The Pinker vs. Sapir-Whorf debate is central to the study of linguistics and related areas like psycholinguistics and cognitive science. Most linguists can at least agree that humans have a “unique language capacity,” (Levinson 25). Yet the innate capacity to learn language is where the similarities between Pinker and Whorf end. Whereas Whorf radically transformed both cognitive science and linguistics by using empirical evidence to show how language shapes thought, Pinker has also been influential with a nativist, modular, and nativist understanding of human language development. Both theories have their strengths and weaknesses, but ultimately the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis remains far more compelling, more substantiated by empirical evidence, and also more able to explain some of the complexities of language and culture. Even though children are not born speaking in full sentences, all children have the capacity for language development, the potential to learn verbal and written means of communication as well as non-verbal communication like gestures (Pinker). Yet linguists still grapple with whether semantics exist independently of language (the Pinker point of view) or whether semantics and linguistics co-create each other (Whorf’s perspective). As linguistics has employed more quantitative and empirical methods of data collection and analysis, it becomes increasingly possible to make more cogent arguments about the efficacy of both Pinker’s or Whorf’s points of view. Pinker’s perspective is commonly called “nativism,” not to be confused with the racist political ideology that bears the same name (Levinson 25). Nativism in linguistics refers to the innate capacity of people for language development, based on evolutionary theory. According to Levinson, Pinker’s nativism rests on two assumptions. The first assumption aligns with Chomsky’s own research, and has to do simply with the “universal and innate” nature of language syntax (26). The second assumption in Pinker’s theory is that even...

Although Pinker’s theory has become prevalent in linguistics, it is not universally accepted. Pinker’s analyses like “Baby Born Talking” also seem more based on anecdotal evidence than on empiricism, which weakens the Pinker point of view.
The alternative point of view held by Whorf and expressed most notably in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. In “Language and Mind,” Levinson aligns with the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, which proposes that language actually precedes thought and is co-created with culture and socialization. Language is critical for all higher-level cognitive processing, learning, and instruction, which is why the language(s) a child learns will impact that child’s problem solving preferences, communication styles, and worldviews. Linguistic coding can be shown in experimental research to have a measurable effect on “nonlinguistic cognition,” implying that language shapes cognitive schemas, worldviews, and other large-scale patterns of thought (Levinson 41). Levinson also shows that contrary to the anecdotal evidence used to support Pinker’s position, evidence supporting the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis uses experimental methods, particularly focusing on the rendition of numbers, colors, and geographic descriptors. The Whorf position is not deterministic, though. For instance, abstract thought can occur in non-linguistic ways, giving rise to mathematical, musical, or visual artistic “languages.”

Other premises of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis are related to the nature of language itself. For example, “languages vary in their semantics just as they do in their form,” (Levinson 41-42). In other words, the same concept cannot necessarily be communicated in all languages. The language has limits, and sometimes those limits actually create cognitive limits too. For instance, language determines how a person renders…