Whorfian Hypothesis Tis Nature's Work

Whorfian Hypothesis Tis nature's work that man should utter words But whether thus or thus, 'tis left to you To do as seems most pleasing" (9) Dante's Paradiso How relevant is the Whorfian Hypothesis (WH) - also referred to as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - to language learning, in particular for the person who learned (or is learning) English as a second language? It is no secret that there are conflicting views on the meaning of and application of WH - and on the value of this hypothesis about language.

What are some of those conflicting viewpoints that are reflected in the academic community? This paper will review the available literature on the subject and offer value judgments on the significance of WH in various applications and learning environments. The thesis is straightforward: What was Whorf's contribution; what are scholars saying about him; and has "Whorf-hypothesis" proven realistic and effective in meaningful linguistic and cultural settings? A.M. Halpern, "[Review of] Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf," American Sociological Review.

In this article critic Halpern briefly reviews the writings of Whorf, found in the book published after Whorf's death, Language, Thought, and Reality. No matter that it is short, there is value in this critique; readers learn that Whorf's impact on American understanding of language, from the point-of-view of noted economist / engineer Stuart Chase, was equal to what Einstein accomplished in physics.

And also, because of Whorf's untimely death (of cancer) at the age of forty-four, Halpern writes, some of what Whorf accomplished in anthropology and linguistics was actually unfinished scholarship, albeit his "provisional insights have been treated as definitive formulations." Hugo a. Bedau, "[Review of] Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf," Philosophy of Science. In another but far more in-depth critique of the book published following Whorf's passing, Bedau makes a point of identifying numerous gaps and flaws in Whorf's work.

But first, Bedau quotes Whorf's "most precise formulation of the linguistic relativity principle," as the late linguist / engineer preferred to call it. It follows: All observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated" (p. 214 of Whorf's book; p. 290 of Bedau's critique).

Whorf was certainly aware, Bedau continues, that he left his principle "far from adequately formulated, let along confirmed"; and further, Whorf surely understood that his hypotheses would make a substantive contribution to social science "only if further investigation showed precisely what testable hypotheses it entailed," Bedau explained. Deserving special attention from future and present day scholars is Whorf's idea of a picture of the world - what he termed "metaphysics," "thought world," "conceptual scheme" and "ideology" (pp.

58, 147, 214, 241 in Whorf's book; 291 in Bedau's critique) - as "distinct from but related to the language background, all non-verbal behavior, and the rest of a culture," Bedau continued. And while Bedau's task here is essentially reviewing and critiquing a book published after Whorf's death, Bedau is not shy about weighing in on the validity of Whorf's hypotheses.

For example, on page 291, Bedau points out that indeed Whorf has been criticized, and "often," for his attempt to use his knowledge of a linguistic background "...as a basis for inferences to the content of the correlated thought world." The problem is, Bedau goes on, "he offers no convincing examples of the inferential use of his principle"; and, Bedau adds, "it is very doubtful whether his arguments have at all established a causal relationship between language and thought worlds in the first place." By the middle of his lengthy critique, Bedau seems to be taking the late Whorf out back to the woodshed, to use a metaphor; to wit, every argument Whorf offers "...for the linguistic relativity of some metaphysical orientation can be similarly criticized." Many of Whorf's illustrations of his principles, Bedau continues, "appear to be either irrelevant or mistaken." Meredith M.

Kimball & Philip S. Dale, "The Relationship between Color Naming and Color Recognition Abilities of Preschoolers," Child Development. The argument put forward by the WH, according to Kimball et al., is that the experiences one embraces in this world are determined by the language one speaks in this world. Given that the WH was basically formulated in 1957, and this article was published in 1972, it is altogether probable that subsequent developments have shed a brighter light on the definition and its refinements.

Still, it is worth examining each scholarly article as an independent piece of work and to allow its apparent value to rise to the top or sink to the bottom based on its own merits. The author of this piece suggests that there are, according to D. McNiell's work in 1965, three possible interpretations of WH. ONE: There is a "strong version," Kimball writes (Kimball 973), which alludes to the fact that "categories and structures of language determine thought," and this "causal relationship" does not depend on the individual actually producing language.

TWO: The "weak version" of the WH is different from the strong both in point of influence and in the role of language production.

Language, the weak version goes, can "influence perception, but only when the relevant linguistic labels are actually produced." THREE: In the "weakest version," according to Kimball's interpretation of McNiell, if information is expected to be stored over a period of time, the storage of it is performed by a "linguistic code" and hence, that imprint of the linguistic code is present at a later time and can be retained by the learner.

In all three versions "language touches cognition at one of three points - thought, perception, or memory," Kimball writes (973). The evidence for the strong version has not been verifiable and the evidence to support the weak version of this hypothesis has been "ambiguous." But the weakest version is supported by evidence that is indeed somewhat clearer, Kimball goes on.

Studies involving both deaf and hearing children, six years old, reported that the deaf children performed "significantly worse" on a recognition task which indicated how important language really is in terms of coding (retaining) information over a period of time. Meanwhile, Kimball et al. took that "weakest form" of the Whorfian hypothesis down the road to discovery in a research study; this test involved thirty-three boys and girls (11 boys, 22 girls) from middle class families. Their ages were between three and five years, and they were in two different nursery schools.

They were tested in two sessions (first a naming task; second a recognition task); the tests used Farnsworth-Munsell color chips. The precise steps and procedures of the tests will be omitted here in the interest of space, but the outcome reported by Kimball et al. supported the "weakest" form of the WH. The bottom line is that the empirical data from this research supports the finding by Delee Lantz and Eric. H.

Lenneberg that six-year-old hearing children remembered colors "significantly better" than six-year-old children who were deaf and had no language system (Kimball 978). John Adai; Sol Wort, "The Navajo as Filmmaker: A Brief Report of Research in the Cross-Cultural Aspects of Film Communication," American Anthropologist. In this article the authors are very much supportive of the value of the Whorfian hypothesis and seek to validate it.

They are working with moving pictures and Navajo Indians in an effort to "shed light on the Whorfian hypothesis" since most previous work (at least up to the time of the article, 1967), they contend, has mainly been limited to "linguistic investigation of cognitive phenomena." This interesting experiment was conducted using three young men and three young women (all bilingual) - and a 55-year-old monolingual woman - all seven of Navajo ethnicity. The participants were instructed as to how to "conceive, to photograph, and to edit 16 mm silent film" (Adai, 76).

As to what their silent film subject would be, that was entirely up to them. The operating hypothesis put forward was that a movie created entirely by this group might reveal "aspects of cognition and values that may be inhibited, not observable, or not analyzable" when the process of investigation relies on "verbal exchange" conducted in the language of the investigator. Moreover, producing film images then sequencing those images by editing, cutting and pasting, just might help researchers understand better the WH.

Another operating theory here is that by treating the visual as though it were a language, and then following up by comparing the two "linguistic structures" (visual and verbal) - believing that both make statements about cognition and culture "across two modes" - may provide a context in which the Whorfian manner comes clearer into focus. Yet another idea was that juxtaposing the final product with the raw original footage would surely shed light on the cognitive dynamics of Navajos (77).

Meanwhile, on page 78, the authors report their findings; a) it is feasible to teach people "of another society" to use film as a "language"; b) using a language-free medium (silent film) provides valuable insights into Native American (Navajo) values - and other tribal and folk society cultural values - and by using film as a future research tool, anthropologists "will yield increasingly rich returns." The authors go on to mention that by comparing the Navajo silent film research with similar research using African-American high school drop-outs in Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania filmmakers, some "universals" and some differences as well came to light in the relationships between film and "linguistic" and cultural variables.

Zhu Zhifang, "Linguistic Relativity and Cultural Communication," Educational Philosophy and Theory. The author, a Whorf hypothesis believer, goes to some lengths in this piece to establish that due to globalization, philosophy is no longer universally believed to be the "ultimate foundation of cultural communication" (Zhifang 162).

And yet, traditionalists still believe that the "merits of a culture" are given value based on how closely that culture adheres to the "objective truth and ideal morality." And there are two "presuppositions" associated with that view; one is metaphysical ("all cultures share the same worldview"); the second is the "linguistic presupposition that all languages associated with different cultures represent the world in the same way," Zhifang explains.

Which leads him to offer his basic bottom line definition of Benjamin Lee Whorf's principle of linguistic reality; how a person understands reality and behaves with respect to that reality is influenced by that person's language. Through his hands-on research into Hebrew, Aztec, Maya, Hopi, among other languages, Whorf was convinced that language "segments experience" and "cuts up the world in a special way," Zhifang continues (162).

And linguistic relativity suggests to Zhifang that throughout one's life he or she has been "tricked by the structure of language into a certain way of perceiving reality," and the implied result is that being aware of this trickery allows one "...to see the world with fresh insight." Zhifang quotes Whorf at this point in the article as saying (in 1956) that language is not merely a "technique of expression" but rather language is a "classification and arrangement of the stream of sensory experience which results in a certain world order..." What is the bottom line in this philosophically focused research paper? Three bottom lines are put forward here: one, Zhifang is a humanist and a believer in WH; two, there is no easy way to rationalize the failure of communication between nations and cultures; and three, different languages (whether Hopi, Maya, English or French) are "equally valid" when describing the "observable phenomena" of the cosmic world (164).

An addendum to those points is found on page 167, as Zhifang asserts that cultural communication depends on the virtue of "charity" being at play, and that no culture is "superior to others" since any two methods of describing the universe are "equally valid." R. Zepp, J. Morin, C.L. Lei, Common Logical Errors in English and Chinese, Educational Studies in Mathematics. The authors make clear at the outset that they are not at all concerned with "...the overall validity of the Whorf hypothesis" (Zepp et al. 1). They quote from J.

Fishman who wrote in 1973 that attempts at "proving or disproving" the Whorfian hypothesis should be set aside; instead, the focus should be on "attempt to delimit more sharply the types of language structures...that do or do not show the Whorfian effect as well as the degree and modifiability of this involvement when it does obtain" (Zepp 2).

The point of the article is that students increasingly are studying math and science in a second language, which is of course problematic in many cases and provides the seeds for investigation and understanding. The reasons students learning in a second language have difficulties boils down to the fact that as the WH puts forward, logical reasoning in one's original language is natural. Therefore, if one buys into WH, which these authors do, then in a second language logical reasoning is "difficult if not impossible," Zepp asserts.

One of the conclusions of this research is in itself very logical; it is that "...learning ability in the second language is affected by competence in the first language" (Zepp 2). Emilio a. Lanier, "Teaching English as a Foreign Language to American College Freshmen," Phylon.

The author, Lanier, tries to resist being cryptic and skeptical at the outset of this article because he is a professor of English and many freshmen entering school wind up in his class; it is a "grim if humorous picture of futility" in many cases, he contends.

He does appear, however, totally un-skeptical when he embraces the "...comprehensive, objective perspective on human linguistic-logical systems which Benjamin Lee Whorf's theory affords..." The reason for this paper, Lanier explains on page 362 of this journal, is to suggest ways to improve strategies for teaching and learning English to college beginners.

One of Whorf's propositions that Lanier emphasizes as important in launching a new approach to teaching this level of English is that "...our language does our thinking for us." In other words, individuals cannot "even perceive...aspects of life and nature" for which English has no words. The second of Whorf's ideas that Lanier examines in this paper is a bit more involved, and moreover it has never been carried out in an instructional environment, he asserts.

So-called "civilized" European languages carry with them certain "common sense" patterns and "underlying assumptions," Lanier writes on page 362, that don't match up with more "primitive" languages. Meanwhile, the speakers of "primitive" languages such as the Hopi (which Whorf researched in great depth) have within their rhetorical, grammatical and logical patterns a kind of "real" and "basic world view" that is missing in European languages.

Taking that a step further, the Hopi language approaches "more nearly" the principal assumptions of "modern mathematical physics" than do the "civilized" European languages, according to Lanier. Where is this leading the reader of this scholarly piece? Lanier asserts that Whorf's studies led him to "strongly suspect" that those primitive language speakers and "heirs of their concomitant cultures" may indeed lead "more well-balanced, happy lives," notwithstanding their perceived "backwardness" to date in scientific matters, than do heirs of the European hegemony.

So, given that approach, Lanier goes on to suggest that what is needed in colleges is "more emphasis on...the deeper and wider emotional, psychological, and aesthetic range of enjoyment of life." This enjoyment, after all, is "the birthright of humankind" (Lanier 363). The primitives through their more logical, focused language understand "ultimate reality" - the "nth dimension of awareness" - and the modern student can certainly become more successful in learning, Lanier continues, if they are coaxed into embracing a new approach to English.

That new approach would be workable, Lanier concludes as he quotes from Whorf's book, Language, Thought, and Reality:."..the crudest savage may unconsciously manipulate with effortless ease a linguistic system so intricate, manifoldly systematized, and intellectually difficult that it requires the lifetime study of our greatest scholars to describe its workings" (Lanier 367). Bruce I. Kodish, What We do With Language - What it does With Us, a Review of General Semantics.

Author Kodish reviews the concept of "linguist relativity" by establishing that he believes in what Whorf put forward; i.e., "language is intertwined with behavior" and language does not exist outside humans' nervous systems." People create their own language in an ongoing process through each particular culture, he goes on. And moreover, a large part of "human evaluative processes relates to language behavior or use," Kodish explains. Hence, we humans learn how to do things with words in a social context.

Kodish alludes to the view of linguistic scholar Steven Pinker, who proposed that the structure of language (i.e. grammar) "...comes primarily by means of what he calls a 'language instinct' determined by genes" (Kodish 387). However, to most people who believe that most of language structure "gets determined genetically" - which Whorf did not - there is a notable lack of substance in their explanations, Kodish goes on.

Indeed, Pinker is a person who not only tried to dismiss Whorf's linguistic relativity, Pinker also viciously attacked Whorf's work with Hopi Indians, according to Kodish.

Pinker uses "selective quotes" in order to "prove" that Whorf made "outlandish claims" that the Hopis were "oblivious to time." In fact, Kodish's study of Whorf's work with the Hopis shows that Whorf did not deny that the Hopi language used dating or calendars; but Whorf indeed claimed the Hopi "did not conceptualize 'space or time as such' in the reified manner that we do in English." Kodish's main point here is that Whorf is open to some criticism, but people like Pinker are taking things out of context.

Jane O. Bright, William Bright, "Semantic Structures in Northwestern California and the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, American Anthropologist. This article by two professors from the University of California, Los Angeles alludes to a number of Native American tribes in northwestern California, among them the Yurok, Hupa, Karok, Wiyot and Chilula. These tribes all have cultural connections, and yet they are linguistically diverse, Bright writes.

Hence, the writers are impressed with this "paradoxical combination of cultural unity with linguistic diversity" which was cited by a Whorf colleague and mentor, Yale anthropologist Edward Sapir, in 1921. The Hupa Indians, "are very typical of the culture area to which they belong," Bright quotes Sapir as writing. And "culturally identical" to the Hupa are the Yurok and Karok tribes.

When the three tribes get together, "...there is the liveliest tribal intercourse...so much so that all three generally attend an important religious ceremony given by any one of them" (Bright quoting Sapir, 249). However, the languages of all three tribes are alien to each other; none of the three speak the same or understand what the others are saying.

Sapir wrote that "Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society..." (Bright 249-250). Meantime, Bright's thesis in this article is, given the Sapir-Whorf or Whorfian hypothesis, there is a discrepancy in what Sapir writes about these tribes. Given their linguistic diversity, how can they also be "culturally identical"? This is a test of WH, indeed; and.