Chapter 8. How Can We Understand the Relationships Between Language and Thinking?

How Can We Understand The Relationships Between Language and Thinking?Chapter 8 Page 1

Chapter 8. How Can We Understand the Relationships Between Language and Thinking?

This chapter investigates the hypothesis that language influences the way we think and understand our world. It begins with the Whorfian hypothesis and concludes with an analysis of ideology.

1. The Relationship between Language and Culture

The subject matter of this book is premised on the awareness that our uniqueness as humans dependent on our having both language and culture. This chapter explores the relationship between language and culture beginning with Whorf’s concept of linguistic determinism and ending with an examination of the workings of ideology.

What is linguistic determinism?

Natural man, whether simpleton or scientist, knows no more of the linguistic forces that bear upon him than the savage knows of gravitational forces... [T]he study of language... shows that the forms of a person’s thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which he is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived intricate systematizations of his own language - shown readily enough by a candid comparison and contrast with other languages, especially of a different linguistic family. His thinking itself is in a language - in English, in Sanskrit, in Chinese, and every language is a vast pattern system, different from the others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness.
Whorf 1956: 251-2)

As the sidebar shows, Whorf clearly states that the structure of one’s language determines the way we perceive reality. As we will see, others have stated similar hypotheses before, but Whorf deserves special attention because he stated his hypothesis so unequivocally. Furthermore, Whorf also proposed that in many cases European languages, which he referred to as SAE (or Standard Average European, were actually inferior to other languages. For example after comparing the way English and Hopi report observations he stated that, “English compared to Hopi is like a bludgeon compared to a rapier” [a thin, sharp sword] Whorf (1956: 144).

One of his clearest and most unequivocal statements about the extent of the effect of language on our thinking is the following:

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 (Whorf 1956:xx).

This claim means that language works as a filter or lens, which we use to see and interpret the world. Without this lens, we see nothing but meaningless images (“a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions”). It is their claim that language determines thought and the way we perceive the world that makes it a hypothesis of linguistic determinism.

Recall, however, that in chapter 2, we noted that language can be viewed from several perspectives, as grammar, as discourse, and as object. It is clear from Whorf’s writings that in by the term linguistic determinism, he means that the grammar of a language determines our thoughts, perceptions and worldview. This is what he means when he says, “every language is a vast pattern system.” By this he means, not only the collection of vocabulary and the syntax of the language, but the patterns of the way ideas and thoughts are expressed.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Language is a guide to "social reality." Though language is not ordinarily thought of as of essential interest to the students of social science, it powerfully conditions all our thinking about social problems and processes. 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. Sapir 1929:xx

This hypothesis is also termed the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” because it reflects the thinking of Edward Sapir, Whorf’s teacher (see history, chapter 2). Sapir’s statement is far more conservative than Whorf’s, for Sapir, while acknowledging that language is necessary for thought, sees language only a guide (not a determiner) of social reality. Here, Sapir draws a distinction between two types of realities, physical reality and social reality, the physical and social (and cultural) worlds described chapter 2. Sapir’s reason for distinguishing these two worlds is because unlike the physical world, information about the social and cultural comes to us exclusively through language.

For example, take the social term uncle. An uncle cannot be observed in the physical world, or rather, when one does observe an uncle in the physical world, all one sees is a human being. Yet an uncle is more than that for it entails specific social relationships and responsibilities (in some societies one’s maternal uncle has the responsibilities usually assigned to the father in Western societies). The point here is that only way one can find out about who is an uncle and what constitutes an uncle is through language and not by directly observing one. In contrast, one can get a very good idea of what a rock or a tree is through direct observation. Because of this difference, Sapir, unlike Whorf, proposed that language is a guide to social reality only.

The Linguistic Non-Determinism of Franz Boas

Sapir and Whorf’s views of the relationship between grammar and thought contrast sharply with those of Franz Boas, Sapir’s teacher. Boas proposed that, language “determines those aspects of experience that must be expressed.” In this statement, Boas sees the grammar of a language merely as a means of conveying information. And although different languages use different vocabulary and grammatical structures, this does not mean that a different way of thinking is involved.

the man v. a man(definite v. indefinite quantity)
man v men(singular v. plural number)
killed v kills(past v. present tense)
the bull v. a bull(definite v. indefinite quantity)

Boas gives an example of the English sentence, “The man killed the bull.” In this statement, English is forced to make several grammatical decisions. One cannot simply say, as one can in some languages, “Man kill bull.” Boas notes that “a paucity of obligatory aspects [choosing between the man and a man, etc.] does not by any means imply obscurity of speech. When necessary, clarity can be obtained by adding explanatory words.” (1938:132-3). On the other hand, Boas notes that other languages require other decisions, such as how the information for the statement was gathered, whether seen, heard (i.e., known by hearsay) or inferred. Thus for other languages, to be grammatical, one would have to add, “I saw that, I heard that, or I concluded that” to the sentence.

The term objectivizing means presenting our subjective thoughts as objects. Because signs are objects, this usually refers to the process of speaking.

Thus Boas argues that language is a mechanism for representing or objectivizing thought. This objectivist view, both preceded and followed the period of linguistic determinism introduced by Whorf in the 30s and which lasted until the mid 1950s.

Whorf’s Examples

Before Whorf, others like Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) had made similar statements or linguistic determinism, but Whorf’s were different, for he also provided examples from American languages to support his contentions. Although he never wrote a book, Whorf wrote numerous short articles, which were later, collected and published in a volume by John Carroll called Language, Thought and Reality (1956). In this collection one finds variations of the above stated hypothesis.

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tl'imsm ya 'is ita 'itl ma
boil ed eat ers go for he-does

One of Whorf’s examples comes from Shawnee, an American language of the western United States. Whorf presents a Shawnee word and breaks it into its constituents (I have added the phrase structure to show how the morphemes fit together). Unless we are Shawnee speakers, the meaning of this word is quite unclear. While we can identify the meaning for each morpheme, we still do not know what “He goes for eaters of boiled [foods]” means. Furthermore, it may also strike us as odd that in Shawnee, one can say all this in a word, whereas English requires a whole sentence.

However, the meaning of this word emerges, when we see it in the context of Shawnee cultural information, that at feasts (parties), one serves boiled food as opposed to broiled or fried foods. With this in mind, “eaters of boiled [food]” are ‘guests at a feast’ and in turn, going for such people, means that ‘he invited guests for the party.’ Whorf’s point here is that the Shawnee way of expressing this concept is very different from that of English and other SAE languages. To him, this was sufficient to say that a very different way of thinking was involved.

The above example, like many Whorf used, suggests that he only considered words and syntax to be the linguistic determinants of thought. However, he often spoke of “patterns.” One clear example of such a pattern comes from his article entitled “The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language.” In it, he introduced the Hopi conceptualization of time.

To understand Whorf’s point, we need to understand the distinction between count nouns and mass nouns. As the name implies, count nouns can be counted: one stone; two trees; three houses, etc. Mass nouns (such as bread, gravel and water) are taken as a whole and not counted unless defined as a unit (a loaf of bread, a ton of gravel, and a pint of water). In English measurements of time are expressed as count nouns (one hour, two days, five months). However, the Hopi conceptualization is quite different for the flow of time is continuous and while one can locate points on the flow of time, one cannot break it up into discrete units and one cannot say “he stayed for five days.” In the Hopi mode of representation, one can only say “he stayed until the fifth day” because the use of the ordinal numbering system (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) does not break up the string of days into separate units but merely point to the stretch of time that has elapsed during the visit. For Whorf, this information was sufficient to show that the Hopi way of thinking was different from that of the SAE speaker.

While it is true that in the Hopi view, one sees a sequence of days consisting of sunrises, noons and sunsets, but one does not have to break them up into separate days with beginnings and ends. Furthermore, it might be argued that unlike solid objects like stones, trees and houses, the intangibility of time makes it more difficult to segment it into discrete units. Note, for example, that there is no universal agreement as to when a day begins. For most Westerners, the day begins in the middle of the night, while for Swahili speakers it begins at dawn. Note also, that many other languages, western and non-western alike have no difficulty in counting days, years and months. Mende, a language of Sierra Leone, counts time in discrete units easily: foo-ita, foo-fele, foo-sawa (one day, two days, three days). The Hopi pattern has shown us a different way of representing the passage of time, but Whorf has not shown us that Hopi speakers think about time in a unique way. To show this, would involve further testing of Hopi and non-Hopi conceptualizations of time, something Whorf did not do.

Proving Linguistic Determinism

We have noted that Whorf went beyond earlier proponents of linguistic determinism by providing examples of how differently languages represent the same natural phenomena. However, the mere statement of differences in linguistic representation does not answer Boas’ objectivist argument, that these differences mean little as language is only a vehicle for representing though and not the process of thought itself. In the 1940s and 1950s a number of experiments were undertaken to prove the Whorfian hypothesis of linguistic determinism. In this sense the word prove is being used in its older meaning of ‘testing the hypothesis’ as opposed to the newer meaning of ‘showing the hypothesis to be true.’[1]

M LH LH bu = 'not'
1. Ta ai buai. He is short or not?
i.e. How tall is he?
M LH
2. Ta ai. He is short
The letters above the words mark the tones
(pitches) of the words (L=low; M=mid and H=high)
L M M LH L H
3. Jeijang jwodz bi neijang chang.
this table as compared to that one long

Hockett: Chinese versus English. One such experiment carried out by Charles Hockett (1954), a noted linguist with a considerable knowledge of Chinese, contrasted the patterns of comparisons used by English and Chinese. Hockett begins by noting that the second Chinese Sentence (he is short) is almost never said as a standalone statement but only in response to the first sentence. To express the idea of sentence 2 as a stand-alone statement, one would have to say something like: ‘compared to someone or thing, he is short’ as in the third sentence.

This is in contrast to SAE languages where a sentence like “He is short” may stand alone as a statement. Hockett then identifies the Chinese pattern as one of “relativism” - that in Chinese, descriptions are usually done by showing the object relative to another object. Hockett then argues that this linguistic pattern provides an opportunity to prove (in the sense of “test”) the Whorfian hypothesis, which predicts that there should be a cultural reflection of this linguistic pattern. The question is, as Hockett puts it, “is any attribute of Chinese culture with which this habitual relativism correlates?” One possibility, Hockett suggests, is “the Chinese "philosophy of life" emphasizes a doctrine of the mean: “never get too happy, or you may also become too sad; moderation in all things.” Hockett sees a possible parallel between the “doctrine of the mean” and the linguistic pattern of comparison. However, he is not convinced that there is a connection for he says:

This suggestion is put foreword with great hesitation . . . for if there is indeed a determinable correlation, then it would impress the writer that the direction of causality in the matter is in all probability (Hockett 1964:123).

During this period, several other tests of this sort were carried out. For example, Ward Goodenough, in his (1966) article entitled “Language and Property on Truk” compared the linguistic expression of possessive constructions and the cultural conceptualizations of possession and found that there was no correlation whatsoever.

2. The Weak Version of the Whorfian Hypothesis

With little evidence in support of Whorf’s hypothesis, but with the conviction that language must somehow influence one’s perception of the world, researchers suggested a weaker version of the hypothesis which suggested that language patterns influenced, but did not determine, perception and thought. Along with this alternative hypothesis, researches began to test individuals as members as opposed to looking for cultural concepts as in the Hockett example.

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Color and Codability. Although most of the SAE languages use the same primary color terms to classify the color spectrum, other languages do not. Primary color terms are so called because they cannot break them down to more basic terms. For example, if we asked what sort of color is aqua, we would say that it is a kind of blue. If we were to ask what kind of a color blue is, we would answer something like “blue is blue.” Thus, in English, blue is a primary color term and aqua is a secondary color term.[2]

Drawing on the observation that different languages divide the color spectrum differently, Brown and Lenneberg (1958) devised a “Color-Codability” experiment in which speakers of different languages were asked to identify different colors. They found that when asked someone to identify a color that was at the edge of the range for his/her language, the speaker would have difficulty in naming the color (encoding). For example a color that was on the border for blue and green would pose a problem for an English speaker, but not for a Shona speaker. On the other hand a color that was on the border for a Shona speaker, say between “chipswuka” and “chichena” would pose naming difficulties for Shona speakers, but not for English speakers who would easily identify it as “yellow.” Brown and Lenneberg also found that when these various speakers were asked to recall the color they had identified earlier, these speakers tended to recall a color much closer to the middle of the color range.

This experiment was significant because it clearly showed that one’s language does actually affects one’s behavior, both with respect to the time it takes to identify primary colors and with the ability to recall those colors. This then is support for the Whorfian hypothesis, but it is certainly not support for the strong version put forth by Whorf above where language “determines” one’s perception, but only the weak version, where language only influences one’s perception.