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braintransplantthe base idea of sapir-whorf theory is that the language you natively speak shapes and influences how you see the world around you, aka linguistic relativism/determinism. this is all based off now falsified research sapir supposedly did on the hopi people (a native american tribe in arizona) that claimed the hopi language had a circular conception of time (i.e. no words, grammatical forms, constructions or expressions which directly referred to 'time'), and thus could not understand time in the western linear sense back in the 1940's. not only is this bizarrely infantilizing and arguably a very weird kind of racist, its literally just straight up wrong, and later much evidence was uncovered that whorf never actually interacted with any hopi people at all.
in 1983 ekkehart matloki released hopi time, an entire book dedicated to 4 years of research on hopi conceptions/grammaticalization of time, spatial and temporal reference that he did on the third mesa WITH the hopi people. turns out the hopi language actually has numerous terms, words, and constructions that directly refer to time, spatial metaphors that describe unites or durations of time, and sapir had misanalysed tons of hopi words and expressions. surprise! whorf wasn't a scholar anyway. he worked as a fire insurance claims adjustor and had a pretty bad case of confirmation bias. whorf's data was presented largely without any actual language examples, and matloki did years of work to be able to prove him wrong. the book hopi time even opens with a quote from some of matloki's fieldwork by a hopi speaker that directly challenges whorf's claims of no temporal terms; 'then indeed, the following day, quite early in the morning at the hour when people pray to the sun, around that time is when he woke up the girl again.'
sapir-whorf theory also presents us the problem of translatability; if each language has its own reality encoded within it, how is it that anything can be translated from on language into another? according to whorf's theory, wouldn't these separate conceptions of reality limit thought? you've probably heard the myth that the inuit people have 100 words for snow - this is bulllshit that comes directly from whorf's paper. this too, is not true. the real number is more like eleven, and in any case, is actually a pretty good argument against his hypothesis. in english, we only have one or two words for snow - there are certainly things that are tangential synonyms; slush, sleet, etc. but they don't all mean 'snow.' it only makes sense that people live in a almost perpetually snowy environment would have different words for snow, because snow is deeply relevant to their every day existence and survival. this is reality shaping language, not language shaping reality.
linguists have tried and tested sapir-whorf theory for decades, and any evidence they have found of it has been completely inconsequential. in one test, speakers of certain languages were able to identify color names on average a few milliseconds earlier than speakers of others. you can call that evidence, or ask how meaningful that actually is to reality. what is that supposed to say about speakers of X or Y language? to me, nothing, really. nothing that indicates separate realities.
besides the fact that sapir-whorf theory has been proven wrong time and time again, people cling to it's ideas because, frankly, it sounds good. it makes 'sense.' why shouldn't someone who speaks chinese natively see the world differently than me? but the first thing you learn in any linguistics course is that anything that sounds like it is true upon hearing it needs to be investigated much further, because more often than not, it's wrong. the reality is rarely ever simple, and groups of native speakers are not homogenous in any way. language seeks to describe the objective world, not lock people into a subjective one.
but, in my Real Ass opinion, the genuine truth of why people cling to sapir-whorf is because - in the modern age - people seek out proof that we are all different. from trivial shit like 'not like other girls' rhetoric and what it means to be 'basic' to far more dangerous things like the essentialization of race and gender, people look for evidence that the people they perceive as 'different' from them really are different, and cling to these illusions society has created, because it's easier. it explains why people 'unlike' them make them uncomfortable, or why they are treated differently. theres a lot to be said about the deeply american notion of the individual self that has produced so much of this 'sameness' is bad / 'individuality' is good rhetoric, but thats a whole other essay.
anyway. in conclusion, fuck whorf, fuck his theory, and arrival directed by dennis villenueve is the only thing in this world that gets a free pass from me for using it.
and besides, the idea that we're actually all the same is far more comforting to me. thank you.
in 1983 ekkehart matloki released hopi time, an entire book dedicated to 4 years of research on hopi conceptions/grammaticalization of time, spatial and temporal reference that he did on the third mesa WITH the hopi people. turns out the hopi language actually has numerous terms, words, and constructions that directly refer to time, spatial metaphors that describe unites or durations of time, and sapir had misanalysed tons of hopi words and expressions. surprise! whorf wasn't a scholar anyway. he worked as a fire insurance claims adjustor and had a pretty bad case of confirmation bias. whorf's data was presented largely without any actual language examples, and matloki did years of work to be able to prove him wrong. the book hopi time even opens with a quote from some of matloki's fieldwork by a hopi speaker that directly challenges whorf's claims of no temporal terms; 'then indeed, the following day, quite early in the morning at the hour when people pray to the sun, around that time is when he woke up the girl again.'
sapir-whorf theory also presents us the problem of translatability; if each language has its own reality encoded within it, how is it that anything can be translated from on language into another? according to whorf's theory, wouldn't these separate conceptions of reality limit thought? you've probably heard the myth that the inuit people have 100 words for snow - this is bulllshit that comes directly from whorf's paper. this too, is not true. the real number is more like eleven, and in any case, is actually a pretty good argument against his hypothesis. in english, we only have one or two words for snow - there are certainly things that are tangential synonyms; slush, sleet, etc. but they don't all mean 'snow.' it only makes sense that people live in a almost perpetually snowy environment would have different words for snow, because snow is deeply relevant to their every day existence and survival. this is reality shaping language, not language shaping reality.
linguists have tried and tested sapir-whorf theory for decades, and any evidence they have found of it has been completely inconsequential. in one test, speakers of certain languages were able to identify color names on average a few milliseconds earlier than speakers of others. you can call that evidence, or ask how meaningful that actually is to reality. what is that supposed to say about speakers of X or Y language? to me, nothing, really. nothing that indicates separate realities.
besides the fact that sapir-whorf theory has been proven wrong time and time again, people cling to it's ideas because, frankly, it sounds good. it makes 'sense.' why shouldn't someone who speaks chinese natively see the world differently than me? but the first thing you learn in any linguistics course is that anything that sounds like it is true upon hearing it needs to be investigated much further, because more often than not, it's wrong. the reality is rarely ever simple, and groups of native speakers are not homogenous in any way. language seeks to describe the objective world, not lock people into a subjective one.
but, in my Real Ass opinion, the genuine truth of why people cling to sapir-whorf is because - in the modern age - people seek out proof that we are all different. from trivial shit like 'not like other girls' rhetoric and what it means to be 'basic' to far more dangerous things like the essentialization of race and gender, people look for evidence that the people they perceive as 'different' from them really are different, and cling to these illusions society has created, because it's easier. it explains why people 'unlike' them make them uncomfortable, or why they are treated differently. theres a lot to be said about the deeply american notion of the individual self that has produced so much of this 'sameness' is bad / 'individuality' is good rhetoric, but thats a whole other essay.
anyway. in conclusion, fuck whorf, fuck his theory, and arrival directed by dennis villenueve is the only thing in this world that gets a free pass from me for using it.
and besides, the idea that we're actually all the same is far more comforting to me. thank you.
