The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Issues and Implications
February 21, 2004
Copyright © Tim Nall 2004.
All Rights reserved.
Do not copy without permission.

There is something immensely appealing about the idea that our native language affects the way we think and act, dictating our understanding of the way the universe functions, and molding our cognition to such a degree that it actually defines for us the boundaries of our personal reality. A continuing debate within the disciplines of linguistics, anthropology and cognitive psychology centers on this question: does the nature of a given language somehow determine the boundaries of what reality can or cannot be for those who are born within its concomitant language community, or does it merely influence their perceptions?

Perhaps this question resonates so strongly within us because we see in our native language such a profound reflection of ourselves. Languages have the power to name and un-name us both as individuals and as peoples; nations are unified around a shared linguistic history, and divided around linguistic differences large or small. Language "unifies individuals and groups within a larger community.. [and can] reflect and symbolize.. regional, social, ethnic or religious [identities]" (Wardhaugh 2002:34). Another possible explanation was noted by Stuart Chase (Whorf 1956:27):

Perhaps it is the suggestion that one's life has been tricked, all unaware, by the structure of language into a certain way of perceiving reality, with the implication that awareness of this trickery will enable one to see the world with fresh insight.

This idea that language shapes thought (as opposed to vice versa) was perhaps most eloquently expressed in the posthumously published collected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956). Whorf, an amateur linguist, had been exposed to similar views by his teacher and mentor Edward Sapir. The various formulations of the hypothesis that language either determines or influences cognition have come to be known as the SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS (or Whorfian Hypothesis).

There are both a 'strong version' and a 'weak version' of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The strong version, or LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM, holds that language determines thought. The weaker form, LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY, simply states that language influences thought. This lack of precise definition was probably caused by Sapir and Whorf themselves, both of whom were decidedly vague about their position on the hypothesis that has taken their names, although both of them "…did at some point advocate the extreme position in their respective works" (Penn 1972:15). For example, Whorf clearly presents the stronger version in these oft-quoted words (Whorf 1956:252):

This study shows that the forms of a person's thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which he is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived intricate sytematizations of his own language ... And every language is a vast pattern system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained ... forms and categories...[which build] the house of consciousness.

Whorf's statement suggests that the state (lexicon) and behavior (grammar) of one's lexicogrammatical system has vast metaphysical implications. If the stronger version is true, for example, then from our contradistinct lexicons would arise the condition that "…a thought expressible in one language may not be expressible in another" (Hunt and Agnoli 1984). Similarly, out of the disparate grammatical systems that are found among mankind would spring the fact that "…a speaker of a natural language without tenses would not be able to form a concept of past, present, and future" (Zhang and Schmitt 1998).

This idea touches the raw sinews of our understanding of the universe. As such, it evokes strong responses. One barometer of the aforementioned appeal of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis might be the diversity of disciplines or fields of interest that use it as a touchstone, finding or framing their discussions within Whorf's paradigm. A partial list of such would include: management (Halliday and Cawley 2000), marketing (Douglas 2001), world literature (Jirgens 1998), philosophy (Gill 1997; Harvey 1996), sex studies (Parks and Roberton 2000), death studies (Leichtentritt and Rettig 1999), drug addiction studies (Moore 1998), math education (Prins and Ulijn 1998), optometry (Lindsey 2000), gerontology (Goodwin 2002) and last, but certainly not the least, urology (Bloom et al 1998). With respect to the first discipline mentioned above, Markóczy (1998) observes that "[s]ome articles in leading management journals attribute differences in Polish and English management more to the differences in the respective languages than to the 40 years of communist rule in Poland." An abstract of the urological treatise also cited above provides us with the illuminating observation that "[t]he language of voiding dysfunction influences our perception of it" (Karger 1997). It would seem that there are more disciplines with at least nominal disciples (or perhaps name-droppers) of Whorf than there are Inuit words for 'snow' (see link to Scientific American article at bottom of page). For whatever reason, Whorf popularized an idea that seems to resonate with people examining a diverse host of questions from an equally large number of distinct vantage points.

Despite its apparent popularity in other disciplines, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been through cycles of relative tolerance and outright disgrace (but more of the latter than the former) within the literature of linguistics. Throughout recent decades it had little or no support within academia. It has been described as '…one of the prime whipping-boys of introductory texts on linguistics' (Parry-Jones 1996) and 'never orthodox, but… in linguistics..[has] acquired the status of "that which must be refuted at all costs"' (Cameron 1999). This probably stems largely from the powerful influence of Chomsky on the field. If Whorf has it right (at least in the stronger version), then Chomsky has it wrong: Chomsky's assertion that a Universal Grammar underlies all languages stands in direct contrast to Whorf's emphasis on the vast differences, perhaps even insurmountable ones, between languages. Moreover, the Chomskyian side of the debate (as expressed by his supporters, at least ) is tinged with an undercurrent of ideology that runs deeper than mere differences of opinion about linguistics. The very idea that the ability to grasp significant metaphysical concepts involving variables native to the fabric of reality (such as time and space) could be unequally distributed among cultures, not simply because some cultures had or had not yet been exposed to these concepts, but because of the presence or absence of an innately endowed faculty for perceiving them, is anathema to "[c]ritics like Steven Pinker and Geoff Pullum [, who] charge latter-day Whorfians not only with ignorance, but racism" (Cameron 1999). Pinker in particular is well-known for his flat assertion that the Whorf is "wrong, all wrong" (Pinker 1984:57). He later adds, 'No one is really sure how Whorf came up with his outlandish claims, but his limited, badly analyzed sample of Hopi speech and his long-time leanings toward mysticism must have contributed'(Pinker 1984:63). [It should be noted here that Lucy (1997) described Whorf's work with the Hopi in this way: ' … '...pioneering work… shows… tendencies to deal in an ad hoc way with providing a neutral description of reality and… somewhat anecdotal ethnographic evidence… Despite this, his effort is exemplary in addressing all the key elements of the hypothesis.' The rift between the two camps is clearly seen.] Relativism has thus been equated with ethnocentrism, new-age mysticism, or worse.

Attempts to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis have led to famously contradictory results. Penn draws the conclusion that 'Those who consider the [strong version] conclude with invalidating evidence, but those who set out to test the mild hypothesis conclude with possibly supporting evidence' (Penn 1972:16). Sera et al (2002) give a fairly lengthy list of some of these studies and summarizes their discordant results. Lucy (1997) provides an overview and discussion of the different approaches that empirical studies have taken: '...there have been three approaches… depending on which among the three key elements at issue (language, reality, thought) serves as the central orientation or point of departure for the investigation'. The first approach Sera describes examines the impact of the grammatical structure of languages on cognition, including the effects of various systems of temporal marking and number marking. Secondly, domain-centered approaches '…begin with experienced reality and ask how different languages encode it', examining such things as color categories and spatial orientation. Finally behavior-centered approaches include examinations of occupational accidents and counterfactual or hypothetical reasoning. Perhaps the best-known example of the latter is the oft-cited research of Bloom (1981) stemming from the fact that the Chinese language lacks a clearly marked subjunctive mood.Nall 2004: www.oocities.org/twocentseltcafe

Various studies have attacked the stronger version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis from the perspective that lexicon does not determine experiential reality. A substantial number, for example, examined differences in various languages' color perceptions and their lexicons for color. Boroditsky cited the work of Heider (1972) and Rosch (1975, 1978) as being particularly exemplary, "…demonstrating that the Dani (a tribe in New Guinea) had little trouble learning the English set of color categories, despite having only two words for colors in their language." However, the explicit lexical state of languages such as Chinese and English (and even registers within a language, such as the differing special vocabularies of mathematicians and botanists) were less significant to Whorf than their grammatical behavior. Citing Whorf's own discussion of the marked and unmarked gender of different languages, (Whorf 156:80, 90-92), Hunt and Agnoli (1984) conclude that Whorf "… believed that distinctions that are made implicitly, by the grammar of a language, are far more important determinants of thought than are the explicit categorizations of the lexicon". As Markóczy (1998) wryly observes, 'My native language, Hungarian, does not use separate words for "she" and "he," but I assure you that Hungarians are as conscious of the differences between the sexes as anyone else.'

The weaker form of the hypothesis, LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY, says that language simple influences cognition. "…language affects thinking…as a part of the… facilitations for directing thinking and attention and for expressing relationships" (Ho and Fuson 2004). This version has far more support, particularly with respect to the observation that different types of messages place a lesser or greater computational burden on the speaker depending on how well the language lends itself to transmission of the message (Hunt and Agnoli 1991). The aforementioned studies of Bloom are a good case in point: Chinese speakers, lacking the subjunctive form, have no direct method of expressing hypothetical situations (as English does), and therefore must resort to circumlocution.

The Whorfian Hypothesis is far from an ivory-tower abstraction. The implications for everyday life of even the weaker version can be striking. There is evidence that linguistic relativity may play in a pivotal role in education, medicine, and even pop culture. As an example from education, Ho and Fuson (2004) argue persuasively that Asian children face a lower computational burden (in the cognitive as well as mathematical sense) than their English-speaking counterparts, due to "…differences [in Chinese versus English-speaking] children's understanding of teen quantities (11 -< n --< 19) as counted cardinal tens and ones (embedded-ten cardinal understanding)." Similarly, Prins and Ulijn (1998) found that African readers of L2 English or Afrikaans were disadvantaged while working math problems with a textual component ("Two straight roads intersect perpendicularly at O. P is a point on one road… Two persons, at P and O respectively, start to walk simultaneously...") due to, among other things, difference in the way spatial relationships are perceived and expressed.

Whorf's theory has also been examined with application to the disciplines of marketing and advertising. For example, Zhang and Shmitt (1998) found that Chinese classifiers or "measure words" can have a significant impact on perceptions about products. Specifically, their research showed that pictures of consumer products which take the classifier 'ba', which refers to graspable objects, were evaluated more positively when shown in the grasp of a hand than when shown in isolation. Moreover, objects which take the same "measure word" were seen as being more similar to one another than objects which took different measure words but shared some other external features. This may account for actual practices of floor placement of products within stores, as for example some Chinese stores have one floor which contains items which take the measure word 'tai' (Zhang and Shmitt 1998).

One can even see shadows of Whorfian thought in pop culture, albeit in a highly informal manner. Celebrities often change their names in order to cast the public's perceptions into a desired light. For example, the name 'Marion' sounds distinctly feminine, which is probably why Marion Michael Morrison changed his name to 'John Wayne'. Names like 'Norma Jean' and 'Anna Mae' conjure up mental images of 'farm girls' from rural Southern regions, and 'Bullock' is a distinctly non-feminine word. That's probably why Norma Jean Baker and Anna Mae Bullock changed their names to Marilyn Monroe and Tina Turner, respectively. From Issur Danielovitch Demsky to Kirk Douglas, from William Pratt to Boris Karloff, from Archie Leach to Cary Grant - celebrities try to change lexical labels in order to bend perceptions in a desired direction (Wikipedia 2004). These name changes all echo, in a distant way, the work of a much-criticized amateur linguist named Whorf and his teacher, named Sapir.

Three popular articles examining a recent reevaluation of the S-W hypothesis (and the infamous 'hundred words for snow') can be found here:

Draining the Language out of Color by Philip E. Ross. Scientific American online, April 2004
A Way with Words by J.R. Minkel. Scientific American online, March 2002
Snow, by Any Other Name by J.R. Minkel. Scientific American online, March 2002

References

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Bloom, D.A., J.M. Park and H.P. Koo. 1998. Comments on pediatric elimination dysfunctions: the whorf hypothesis, the elimination interview, the guarding reflex and nocturnal enuresis. European Urology 33. 20-24.

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Wikipedia search on 'stage name'. As retrieved on February 21, 2004 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage_name

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Copyright © 2004 Timothy M. Nall. All rights reserved.

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