Chapter 7 - 2

02

Linguistics

Listen to a lecture in a linguistics class. Fill in the diagram with the information that you hear.

W: In linguistics, we often focus on really particular details of language.

Today I want to move away from that and discuss the relationship between culture and language and how each affects the other.

I want to start with the theory of linguistic relativity, which is more popularly known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, after the two linguists who formulated it.

Has anybody ever heard of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? No? I only ask because it’s pretty popular.

In fact, it’s been applied to many other fields as well.

OK, so the premise of the theory is that the way a language is structured influences how its speakers think and behave.

Do you don’t all get what I mean?

If you think about it, it’s pretty amazing. I mean, they’re essentially saying that the language you speak determines how you think and how you act. It’s not just that.

On a much greater level, it also suggests that the world for any given culture is perceived through completely different eyes, or tongues, more appropriately.

Do you understand how we get to that conclusion? It’s because of the way that their language allows a culture to express and understand their unique realities.

Sapir and Whorf were a professor-student team.

They formulated this theory over the course of many years working with a variety of different groups.

It resulted from performing experiments in comparative language studies. That’s when linguists study two different languages next to each other to find their similarities and their differences.

After all was said and done, they reviewed their results and came up with the theory of linguistic relativity.

Anyway, before you will completely dismiss this, let me say, there’s a lot of evidence that supports this theory. One of the more cited cases was the work that Whorf did with the Hopi.

After studying and analyzing the Hopi language. Whorf observed that, both linguistically and culturally, the Hopi had very different conceptions of time, then English speakers.

He noticed that the Hopi didn’t have different tenses as we do in English to express when things happen.

For example, in English, we would say “ran” to express that the action happened in the past, but the Hopi have no equivalent to the past tense.

In order to express the same thing, they would use a word that literally translates to “running from memory”.

Like I said, Whorf noticed this difference and thought it was…uh … different. The more he learned about the Hopi culture, however, he realized that this was no sheer coincidence.

It turns out that the Hopi have a different way of thinking about time. For us, it’s natural to view time as a line. Something happens, and it is done.

Something will happen in the future, and what that means for us is that it’s farther up in the line.

But the Hopi saw time as a process, so instead of line, it was more cyclical.

1) What does the professor imply when she says: this only ask because it’s pretty popular.

2) What can be inferred about how people from different cultures perceive the world?

3) What does the professor imply about Whorf’s discovery?