The document discusses the relationship between language, thought, and culture. It explores the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which claims that the language we speak shapes how we think. The document examines the work of Sapir and Whorf, who argued that different languages lead to different worldviews. As evidence, it analyzes Whorf's study of the Hopi language and his claim that it conveyed a different concept of time than English. While the strong version of linguistic determinism has been debunked, evidence suggests there may be weaker "Whorfian effects," where language predisposes certain ways of thinking.

1. The Relation between
Language, Thought, and Culture
ANTH1007
Intro to Linguistic Anthropology

2. Overview
• Does your language shape how you think?
• Language, thought and culture.
• Sapir-Whorf’s Linguistic Relativity
• Hopi: habitual thought, behavior
and language.
• Debunking linguistic determinism
• Evidence of Whorfian Effects

3. How are language and thought related?
Does your language shape how you think?

4. Language, Thought, and Culture:
Boas, Sapir & Whorf
Boas
• argued against idea that a people were incapable
of abstract thought if their language lacked abstract
terms or logical categories
• All languages and cultures were equally complex and
logical
Sapir
• any language can express whatever meaning
a speaker may wish to communicate; but …

5. Sapir’s ‘Linguistic relativity’
“Human beings…are very much at the mercy of the particular
language which has become the medium of expression of
their society. …The fact of the matter is that the ‘real
world’ is to a large extent built up on the language habits
of the group. …We see and hear and otherwise experience
very largely as we do because the language habits of our
community predispose certain choices of interpretation”
(Sapir, 1929).
• What does it mean to say we are ‘at the mercy of’ the
language we speak?
• How is our experience of the ‘real world’ built upon our
‘language habits’?

6. ‘The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to
Language’: B. L. Whorf
• Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941)
• Student of Sapir’s at Yale
• Elaborated on Sapir’s notion of ‘linguistic relativity’
• Inspired by experience at his day job as insurance inspector for the
Hartford Fire Insurance Company

7. ‘The name of the situation as affecting behavior’
‘Empty’ gasoline drums
Drum w/out gasoline worker smokes cigarette Drum bursts into flames

8. ‘The name of the situation as affecting behavior’
‘Spun limestone’
‘stone’ = noncombustible exposed to heat Insulation catches fire

9. Language as ‘worldview’:
The ‘Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis’
• Whorf claimed that language
constitutes a ‘worldview’ for
speakers
• Grammatical categories (e.g.,
plurality, number, tenses, gender,
classification of nouns, etc.) are
based on and provide particular
ways of interpreting experience
(e.g., of time, space, matter, etc.)
• Influenced by Einstein’s Theory of
Relativity – Sapir Whorf
hypothesis also known as
‘Linguistic relativity’
• Evidence from Hopi language

10. ‘The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior
to Language’: Hopi

11. Hopi Language
Uto-Aztecan language
(Hopi, Comanche,
Shoshone, Nahuatl)

12. The concept of ‘time’ in Hopi and English?
• Whorf claimed that Hopi has a very different concept of time
than English or other ‘standard average European’ (SAE)
languages
• Whereas English et al. objectifies time as a ‘thing’ and treats
it metaphorically as existing in space, Hopi preserves a more
basic experience of the cyclicity of time and of time as a
process of ‘becoming later’
• Based his claim on differences in the grammatical patterns of
Hopi and English, i.e., plurals and verb tenses.

13. Plurality in SAE and Hopi
SAE:
• Use of cardinal numbers with real and imaginary plurals,
e.g., ‘day’ counted as an object, a ‘length of time:
‘three days’
Hopi:
• Use of ordinal numbers with units of time, e.g., ‘day’
experienced as cyclicity (i.e., the same day recurring over
and over):
‘payistala’ or ‘the third day’
[‘paayo’ (three) ‘s’ (times) ‘taala’ (daylight) ‘three-times-
daylight’]

14. Temporal forms of verbs
in SAE and Hopi
SAE:
• ‘Three-tense’ verbal system: past, present, and future
• Spatial metaphor of time as moving through space out of past
(behind) into present (deictic center) towards future (front)
Hopi:
• ‘Two tense’ verbal system: future (-ni) non-future ( Ø or -ngwu)
• Subjective experience of time as ‘getting later’and of events as
‘later’ or ‘earlier’ – expressed by temporal adverbs

15. Did Whorf Claim that
Hopi lacks a concept of time?
• Controversy over Whorf’s claims about (and knowledge of) Hopi
• Some took him as saying Hopi doesn’t have a concept of time – still
the basis of common myth about the Hopi
• Some linguists have sought to disprove Whorf citing evidence that
Hopi language does have tenses and does express time through spatial
metaphors.
• Anthropologists have countered that Whorf never claimed that Hopi
didn’t have a concept of time, just that it was different from English
• Bourne out by same evidence e.g., in having a future non–future
distinction; temporal adverbs have spatial aspects (something that
happened or is happening far away is described as being distant in time
or having taken place long ago).

16. Habitual behavior features of SAE culture
How is the treatment of time
as an OBJECT reflected in
features of SAE culture?
– Cultural practices of
measuring time
– Historicity
– pro rata allocation of
value to time

17. Habitual behavior features of Hopi Culture
How is the treatment of time as an
EVENT (‘becoming later’)
reflected in features of Hopi culture?
– Persistence: e.g., Butterfly dance
– Cultural practices of preparation:
• Outer preparation: i.e., for
crops na’twani
• Inner preparation: e.g., prayer
pipe na’twanpi
– Announcing (Crier Chief)
– Precautions and ‘good will’

18. Discussion Questions
• Think of some common phrases related to time in English (e.g., ‘time is
money,’ ‘tomorrow is another day’)? What would some equivalent
phrases be in Hopi?
• How would a speaker of Hopi have experienced living in SAE society?
What differences would they have noticed?
• How would a speaker of a SAE language have experienced living among
the Hopi? What differences would they have noticed?
• Do modern Hopi still conceive of time differently than most SAEs?
• Do you think the way the Hopi language deals with time is an obstacle to
Hopi adapting to the ‘modern’ world?

19. Does your language shape how you think? Redux
It depends…

20. Debunking Sapir-Whorf (Strong version)
• Unidirectional influence
• Language determines thought
Language Thought

21. Debunking Sapir-Whorf (Strong version)
• Unidirectional influence
• Language determines thought
FALSE
Language Thought

22. Debunking ‘Strong’ Linguistic Determinism
• The Lexical Poverty Myth:‘Language X has no word for
Y’meme
• Example: ‘There is no word for thank you in Dothraki’
• For examples and debunking of this myth see the article on
Mark Liberman’s (UPenn) Language Log:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1081

23. Debunking ‘Strong’ Linguistic Determinism
President Reagan’s claim that ‘Russian has no word for
‘freedom’’
Really?
English-Russian dictionary:
‘freedom’ = svobóda

24. “The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax”
• “The Eskimos have a dozen words for snow.”
• Boas recorded 4 roots for snow in Eskimo language: aput
(‘snow on the ground), gana (‘falling snow’), piqsirpoq
(‘drifting snow’) and qimuqsuq (‘a snow drift’)
• Whorf claimed that, for the Eskimo, one catch-all word for
snow would be ‘unthinkable’
• But doesn’t mean you can’t understand
distinctions just because your language
doesn’t mark them.
• Cf. Nepali words for English ‘rice’

25. “The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax”

26. Can language control thought?
Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty Four
“It was intended that when Newspeak
had been adopted,… a heretical
thought should be literally
unthinkable, in so far as thought is
dependent on words. … The word
free still existed in Newspeak but it
could not be used in its old sense of
‘politically free’ or ‘intellectually
free’…since political and
intellectual freedom no longer
existed even as concepts, and were
therefore of necessity nameless”
(Orwell, 1948).

27. Linguistic Relativity (Weak version)
• Axiom: ‘Language thought and culture influence one
another in a flexible, mutually constitutive way’
• Language may predispose certain ways of thinking or
cultural practices (‘Whorfian Effects’)
Language
Thought Culture

28. Evidence for ‘Whorfian Effects’:
Where to look?
• Language-in-general:
– language as prerequisite for development of ‘Theory of
Mind’
• Language structures:
– semantic domains (color, space)
– grammatical categories (gender, plurals)
• Language use (discursive relativity):
– e.g., ‘technostrategic’ discourse (Cohn, 1987)

29. Evidence for ‘Whorfian Effects’:
Semantic domain of color
• The color spectrum:
• Biological and cultural aspect to perception of color(s)

30. Berlin & Kay’s (1969)
Implicational hierarchy of color terms
• txt

31. Differences in perception of color(s):
Color terms
Full spectrum
W, B, R
W, B, R, Y
W, B, R, Y, GR, (G, B)
W, B, R, Y, G, B, P

32. ‘Whorfian Effect’: Color
English Russian
sinii
blue
goluboy
• Russian speakers must distinguish shade of blue every time
they describe something ‘blue’
• Effect - Russian speakers are quicker at distinguishing
between light and dark blue

33. ‘Whorfian Effect’: Color & Gender
• Claim: Women have more terms for colors than men, thus perceive
more differences in color

34. Evidence for ‘Whorfian Effects’:
Semantic domain of space
Spatial coordinate systems:
• Relative: left-right, forward-backward
– E.g., English
• Absolute: north-west-south-east; uphill-downhill,
upstream-downstream
– E.g, Guugu Yimithirr

35. Evidence for ‘Whorfian Effect’:
Spatial frames of reference
• Speakers of languages with absolute coordinate system
have to constantly be aware of their orientation and also
have to remember the orientation of objects they see
• Rotation experiment:

36. ‘Whorfian Effect’: Spatial frames of reference
• Another rotation experiment:

37. Evidence for ‘Whorfian Effects’: Grammatical
gender
• Languages vary in terms of obligatory marking of
grammatical gender (i.e., whether a nouns is ‘masculine’
or ‘feminine’)
• How would you describe a bridge?
strong, slender,
hard, elegant,
rough, graceful?
• German speakers (die Brücke = f.): slender, elegant
• Spanish Speakers (el puente = m.): hard, rough

38. Evidence for ‘Whorfian Effect’:
Shape v. material composition
• Two number-marking patterns in languages: plurals v. unitizers
• Plurals in English v. Yucatec Maya
– English split pattern: plural markers with stable objects;
unitizers with malleable objects
• E.g. ‘one(two) banana(s)’ but ‘one cup of coffee’
– Yucatec Maya continuous pattern: unitizers with stable
and malleable objects
• E.g., one(two) unit(s) of banana’ and ‘one cup of
coffee’

39. ‘Whorfian Effect’: Shape v. material composition
• Prediction: English speakers pay attention to shape of objects;
Yucatec Maya speakers pay attention to the material
composition. (Lucy & Gaskins, 2003)

40. The continuing debate over Whorfian Effects: The
Pirahã
• Pirahã of Amazonia:
• Language has no numbers, no color terms, no pronouns, only basic
kinship terms, and no recursive structures (e.g., ‘the house that Jack
built’)
• According to Everett (2005) the reason is Pirahã cultural constraints on
talking about anything but concrete subjects and the here and now
culture language/thought ?