Linguistic Determinism

The idea that language shapes thought. A cornerstone of PostModern and MarxIst? cultural thought. Draws its inspiration from the SapirWhorfHypothesis - see http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/whorf.html.

The SapirWhorfHypothesis is refuted by StevenPinker, in TheLanguageInstinct, with arguments connected to the genesis of CreoleLanguages.

(Removed inevitable connection to "political correctness" and 1984)

So, how come I sometimes have thoughts and feelings for which I don't have the words? And doesn't your first sentence assume the SW-hypothesis?

And please lets not confuse the attempts by the right to maintain the status quo ante by rubbishing PC and the SW-H with any intrinsic flaws in the ideas.

So, what are these ideas you don't have words for?

Look into my eyes and you'll see them.

So, those are the ideas "that someone has to look into your eyes to see." My point is you have to distinguish between actually not having a name and things like the QualityWithoutaName which has a name. However, this example was pretty bad and I will admit there might be some thoughts that exist without language. Note: visual thoughts are still communicatable if you could draw. You must be totally incapable of expressing the thought even to yourself. Huh ? I don't understand. Please re-write this Note using different words.

Communication is especially cool when the concrete center of a sentence or two comes with that halo of aphora. Can it be written down? Maybe in a big fat book. What does "aphora" mean? http://www.dictionary.com/ and http://www.m-w.com/ have no definition for it.

Those are called "feelings". You'll never demonstrate that all perceptions are linked to words. Having a word for a thing is a very advanced form of perception, and only the most repeated and stable sorts of perceptions get words.

I agree with the first half: the problem with claiming everything has a meme is that you can't prove it. Sure, you can say that it appears people only think in memes because that's all they can directly communicate, but that's begging the question. Introspectively, I don't use memes to feel my toe being stubbed, so not everything is a meme. On the other hand, complex thoughts, especially meta-thoughts, probably do require memes to construct.

The second half is dubious. Very unstable perceptions get words like "love" which is a feeling and highly unstable. Or "truth". Or "utopia".

Coming from the left, I have to say don't recognize LinguisticDeterminism as a cornerstone of MarxIst? thought. Marx having been dead and gone for over half a century before the SapirWhorfHypothesis.

If Marx were to come struggling up through the loam at Highgate there's probably not much of the thing called "Marxism" that he would recognise, either. The above should probably say "current Marxist thought".

I would say that in any ParadigmShift the proponents find it difficult to make themselves understood using the language of the day - why do we neologise in PatternLanguage -s, ExtremeProgramming, and so on?

But wouldn't S-W, if true, mean that no paradigm shifts were possible, since we would be unable to concieve of the new things that we didn't have the language for?

When Marx put forward his ideas they were new and radical, and with hindsight it may look like LinguisticDeterminism was part of what he railed against in trying to get them across (though ironically, he wouldn't have had that name for it). But its hardly a cornerstone of leftism - just of ParadigmShift -s in general. I think it does Sapir and Whorf a disservice to bring their theory down to the level of a political football, when people do try to produce 'hard' science experiments to test it. Could you provide references for these experiments, please?

One experiment: James Cooke Brown's Loglan ... is a language ... Its original purpose seems to have been to test the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. ... however ... no actual test of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis using Loglan was ever carried out, for reasons given below. Furthermore, most modern linguists deny the validity of Sapir-Whorf, and would probably be unwilling to fund a major test of the hypothesis. I'd be fascinated to know about any (other) experiments. -- DavidCary (quoting http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/EBook/chap03.html )

Strikes me that one of WilliamBurroughs supposedly ground-breaking themes - that of 'The Word is Control' is just directly derivative of the concept of LinguisticDeterminism. In many of his works, and in those of BrionGysin, there is the advocacy of the elimination of all literacy as a device to free oneself from overbearing totalitarianism. 'Exterminate all rational thought' is one of the most overquoted Burroughsisms... --- BryanWhite

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

In the beginning a man conceived of the highest level abstraction, and he thought about a sound to represent it, and the sound was "God".

Does language shape thoughts? Yes, but we shouldn't be using the word language. Thoughts are not limited to language. Language is but a set of symbols that cultures uses to communicate. Other symbol sets exist in music, body language, math, art, science... Thinking about a problem that has known symbols is much easier than one where you don't have symbols. Expressing those thoughts are also much easier with symbol sets.

Who can think through a math equation better? Someone who knows the symbols. Therefore symbols help in thought processes.

A quote from Nietzsche:

``Only as creators! --- This has caused me the greatest trouble and still does always cause me the greatest trouble: to realize that what things are called is unspeakably more important than what the are. The reputation, name, and appearance, the worth, the usual measure and weight of a thing --- originally almost always something mistaken and arbitrary, thrown over things like a dress and quite foreign to their nature and even to their skin --- has, through the belief in it and its growth from generation to generation, slowly grown onto and into the thing and has become its very body: what started as appearance in the end nearly always becomes essence and effectively acts as essence! What kind of a fool would believe that it is enough to point to this origin and this misty shroud of delusion in order to destroy the world that counts as 'real', so-called 'reality'! Only as creators can we destroy! --- But let us also not forget that in the long run it is enough to create new names and valuations and appearances of truth in order to create new 'things'.''

DanielDennett and others put forth the theory that consciousness is a by-product of language, that what we think of as thinking can't happen without some sort of syntax, grammar, symbols, symbolic manipulation, etc.

There's a particularly good example of a thing with no word for it in French. French speakers often drink coffee, like the rest of us, out of mugs. But they have no word for them. They call them "cups" ("tasses"). When I asked two native French speakers how they would order a mug over the telephone, one thought for a while, and said he'd draw one and then fax the picture. The other, after checking with the largest dictionary he could find, said that "mug" could be translated into French as "grosse tasse", but he'd never heard of the term before.

There are similar linguistic gaps in English. Even a basic knowledge of another language will uncover them.

None of the above means that languages don't shape thought, though it's clear that thoughts (even common ones) don't necessarily shape languages.

-- DonaldFisk

Indeed. A major one is "amiga" (friend who is a girl) versus "novia" (girlfriend) in spanish. In english we only have "girlfriend" or the gender-neutral "friend". Some say that makes it so one gender can't be just friends with another - unless the gender issue is completely removed. i.e. your wife wouldn't want you spending time with a "friend who is a girl", but would be more ok with you spending time with a friend (no gender included). In general I think LinguisticDeterminism is as bunk as AbsoluteDestiny? - people are always coming up with concepts - then trying to find the words to describe them. -- LayneThomas

In French, there is no word for 'mind' or 'consciousness'. There is a word for 'spirit' (esprit) which tends to be used instead of mind but it has very ugly supernatural connotations. And the word for consciousness is 'conscience' although its primary meaning is still 'conscience'. This makes discussing certain things rather difficult. But then again, in English itself most people don't draw the distinction between wakefulness and consciousness, let alone between psychological consciousness and phenomenological consciousness (see WhatIsConsciousness).

In Polish, there is no word for sharing. There are words for splitting up but they don't come anywhere close to sharing. There also isn't any word for the abstract 'going', only for the concrete 'walking', 'driving', et cetera.

I actually do think that language shapes thought to some degree.

"SpokenHere: Travels Among Threatened Languages" is a recent book that very much operates from the standpoint of the SW hypothesis, and IMHO much of what he describes is difficult to explain on any other basis. -- PaulMorrison

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