Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: What is the relationship between L&C?

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Language & Culture

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was first published in 1929, stated that "language was a guide to social reality".

• Language presents a cognitive framework which determines thought
• Thought and cognitive frame determines culture
• Therefore language determines culture
• If you learn a language therefore, you will learn the culture

Language:

1. communicates
2. directs the perceptions of its speakers
3. provides habitual modes for analyzing experiences
4. constructs cognitive categories
5. powers are part of the unconscious

Arguments for Sapir/Whorf

1. The Northern Hopi
1. TIME SPACE & MATTER...do we all view these the same way
1. Whorf looked at the Hopi and found that the way we view time is reflected in a languages tense system.
2. in Hopi, there are only two tenses...earlier and later...therefore they do not think of time as a quantity
3. In SAE where three tenses are used (past, present & future) This is why we use clocks, watches, etc, according to Whorf
4. THINKING is a function of language, and therefore determines culture.
5. CLOSURE is the psychological

Hopi & SAE

§  Mass nouns (SAE) & plurality

§  Time is discrete(Hopi) /length (SAE)

§  Verbs have no tenses in Hopi, but “validity forms”

§  Use of metaphors for duration, intensity & tendency (SAE only)

Summary:

·    SAE sees the world in terms if THINGS (bodies and quasi-bodies) plus modes of existential, but formal existence (substance & matter). It tends to see existence through a binomial formula  (content is understood by the outline of a container “stick of butter, “glass of water”) Time, like space is limited

§  Behavioral implications

·         Emphasis on time keeping, records and history

·         Increased gesturing as a visual metaphor

·         monotony

·    HOPI reality analyzed in terms of events, Events are expressed objectively through experience & perceptive reports. All quantities have a particulate existence. Time, unlike space, is not limited

§  Behavioral implications

·         Little gesturing

·         Preparedness for things already formed

·         repetition

Chicken or Egg?

Whorf says that language comes first because…”language is a system, not just an assemblage of norms (culture). Large systematic outlines can change to something really new only very slowly, while many other cultural innovations are made with comparative quickness. Language thus represents mass mind; it is affected by inventions and innovations, but…slowly…whereas to inventors and innovators it legislates with the decree immediately”

1. Color Studies
1. artists
2. gender

1. Identification of cultural elements (do structural elements have semantic correlates-this is the primary distinction which Hojior makes)
1. eskimo snow
2. navaho word for canoe
3. no word, no thing
4. gender and words (masculine, feminine, neuter)

1. Multilinguals
1. do you think differently in each language? Why? Why not?

Dorothy Lee:

“Codifications of Reality”

Time in American Culture

·    connects point to point (linear) chronological

·    moves (past to present but not any other way)

·    chronology is climactic (narrative or emotional)

Trobriand islanders

·    time is present, completed or timeless

·    events described situationally (in my father’s time) not chronologically

·    nonclimactic narrative, but validity, dignity, value ( no dessert)

George Lakoff & Mark Johnson

Metaphors We Live By

Our concepts and thoughts are all metaphorical in nature. This underlies the linguistic management of our habitual actions (unconscious) Language and culture are part of a larger cognitive system.

·    Argument is war

§  Win or lose

§  We have an opponent

§  Defend a point

§  Criticisms right on target

§  Shot down for his arguments

§  Gained a strong position

·    Time is money

§  Wasting it

§  Gadget saves you time

§  How do you spend your time?

§  Living on borrowed time

§  Invested a lot of time

§  Flat tire cost me an hour

Chicken & Egg:  Metaphors characterize a coherent system of concepts corresponding to a coherent system of metaphorical expressions for those concepts.

ARGUMENTS AGAINST SAPIR-WHORF

1. Brown
1. literal translation
2. naming
3. Zipf's Law
4. Etymology
5. Form Classes
6. Relativity

1. Bright and Bright
1. Culture area = Language area (areas that speak the same language should have the same culture and those similar in culture and geography should speak the same language)
1. Northwest cost cultures (many languages, one culture)
2. languages do NOT have the same cognitive structures

1. Black
1. LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY vs LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM
1. does language actually determine our perception, or is it a COVARIANCE. Does culture set up these categories and does language reflect them or is there a little bit of both.

Stephen Levinson

“Language & Mind”

Coevolution: there is great diversity among human language systems and there is not a simple temple or blueprint which is innate to all. Not just “noise” (psychlinguistic study)

Simple Nativism (Pinker): the essence of human language is syntax and the blueprint for syntax is innate. Diversity is inconsequential “noise”

Chicken & Egg: “It is culture, responding to a particular ecological niche that provides the bulk of conceptual packages that are encoded in any language”

Evidence for diversity:

·    Children must filter sounds to create a phonetic inventory

·    Children have a learning mechanism for this and we see this in their separation of systems when they are multilingual

·    Few linguistic universals, or statistical generalizations

·    May shift from vocal to visual auditory…does this have grammar in the same way?

Do we think how we speak?

·    Do we have a word or a concept for everything we experience in our culture? No.

·    When words are activated, the concept as a whole is activated, we do not parse. Short term memory is why. (limits)

-Languages vary in their semantics just as they do in their forms

-Semantic differences are bound to engender cognitive differences

-Cognitive correlates of semantic differences  can be empirically found on a widespread basis…no simple nativism.

We do not map words into existing concepts. This is why cognitive development in children exists.

Concepts (Man Without Words):

·      (p28) what is the impact of living without “names” for things? If you don’t have a name, what is your sense of self?

·      (p32) he did not seem to see signs as symbols, but rather as mimes or gestural commands

·      (p49) IMPORTANCE OF HUMAN CONTACT –human seem to need attention, the need to spend time with someone else as social beings-outweighs intelligent content

WHAT IS LANGUAGE?

·      (p57) made up of signs

·      (p63) how is it learned?

o   Names 

o   Sysntax

o   Tense

o   Adjectives

o   Verbs (don’t need these because they are easily mimed)

·      Learning: 1-2 word stages

·      (p79) language learning in isolation of culture is impossible

·      (p86) VISUAL THINKING and deaf culture-creates a rich visual culture

·      *p89) Audiological versus cultural deaf

·      (p90) language as a membership card to culture

·      (p98) language draws the boundaries created by humans, not nature

·      (p156) entrance into language is the entrance into the human family

·      (p160) Orality & education


Deaf language & Deaf Culture:

Culture and language intertwine, with language reflecting characteristics of culture & patterning the thoughts of deaf individuals which see the world through "visual language". 

• Learning about the culture of Deaf people is also learning about their language. 
• Deaf people use American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate with each other and with hearing people who know the language. ASL is a visual/gestural language that has no vocal component. ASL is a complete, grammatically complex language. It differs from a communication code designed to represent English directly. ASL is not a universal language, however. There are signed languages in other countries (e.g., Italian Sign Language, Chinese Sign Language, Swedish Sign Language).
• American Deaf culture centers on the use of ASL and identification and unity with other people who are Deaf. 
• A Deaf sociolinguist, Dr. Barbara Kannapel, developed a definition of the American Deaf culture that includes a set of learned behaviors of a group of people who are deaf and who have their own language (ASL), values, rules, and traditions. 
• In 1913, George W. Veditz, president of the National Association of the Deaf, reflected in an old movie the sense of identity ASL gives Deaf individuals when he signed, "As long as we have deaf people on Earth, we will have signs, and as long as we have our films, we can preserve our beautiful sign language in its original purity. It is our hope that we all will love and guard our beautiful sign language as the noblest gift God has given to deaf people." HMMMM...

The values, behaviors, and traditions of Deaf culture include:

• Promoting an environment that supports vision as the primary sense used for communication at school, in the home, and in the community, as vision offers individuals who are deaf access to information about the world and the independence to drive, travel, work, and participate in every aspect of society.
• Valuing children who are deaf as the future of deaf people and Deaf culture. Deaf culture therefore encourages the use of ASL, in addition to any other communication modalities the child may have.-NON-STANDARD-LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE
• Support for bilingual ASL/English education of children who are deaf so they are competent in both languages. STANDARD-LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE
• Inclusion of specific rules of behavior in communication in addition to the conventional rules of turn taking. For example, consistent eye contact and visual attention during a conversation is expected. In addition, a person using sign language has the floor during a conversation until he or she provides a visual indicator (pause, facial expression, etc.) that he or she is finished. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
• Perpetuation of Deaf culture through a variety of traditions, including films, folklore, literature, athletics, poetry, celebrations, clubs, organizations, theaters, and school reunions. Deaf culture also includes some of its own "music" and poetry as well as dance.
• Inclusion of unique strategies for gaining a person's attention, such as:
  • gently tapping a person on the shoulder if he or she is not within the line of sight,
  • waving if the person is within the line of sight, or
  • flicking a light switch a few times to gain the attention of a group of people in a room- COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE.

Socially Charged Life of Language: Introduction to Language and Culture

"All words have the "taste" of a profession, a genre, a tendency, a party, a particular work, a particular person, a generation, an age group, the day and hour. Each word tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived it's socially charged life..."    ---Bakhtin

"Black Lives Matter", "Blue Lives Matter", "All Lives Matter", 
---"Make America Great Again"

• Key Points and Learning objectives
• Language IS NOT a neutral medium for communication
• Language is a SET OF SOCIALLY EMBEDDED PRACTICES
• Social interactions are MEDIATED by language, whether spoken, written, verbal or noinverbal
• Semester will show that LANGUAGE AND CULTURE ARE INEXTRICABLY INTERTWINED

Examples to Consider: How is it the case that a linguistic analysis alone or a sociocultural analysis alone would NOT provide a comprehensive explanation of the significance of these events?

• getting "stoned" in San Francisco-Anti drug high school class (group 1)
• losing a language in Papua New Guinea (group 2)
• Pounded rice ritual in Nepal (group 3)
• BLM (group 4)

Think about the following when discussing your ethnographic example in your group:

1. how is language enmeshed in cultural values and social power?
2. How is inequality challenged or reproduced (upheld) through language?
3. How do linguistic "forms" like different words for the same thing influence people's thoughts and attitudes?
4. How do people's attitudes about language affect their perception of those that speak them (including themselves)?
5. How is the language in ritual (special contexts) different from everyday language?
6. Can language be understood outside of the social context in which it is used?

*The intertwined nature of language and culture requires, according to LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGISTS, requires that language be studied in REAL LIFE (social) CONTEXTS for any comprehensive understanding of human communication.

Language Decontextualized (emphasis on language as grammatical systems, rather than social acts)

• DeSaussure
• Chomsky
• Pinker

Though anthropological linguists value the work of linguists, they see "grammar" (structural aspects of language and 'universal grammars') as simply one aspect of language's "socially charged life".