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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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 Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 9:41 am Post subject: Sapir�Whorf hypothesis |
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| What do you think? Any good examples from real life that seem to back it up quite well? |
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Keepongoing
Joined: 13 Feb 2003
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 2:20 pm Post subject: yes |
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| I think there are many examples that one's culture is embedded in language. The Chinese have many words for rice, whereas in English there is one that I know of. The Eskimos have many words for snow. In Asian cultures more words are assigned to relationships based on age and if matriarchal or patriarchal. How you address people is a huge factor as well. |
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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 2:51 pm Post subject: Re: yes |
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| Keepongoing wrote: |
| I think there are many examples that one's culture is embedded in language. The Chinese have many words for rice, whereas in English there is one that I know of. The Eskimos have many words for snow. In Asian cultures more words are assigned to relationships based on age and if matriarchal or patriarchal. How you address people is a huge factor as well. |
From Geoffrey Pullum's fantastically funny, but completely accurate essay, The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax:
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What I do here is very little more than an extended review and elaboration on Laura Martin's wonderful American Anthropologist report of
1986. Laura Martin is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the Cleveland State University. She endures calmly the fact that virtually no one listened to her when she first published.
It may be that few will listen to me as I explain in different words to another audience what she pointed out. But the truth is that the Eskimos do not have lots of different words for snow, and no one who knows anything about Eskimo (or more accurately, about the lnuit and Yupik families of related languages spoken by Eskimos from Siberia to Greenland) has ever said they do. Anyone who insists on simply checking their primary sources will find that they are quite unable to document the
alleged facts about snow vocabulary (but nobody ever checks, because
the truth might not be what the reading public wants to hear). |
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Some time in the future, and it may be soon, you will be told by someone that the Eskimos have many or dozens or scores or hundreds of words for snow. You, gentle reader, must decide here and now whether you are going to let them get away with it, or whether you are going to be true to your position as an Expert On Language by calling them on it.
The last time it happened to me (other than through the medium of print) was in July 1988 at the University of California's Irvine campus, where I was attending the university's annual Management Institute. Not just one lecturer at the Institute but two of them somehow (don't ask me how) worked the Eskimological falsehood into their tedious presentations on management psychology and administrative problem-solving. The first time I attempted to demur and was glared at by lecturer and classmates alike; the second time, discretion for once getting the upper hand over valor, I just held my face in my hands for a minute, then quietly closed my binder and crept out of the room.
Don't be a coward like me. Stand up and tell the speaker this: C. W. Schultz-Lorentzen's Dictionary of the West Greenlandic Eskimo Language (1927) gives just two possibly relevant roots: qanik, meaning 'snow in the air' or 'snowflake', and aput, meaning 'snow on the ground'. Then add that you would be interested to know if thespeaker can cite any more.
This will not make you the most popular person in the room. It will have an effect roughly comparable to pouring fifty gallons of thick oatmeal into a harpsichord during a baroque recital. But it will strike a blow for truth, responsibility and standards of evidence in linguistics. |
Go here for the .pdf file:
users.utu.fi/freder/Pullum-Eskimo-VocabHoax.pdf
The article, one of a series of columns Pullum wrote for the end pages of Natural Language and Linguistic Theory (and thebest linguistics humor extant), gives Whorf his due, but trashes his work in this area.
As for me, weak versions of Sapir-Whorf seem to have some support (sorry, no examples this early in the day), but the strong version is nonsense. |
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SuperHero
Joined: 10 Dec 2003
Location: Superhero Hideout
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 4:22 pm Post subject: Re: yes |
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| Woland wrote: |
| From Geoffrey Pullum's fantastically funny, but completely accurate essay, The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax: |
Also be sure to read The Language Log of which pullman is one of the regular contributors. Lots of stuff on there about eskimos and snow and other vocabulary fairy tales. |
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paquebot
Joined: 20 Jun 2007
Location: Northern Gyeonggi-do
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 5:15 pm Post subject: |
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[quote="Woland"]
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| Don't be a coward like me. Stand up and tell the speaker this: C. W. Schultz-Lorentzen's Dictionary of the West Greenlandic Eskimo Language (1927) gives just two possibly relevant roots: qanik, meaning 'snow in the air' or 'snowflake', and aput, meaning 'snow on the ground'. Then add that you would be interested to know if thespeaker can cite any more. |
While I agree with you concerning the misinformed view that the Inuit, Yupik, and Aleutian languages have more 'words' (in this case, lexical categories) for snow than is actually the case, I also have to question the cited author's reference of "two possibly relevant roots". A root is not the same as a word; to use the two interchangably seems like a rather sly way to make a point. Especially given that the Eskimo-Aleut languages are agglutinative polysynthetic languages. (The point being that the Eskimo-Aleut languages may only have two roots for snow but they certainly have more than two words to describe various categories of snow)
The qualities of snow are more important to the average Inuit, Yupik, or Aleut than to the average Anglophone. At the very least they would likely be more observant of the differences in snow types. Using adjectives and adverbs would probably result in a similarly sized lexicon between the Eskimo-Aleut and English languages; however, the agglutinating properties of Eskimo-Aleut languages suggests that they would have more 'words' ('roots plus affixes' as opposed to 'main word plus modifying words').
For a brief discussion and list of lexemes check out: Counting Eskimo words for snow: A citizen's guide by Anthony C. Woodbury (online at http://www.princeton.edu/~browning/snow.html)
For fun, there's an online dictionary located at: http://www.alaskool.org/language/dictionaries/inupiaq/dictionary.htm
(Originally from: I�upiat Eskimo Dictionary, Donald H. Webster and Wilfried Zibell, Illustrated by Thelma A. Webster, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc., Fairbanks, Alaska, 1970) |
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robot
Joined: 07 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 5:49 pm Post subject: |
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The other reason this is a myth is because English has perhaps even more words for snow than do Inuit languages: sleet, slush, flurry, drift, hail, etc...
How about Sapir-Whorf as it relates to Korean? |
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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 6:45 pm Post subject: Re: yes |
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| SuperHero wrote: |
| Also be sure to read The Language Log of which pullum is one of the regular contributors. Lots of stuff on there about eskimos and snow and other vocabulary fairy tales. |
Best blog I know of.
**********
This probably hasn't gone the way you planned, Mith. Sorry. I'll try to fix some of that now. First, by sending people to the wiki page so that they can take a look at the claims and some of the lit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis
Next, by lifting the key texts from there and quoting them here:
Sapir wrote:
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| 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. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached... 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, 1958 [1929], p. 69) |
Whorf wrote:
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| We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds�and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees. (Whorf, 1940, pp. 213�14) |
If we take these to mean that language mediates thought (which is what is called the 'weak' version), it is actually pretty unremarkable. The idea is a staple of Vygotskian psychology, which developed independently around the same time, and is pretty much a common place today.
***********
And now back to the diversion. More wiki on Eskimo words for snow, which neatly merges Paquebot's and Pullum's thinking:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow
And links to a page about a new linguistic category derived from the misuse of the claim, the 'snowclone':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone
Which takes us back to Pullum and that great blog. |
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Keepongoing
Joined: 13 Feb 2003
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 1:13 am Post subject: snow |
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Eskimo Snow Lexemes
A. Snow particles
(1) Snowflake
qanuk 'snowflake'
qanir- 'to snow'
qanunge- 'to snow' [NUN]
qanugglir- 'to snow' [NUN]
(2) Frost
kaneq 'frost'
kaner- 'be frosty/frost sth.'
(3) Fine snow/rain particles
kanevvluk 'fine snow/rain particles
kanevcir- to get fine snow/rain particles
(4) Drifting particles
natquik 'drifting snow/etc'
natqu(v)igte- 'for snow/etc. to drift along ground'
(5) Clinging particles
nevluk 'clinging debris/
nevlugte- 'have clinging debris/...'lint/snow/dirt...'
B. Fallen snow
(6) Fallen snow on the ground
aniu [NS] 'snow on ground'
aniu- [NS] 'get snow on ground'
apun [NS] 'snow on ground'
qanikcaq 'snow on ground'
qanikcir- 'get snow on ground'
(7) Soft, deep fallen snow on the ground
muruaneq 'soft deep snow'
( Crust on fallen snow
qetrar- [NSU] 'for snow to crust'
qerretrar- [NSU] 'for snow to crust'
(9) Fresh fallen snow on the ground
nutaryuk 'fresh snow' [HBC]
(10) Fallen snow floating on water
qanisqineq 'snow floating on water'
C. Snow formations
(11) Snow bank
qengaruk 'snow bank' [Y, HBC]
(12) Snow block
utvak 'snow carved in block'
(13) Snow cornice
navcaq [NSU] 'snow cornice, snow (formation) about to collapse'
navcite- 'get caught in an avalanche'
D. Meterological events
(14) Blizzard, snowstorm
pirta 'blizzard, snowstorm'
pircir- 'to blizzard'
pirtuk 'blizzard, snowstorm'
(15) Severe blizzard
cellallir-, cellarrlir- 'to snow heavily'
pir(e)t(e)pag- 'to blizzard severely'
pirrelvag- 'to blizzard severely'
APPENDIX: An unordered list of English snow lexemes
avalanche
blizzard
blowing snow
dusting
flurry
frost
hail
hardpack
ice lens
igloo (Inuit iglu 'house')
pingo (Inuit pingu(q) 'ice lens')
powder
sleet
slushsnow
snow bank
snow cornice
snow fort
snow house
snow man
snow-mixed-with-rain?
snowflake
snowstorm
others?
http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~atman/Misc/eskimo-snow-words.html |
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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 2:30 am Post subject: Re: snow |
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| Keepongoing wrote: |
Eskimo Snow Lexemes
A. Snow particles
(1) Snowflake
qanuk 'snowflake'
qanir- 'to snow'
qanunge- 'to snow' [NUN]
qanugglir- 'to snow' [NUN]
(2) Frost
kaneq 'frost'
kaner- 'be frosty/frost sth.'
(3) Fine snow/rain particles
kanevvluk 'fine snow/rain particles
kanevcir- to get fine snow/rain particles
(4) Drifting particles
natquik 'drifting snow/etc'
natqu(v)igte- 'for snow/etc. to drift along ground'
(5) Clinging particles
nevluk 'clinging debris/
nevlugte- 'have clinging debris/...'lint/snow/dirt...'
B. Fallen snow
(6) Fallen snow on the ground
aniu [NS] 'snow on ground'
aniu- [NS] 'get snow on ground'
apun [NS] 'snow on ground'
qanikcaq 'snow on ground'
qanikcir- 'get snow on ground'
(7) Soft, deep fallen snow on the ground
muruaneq 'soft deep snow'
( Crust on fallen snow
qetrar- [NSU] 'for snow to crust'
qerretrar- [NSU] 'for snow to crust'
(9) Fresh fallen snow on the ground
nutaryuk 'fresh snow' [HBC]
(10) Fallen snow floating on water
qanisqineq 'snow floating on water'
C. Snow formations
(11) Snow bank
qengaruk 'snow bank' [Y, HBC]
(12) Snow block
utvak 'snow carved in block'
(13) Snow cornice
navcaq [NSU] 'snow cornice, snow (formation) about to collapse'
navcite- 'get caught in an avalanche'
D. Meterological events
(14) Blizzard, snowstorm
pirta 'blizzard, snowstorm'
pircir- 'to blizzard'
pirtuk 'blizzard, snowstorm'
(15) Severe blizzard
cellallir-, cellarrlir- 'to snow heavily'
pir(e)t(e)pag- 'to blizzard severely'
pirrelvag- 'to blizzard severely'
APPENDIX: An unordered list of English snow lexemes
avalanche
blizzard
blowing snow
dusting
flurry
frost
hail
hardpack
ice lens
igloo (Inuit iglu 'house')
pingo (Inuit pingu(q) 'ice lens')
powder
sleet
slushsnow
snow bank
snow cornice
snow fort
snow house
snow man
snow-mixed-with-rain?
snowflake
snowstorm
others?
http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~atman/Misc/eskimo-snow-words.html |
In short, no more than English. Nothing special. |
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kimchi story
Joined: 23 Nov 2006
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| Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 3:27 am Post subject: |
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Interesting post, mithridates. During the discussions of feminism around here lately I've thought often about Sapir-Whorf. Contemporary discourse of language and performativity has flourished in the field of gender studies.
It's an anachronism to suggest that Sapir or Whorf had this in mind, but their work is definitely relevant to gender studies today - if only as a foil. Woland mentioned Vygotsky, and kudos to that - on a side note, many educators today don't realize that such ideas as the zone of proximal development or scaffolding come from Soviet theory.
Here's what I don't like about Sapir-Whorf. The example of the many Inuit words for snow seems at first interesting and benign. They have a lot of snow, so it is intuitive that they would have many words to describe it.
Now let's turn that on its ear. Abdul Jan-Mohammed's discussion of the Manichean allegory describes how colonialist literature constructs "others" using attributes that illustrate not what the subjects truly are, but what we are not. You will have to access JSTOR to find the whole thing but, because we are all university educated, I will proceed as though the idea rings some bells.
What can be seen in the suggestion that a language uses many different words for snow is the accompanying suggestion that it is a language that lacks modifiers. What appears to be a quaint piece of trivia actually represents a language to be lacking and, via the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, a race that is inferior.
In my darkest, most pissy moods - usually accompanied by a hangover and a little homesickness - I actually resort to this type of thinking for an entertaining panacea.
When teaching a dialogue with the phrase 'per cent' in it my co teacher explains that the word is the same in Korean. And I think 'How can they not have a word for such a basic thing? What kind of savages are they?'
And then I laugh at myself and move on. |
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cubanlord
Joined: 08 Jul 2005
Location: In Japan!
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| Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 4:30 am Post subject: Re: Sapir�Whorf hypothesis |
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| mithridates wrote: |
| What do you think? Any good examples from real life that seem to back it up quite well? |
Hi Mith,
working on your MA huh? I recently had to answer a few questions regarding this hyp. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 5:09 am Post subject: Re: Sapir�Whorf hypothesis |
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| cubanlord wrote: |
| mithridates wrote: |
| What do you think? Any good examples from real life that seem to back it up quite well? |
Hi Mith,
working on your MA huh? |
I wish!
Back to the op, here are three constructed languages that were created to a certain extent to evaluate how true the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona
The middle language wasn't made to be learned though so it's not really possible to tell how a person who had grown up with that language would think. There were quite a few Russians that told the author they wanted to learn the language though but found it too hard so he revised it recently to make it easier to pronounce but still similar to the original idea. |
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arjuna
Joined: 31 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 6:12 am Post subject: Re: Sapir�Whorf hypothesis |
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| mithridates wrote: |
| What do you think? Any good examples from real life that seem to back it up quite well? |
If you are looking from within language, would you be able to notice any examples?
If you are looking from without, would you be able to miss any?
I wonder if you realize this is not an academic problem, and no mental exercise, however clever or "profound," will lift the veil of language from the human mind.
General Semantics is one approach to resolving the problem--but the same rule applies: you can't do it in your head. I think Korzybski's "error," if it can be called that, is that he made a too-intellectual system in describing the human malady of language, thus leading fools into yet another maze instead of freeing them. Wikipedia has an adequate description:
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General Semantics is an educational discipline created by Alfred Korzybski (1879�1950) during the years 1919 to 1933. General Semantics is distinct from semantics, a different subject. The name technically refers to the study of what Korzybski called "semantic reactions", or reactions of the whole human organism in its environment to some event � any event, not just perceiving a human-made symbol � in respect of that event's meaning. However, people most commonly use the name to mean the particular system of semantic reactions that Korzybski called the most useful for human survival, e.g., delayed reactions as opposed to "signal reactions" (immediate, unthinking ones).
Advocates of General Semantics view it as a form of mental hygiene that enables practitioners to avoid ideational traps built into natural language and "common sense" assumptions, thereby enabling practitioners to think more clearly and effectively. General Semantics thus shares some concerns with psychology but is not precisely a therapeutic system, being in general more focused on enhancing the abilities of normal individuals than curing pathology.
According to Korzybski, the central goal of General Semantics is to develop in its practitioners what he called "consciousness of abstracting", that is, an awareness of the map/territory distinction and of how much of reality is missed in the linguistic and other representations we use. General Semantics teaches that it is not sufficient to understand this sporadically and intellectually, but rather that we achieve full sanity only when consciousness of abstracting becomes constant and a matter of reflex.
Many General Semantics practitioners view its techniques as a kind of self-defense kit against manipulative semantic distortions routinely promulgated by advertising, politics, and religion, as well as those found in self-deception.
Viewed philosophically, General Semantics is a form of applied conceptualism that emphasizes the degree to which human experience is filtered and mediated by contingent features of human sensory organs, the human nervous system, and human linguistic constructions.
The most important premise of General Semantics has been succinctly expressed as "The map is not the territory; the word is not the thing defined".[1] While Aristotle wrote that a true definition gives the essence of the thing defined (in Greek to ti �n einai, literally �the what it was to be�), general semantics denies the possibility of finding such an essence. |
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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 7:04 am Post subject: Re: Sapir�Whorf hypothesis |
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| mithridates wrote: |
| cubanlord wrote: |
| mithridates wrote: |
| What do you think? Any good examples from real life that seem to back it up quite well? |
Hi Mith,
working on your MA huh? |
I wish!
Back to the op, here are three constructed languages that were created to a certain extent to evaluate how true the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona
The middle language wasn't made to be learned though so it's not really possible to tell how a person who had grown up with that language would think. There were quite a few Russians that told the author they wanted to learn the language though but found it too hard so he revised it recently to make it easier to pronounce but still similar to the original idea. |
One problem, Mith, is that the learners of these languages are already speakers of another language and their learning is filtered through that. (Indeed, look at how the nature of these languages themselves has been shaped by the linguistic knowledge of their creators.) I don't know if we can talk of an independent effect of any of these languages on consciousness or processing.
If two speakers of any of these languages were to somehow give up use of their L1 (and any other languages they know), breed, and use only this language with their children, then we might be able to say something about Sapir-Whorf. But I'm willing to bet that children would also alter these languages. The restrictions imposed in them are the kinds of things only adults would think of.
As an aside, I've been told by Ted Rodgers that Derek Bickerton had the idea of buying an island and pairing up people who spoke different languages to live and breed there, in order to look at the language development of their children, in order to locate support for his creole genesis hypothesis. But it apparently never went beyond the talk stages. |
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paquebot
Joined: 20 Jun 2007
Location: Northern Gyeonggi-do
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| Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 9:04 am Post subject: |
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| robot wrote: |
| How about Sapir-Whorf as it relates to Korean? |
Perhaps making social status a more important/visible issue? English has drifted away from using Tu and Vos forms of second person address and - at least where I'm from on the west coast of North America - personal interactions seem to be, for the most part, extremely casual as a result. Learning French led me to make a few distinctions in this regard [1], but it wasn't until I started interacting with Koreans that measuring social status through verbal and non-verbal cues became a noticable part of my communication style.
[1] Of course, then I spent time in the Rh�ne-Alpes of France and was told to avoid using Vous conjugations with anyone apart from the President of France. |
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