Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Recognition of the patterning of language, and of the implications of pattern for culture structure and process, has grown in importance throughout the history of the subfield. An idea that dates back well into the nineteenth century, and which underlies the positions taken by Boas and Sapir, is that the patterns, and thus structure, of the language one speaks bears some influential, perhaps causal, relationship to the pattern of one's thoughts. A clear expression of that idea can be found in Sapir's famous book, Language, published in 1921. As is well known, one of Sapir's students, Benjamin Lee Whorf, made the idea the cornerstone of his work, culminating in his well-known paper The relation of habitual thought and behavior to language (1956 [1941]). In both cases, the fundamental ideas arc that individuals adapt to their social environments through the languages they speak and that the social environments are thus not isomorphic with each other. The similarity of their ideas led Harry Hoijer (1956) to christen them as the 'Sapir-Whorf hypothesis', a name and concept that continues to be engaging in anthropological linguistics.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a subject with a deep and intrinsic interest: how much docs the language one speaks influence the way one thinks? Much of the literature has been critical, oriented to disproving and rejecting the claims that the hypothesis purportedly makes. There has been a diversity of opinion as to what Whorf, in particular, actually meant, and that in turn has led to considerable misunderstanding. Secondary interpretations of Whorf have led to false ideas such as the existence of two hypotheses, a strong one that claims that the structure of the language an individual speaks determines the thought patterns and thus world view of the individual, and a weak one that reduces the claim from 'determines' to 'influences'.

Questionnaire:

• Explain about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.