. It was Whorf who took

the idea further and brought to it scientific observations and research that he had done

while working with the native American Hopi tribe. This research has been

questioned and widely discredited in academic circles, but the idea of LRH, the

question of how thought and language are dependant on each other is certainly more

relevant today than ever, in a world of such overlapping global culture. In this essay,

the contemporary setting for LRH will be a central feature. I will evaluate evidence

for and against LRH by seeing how adequately it presents a different world view for

the speakers of a given language, and in doing so show that this is a fatal flaw in the

hypothesis.


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The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis – History and definition

A definition of thought, culture, language and ‘world-view’

‘[T]he linguistic relativity principle’… means, in informal terms, that users of markedly different

grammars are pointed by their grammars toward different types of observations and different

evaluations of externally similar acts of observation, and hence are not equivalent as observers, but

must arrive at somewhat different views of the world.

Whorf ([1956] 1970:221)

To understand LRH we must first understand what is meant by the terms thought,

culture and language (Gumperz & Levinson 1996, Wardhaugh 2002). For the

purposes of this essay I will term thought as being the conceptual reference, which is

entirely internal. For Humboldt and some of the subscribers to LRH, language and

thought are inseparable (Slobin 1996),1 which I find a very loose thread in the theory.

Thought and language are very distinct. Language is, to some extent, dependent on

thought, but the two are not the same and we can have thought without language. Just

imagine the most beautiful sunset you have ever seen and you can see the evidence

for this. Also, there are human emotions between jealousy and happiness for which

there is no word in English. Imagine an ex-lover sending you a card announcing that

they are to be married. Although this could be argued to be a feeling rather than a

thought, we would be aware of the feeling and be able to recognise it. Thus, it is

possible to think and feel beyond the semantic markings of our language. Pinker

(1994:59) goes to great lengths to explain why language and thought are not the same,

1 Despite Slobin (1996) attempting to re-brand these terms as “thinking for speaking” they are, in

essence still reliant on the idea that thought and language are inseparable.


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stating that thanks to leaps and bounds in cognitive science there is no question that

the two are separate.

Defining culture is problematic. If I define culture as simply referring to a nation or

social group, its histories, traditions and idiosyncrasies, then we are not fully

encompassing the modern world with glocalization, familiarity and integration

between culture. In this definition, people from Australia and the USA would have a

different culture, despite sharing a language, but people from India would all share

one culture despite their being some 4152 spoken languages. The Longman dictionary

of language teaching and applied linguistics defines culture as “the set of practices,

codes and values that mark a particular nation or group.” (Richards & Schmidt 2002)

This succinct definition will suffice for my purposes here, but the difficulty of

defining culture is important to bear in mind when thinking about LRH because the

world is a different place from that of Whorf and Humboldt, and culture is no longer

so clearly definable.

I shall define language as any spoken and/or written form of communication used

within a given speech community. We will revisit this definition later when we look

at issues concerning the context of English use and globalization.

World-view is perhaps the most difficult term to define as Whorf used „world-view‟

in his posthumously published collected works ([1956] 1970) without offering any

2 Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas,

Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/.

http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=IN


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further definition. The anthropologist Michael Kearney (1988)3 offered the most

comprehensive for my purposes

World View is a way of looking at reality, consisting of basic assumptions and images that provide a

more or less coherent, though not necessarily accurate, way of thinking about the world

Kearney (1988)

A world-view, then, must be quite considerable in scope. It cannot be based on small

or minor differences, but on fundamental variations in a linguistic community‟s

conception of the world. I will attempt to show that under such a definition LRH

collapses utterly, especially in the context of today‟s multicultural and highly

communicative world.

With our definitions in place, we can now look at the different forms of LRH and

evaluate them with a modern perspective.

The stronger form – Linguistic Determinism

The strongest view of LRH, which I termed Linguistic Determinism, is frequently

attributed to the following, very well known lines from Whorf, that “we dissect nature

along lines laid down by our native languages.” ([1956] 1970:213) For him, language

is the “shaper of ideas” (Ibid [1956] 1970:212) Thus, in its strongest form the

hypothesis states that the way we think is a product of the language we speak. This

strong form has been linked with linguistic racism (Cameron 2003). The strong form

3 Cited in course description for “World View” at Williamette University, which specialises in the

liberal arts http://www.willamette.edu/cla/wviews/athens/construct.htm

http://www.willamette.edu/cla/wviews/athens/construct.htm


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could be used to suggest that certain languages, lacking words for certain concepts,

are „primitive‟ or in some way inferior to others, and that the people who speak such

languages are beneath speakers of another „more advanced‟ language. In my view

linguistic determinism is a glass-like theory, too easily seen through or shattered

altogether. “This strong Whorfian view… has long been abandoned in the field [of

psychology and language]” (Boroditsky 2001) One of the key „nails in the coffin‟ for

linguistic determinism was the work of Rosch (1975) on colour theory which found

that the Dani, whose first language has only two words for defining colours, were

easily able to learn English words and use them to differentiate between a set of

colours in the way English speakers would.

A common argument (Fromkin, Rodman & Hyams 2007, Pinker 1994) against the

strongest view is that if we could only conceive of things for which the words already

exist in our language, we would not be able to coin new words, learn second

languages, or indeed be able to learn our own language. “If we could not think about

something for which we do not have words, how would infants ever learn their first

word, much less a language?” (Fromkin, Rodman & Hyams 2007:27). However,

Gumperz and Levinson point out this is a common misreading of the hypothesis “it

was not intended to denote an exclusive causal vector in one direction - probably no

proponent has held the view that what cannot be said cannot be thought.” (Gumperz

& Levinson 1996:22). In this instance I have to agree that although Whorf states

“formulation of ideas is not an independent process, strictly rational in the old sense,

but is part of a particular grammar” (Whorf, [1956] 1970:212) he does not appear to

be claiming that thought is not capable without language, but that language and


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thought become entwined and act as one. However, this is still problematic as I will

attempt to show in the next section.

The weaker form of Linguistic Relativity

The linguistic relativity hypothesis (LRH), or the weaker form of the hypothesis, is

the one to which most people who agree with the theory concur (Gumperz &

Levinson 1996; Lucy 2000; Slobin 1996; Boroditsky 2001; Tohidian 2008). There are

still those who disagree with the weaker form (See Kay 1996; Pinker 1994; Pullum

1991). Lucy (1997) mentioned a lack of research and evidence for linguistic relativity,

but as Bohn (2000) points out there is, it seems a growing number of studies into the

relationship between culture and language (Konishi 1993, Slobin 1996, Boroditsky

2001). Much of this research is psychological or psycholinguistic in nature, so I will

only provide a brief summary here as my focus is on the sociolinguistic implications

of the hypothesis.

The most prominent areas of research have been into the grammatical structures of

languages, such as English which is a non-classifier language and marks plurality

with -S after regular countable nouns, against classifier languages such as Japanese.

Japanese counting has an object-shape relationship. Studies showed a “language-

specific bias” (Imai 2001:157) in the way children and adults perceived non-

individuated substances, which emerges early in language development. However,

upon looking at the results I find it hard to believe that this bias would affect the way

speakers actually conceive of objects, or that they would do so differently. It hardly

seems surprising that we would categorise things externally when prompted to do so


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using words from our own language. I don‟t see how these results adequately reflect a

different world view.

Other grammar based research looked at gender marking and time construal. Some

studies found that speakers of Spanish and German have different connotative

associations with gender marked nouns (Konishi 1993, Boroditsky 2006). The

researcher claimed the associated adjectives were more feminine or masculine

depending on the gender marking of the noun. One obvious fallacy with this

conclusion is that adjectives do not carry gender, so it is subjective to label an

adjective feminine or masculine. Gender is simply a linguistic term, and there can be

many “genders” – they do not specifically refer to male or female properties in

linguistics (Pinker 1994).

The study done into time and spatial recognition (Boroditsky 1999 & Boroditsky

2001) claims to find that because Mandarin conceptualises time vertically and English

horizontally, there is a difference in the speed of recognition when the arrangement is

reverted for the speakers, in other words English speakers were less quick to

recognise the chronology of events when they were presented in a vertical line. Also,

the position of objects was recognised more quickly if displayed from right to left or

left to right, for English and Mandarin speakers respectively. This again, seems only

natural as English speakers are more used to seeing time displayed horizontally. I

believe this can be explained by common, everyday familiarity and training rather

than „world-view‟. Although this everyday familiarity is obviously a product of

linguistic conventions, it is clearly possible for the test subjects to conceptualise time

in different ways and to recognise the conceptual cues.


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Bohn goes so far as to state that, from the perspective of a speech scientist, “linguistic

relativity is not a hypothesis, it‟s a fact.” (Bohn 2000:1) The evidence he cites for this

claim is that of perceptual patterns in phonological recognition, which apparently

show “dramatic and profound changes in the perceptual patterns [which] make infants

language-specific perceivers” (ibid: 9). However, as Bohn points out, not all studies

are conclusive on this4 and it is possible for speakers to „learn‟ to perceive and

produce phonemes outside their L1. I would go further than this and state that it does

not always require training to recognise sounds beyond one‟s own linguistic

repertoire. I was perfectly able to hear the difference between our /dz/ and the Czech

/ Ɉ/ even though I was unable to produce it without training and I had never previously

been exposed to the sound. Similarly, I have encountered many Japanese and Korean

learners who have successfully learned to produce /l/ and /r/. Even though Bohn‟s

research seems valid, the connotations ultimately do not affect semantic ranges,

although they could have implications for ELT, especially with young learners in an

EFL context outside of the target language culture because pronunciation is integral to

comprehending spoken language. Such findings are important, particularly within a

field like ELF, but once again do not constitute a different world view.

As Lucy (1997), Wardhaugh (2002) and Cameron (2003) point out, there is still not

enough evidence to fully arrive at a definite conclusion because, although there is

evidence of a cross-culture-linguistic disparity, it seems to me that the differences are

not conducive to a different way of perceiving and conceptualising the world and they

do not as such „predispose‟ us to adopt a particular „world-view‟. LRH is still an

4 Studies by Polka & Bohn 1996 showed “no discrimination” between English and German speakers.

(Bohn 2000:9)


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interesting point, but let us now further examine it within the wider context of

contemporary society.

Times have changed – a different world to view

In the introduction to this paper I stated that I would return to the definition of

language, thought and culture. When Humboldt (1767–1835), Boas (1858–1942)

Sapir (1884–1939) and even Whorf (1897–1941) were writing they probably could

never have envisaged the world of today. We truly live in a transformed world to

those scholars. In their world, large passenger planes like the Airbus A380-800 were a

long way away, Neil Armstrong was unheard of, a Blackberry would certainly not be

a device with which one could communicate by way of video conference with a

colleague on the other side of the world.

The majority of the developed world live in constant awareness of other cultures and

languages. The reality TV show Big Brother has been replicated and broadcast in

almost seventy countries. I first became interested in Japanese culture when I watched

Manga on British television at the age of seven. My nine year old niece knows all

about Sikhism, Buddhism and even Taoism from her primary school education. The

title of Whorf‟s essay A Linguistic Consideration of Thinking in Primitive

Communities (1956) would be unlikely to get published today under such a title

because it would probably be deemed politically incorrect to talk of primitive

communities (Howell 2004). We live in a world where culture and language overlap

significantly, and as I stated at the beginning of this essay, culture is hard to define.


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As Whorf and Humboldt relied so heavily on the idea of weltanschauung or „world-

view,‟ this has been a central feature when I have analysed the evidence for LRH. The

idea of a different world view is fraught with complications, particularly in terms of

definition.

‘World view’ has served anthropology as a term for the philosophical dimensions of ‘cultures’ seen as

having a degree of coherence in time and space. Today, with our confidence in the coherence,

integration, and political innocence of cultures long lost, a term from the high-water mark of bourgeois

'German ideology' must be problematic.

(Hill & Mannheim 1992:381)

In using such a broad term, we see that LRH is not tenable because the small details

of linguistic variation, such as gender marking or noun classification in my opinion do

not adequately provide us with a reason to believe a given person or culture possess a

significantly different „world view.‟

I believe that under the current definition of LRH, it is not tenable. There is not

enough evidence to suggest that speakers of different languages have different views

of the world. Some re-working of the theory would be necessary for it to remain

plausible. Atomic levels of semantic representation may exist across languages, a

penguin is a penguin whether the perceiver is from Australia or Antarctica. However,

at a molecular level there may be differences in semantic structure.

Gumperz and Levinson state that if one subscribes “to the distinctions between

molecular and atomic levels of semantic representation [the two] diametrically

opposed [opinions about LRH] are entirely compatible” (Gumperz & Levinson

1996:25). This is, then, a restatement of LRH which leaves out „world-view‟ and

attempts to bring both the universalist perspective and the core linguistic differences

of LRH together. Thus they are able to “find the original idea of linguistic relativity


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still alive, but functioning in a way that is different from how it was originally

conceived.” (Ibid, 1996:2). Although very diplomatic, this idea still needs to be

further expanded for me to fully subscribe to a new theory of LRH because it is not

yet explicitly defined.

Conclusion

Thus it would seem that the obstacles to generalized thought inherent in the form of a language are of

minor importance only, and that presumably the language alone would not prevent a people from

advancing to more generalized forms of thinking if the general state of their culture should require

expression of such thought.

Boas ([1911]1964:19)

Research findings in some respects, can be subjective. The evidence is there, but the

extent to which it contributes a „world view‟ is very much a choice we make based on

how much we want to agree or disagree with the theory. For Pinker, LRH exists on a

“collective suspension of disbelief” (Pinker, 1994:58) and I must agree with this view,

since LRH seems to make extremely strong statements about „world-view‟ based on

very small evidence. Boroditsky (2006) argues that this small evidence collectively

amounts to something huge, but again this is only at the molecular level. For me,

molecules are small, almost invisible components only viewed by powerful

microscopes.

Also, let us not forget that differences in „world-view‟ may not be language specific.

Consider the „world-view‟ of two native English speaking Americans, Elizabeth Ann


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Seton5 and Paris Hilton. “A culture does not provide its holders with a unified theory

of the world – a “world view” any more than a language does” Kay (1996:110).

If the theory, even in its weakest form, is true then the significance would probably be

quite large. I can see why, for a sociolinguist interested in cross-cultural issues such as

John Gumperz (see for example Gumperz, 1977, 1982) the idea of LRH is interesting

and relevant because he has studied cross-cultural misunderstandings and

communicational breakdowns. I think we need to shift LRH away from Whorf and

Humboldt, away from world view and back down into individual, molecular levels of

meaning. LRH might find more subscribers if it was used to aid cross-cultural

understanding rather than as a theory for global cross-linguistic incompatibility.

(3,462 Words)

5 The first woman to be ordained a Catholic Saint


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Richard Pinner Page 17 Originally submitted to King‟s College London as part of an MA in Applied Linguistics and ELT

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