Magdalena Dudka AN II

Sapir- Whorf hypothesis and its usage

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (SWH), also known as linguistic relativity principle claims a systematic relationship between the grammatical cathegories of the language of the speaker and how the speaker himself both understands the world and behaves in it. The hypothesis postulates that the habitual thought of the language, speaker is influenced by nature of a particular language.If the pattern of language changes, then the thought pattern is also different.

Late eighteenth and early ninetheenth century was the time when similar ideas were advanced for the first time. Johann Georg Hamann and Johann Gottfried Herder (both were students of Immanuel Kant) showed early version og linguistic relativity in their work. Another German linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt in his essay On the comparative study of languages (original Title Über das vergleichende Sprachstudium) shows a well-known defence of the doctrine.

Franz Boas

The roots of Sapir-Wharf Hypothesis lead to the work of Franz Boas (July 9, 1858 - December 12,1942) who is said to be the founder of anthropology in the United States. He was of American-German origins and a pioneer of modern anthropology. He was also trained in many other diciplines: re received his doctorate in physics, he also did post-doctoral work in geography. He studied in Germany and after he moved to the United States he encountered Native American languages from many different linguistic families. The all differed significantly from the Semitic and Indo-Europead languages. Thanks to studies on these languages Boas realised how many varieties of ways of life and grammatical cathegories one can find between localities. As a result he claimes that coulture and behaviour of people are reflected in the language they speak.

Edward Sapir

Edward Sapir (January 26, 1884 - February 4, 1939) was a Jewish-German-American anthropologist and star student of Franz Boas’. He was also leader in American structural linguistics. He is one of the most influencial figures in American linguistics inspiring linguists across several linguistic schools. In 1904 he receives his B.A. and a year after his M.A. both in German philology, but his inetrests were much broader. He studied languages of Southwestern Oregon and he did his PhD in anthropology. He published 12 books and a great number of essays and articles

Benajmin Lee Whorf

Benjamin Lee Whorf (April 24, 1897 - July 26, 1941) was an America linguist and student of Edward Sapir’s. Together with his professor he created linguistic relativity hypothesis, and for this he became well-known. in sociolinguistic circles. Whorf studied linguistics at Yale University. He was primarily interested in Native American languages, particularly those of Mesoamerica but his work about Hopi language brought him fame. He wrote three books but he is well-known for his essay The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behaviour to Language. Because Whorf was a student not a professional linguist, his work on linguistic relativity did not become popular up untill the posthumous publication of his writings in 1950s.

The development and standardalization of Interlingua were strongly influenced by the SWH during the first half of 20th century but largely thanks to Sapir’s direct involvement.In order to test the hypothesis Loglan constructed language was created by Dr. James Cooke Brown in 1955 (Lojban, a reformed variant of Loglan is still used). The goal of Brown’s work was to create a language completely different from natural languages. If the hypothesis were true, the artificial language would affect people learning it. Unfortunately, no such experiment was ever conducted.

In 1960s the work on Whorf fell out of favour because linguistic theories created in that time (also by Noam Chomsky) were focused on the innateness and universality of language. It was said that thought is independent of language and that language itself is meaningless. It was claimed that human beings do not even think in batural language. Comparing to that, Whorf’s radical theory was said to deny that language contains any thought or culture. Steven Pinker, a linguist of that time and strong Whorf’s oponent, said: the more you examine Whorf's arguments, the less sense they make.

George Lakoff, who represented a more Whorfian approach, claimed that language is essentially a metaphor. Good example here is English which employs many metaphors that

equate time and money, for instance- spend time- waste time- invest time- free time

Interest in Sapir-Whorf hypothesis were renewed in late 1980s and early 1990s as a result of advances in cognitive psychology and anthropological linguistics. Nowadays there are some discussions about how atrongly language influences thought.

The language has absolutely no influence on thought. The most extreme opposing opinion is widely considered to be false. So is strong version of SWH which says that language determines thought. The moxt common view is that truth lies somewhere inbetween the two. So Whorf himself thought and never held the strong form of his hypothesis. Currently scientists study not whether but rather how the language affects thought. Earlier the research was focuseod on supporting or disagreeing with the thesis.

Investigation confirms that tere is a particular connection in human brain between semantic concepts (like the idea of a table) and phonetic representation (the sounds that make up the word table).

Whorf’s study of the language of the Innuit people is one of the most popular examples of linguistic determinism. However the two ideas had completely different starting points, both of them claimed that the language shapes the thought. In his work Whorf argues that the language of the Eskimo creates a different mode of existance for them. As a opposing idea there is a book The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax by Geoffrey Pullum, who prove that Arctic people do not have more expressions for snow, so the enviroment in which they live and their language are not connected with each other in any way.

Mould theories and cloak theories are two terms in linguistic theory which refer to the relationship between tha language and the thought. First one represents language as a mould in terms of which thought categories are cast. The second one claimes that language is a cloak conforming to the customary categories of thought of its speakers. The SWH theory is a mould theory. In 1929 Sapir wrote:

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)

In 1930s Whorf extended this view by declaring:

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; his emphasis)

The quotations above give the idea that both Sapir and Whorf found involved in the way they considered language.

The SWH consists of two related principles: linguistic determinism, which says that our thinking is determined by the language we speak, and linguistic relativity, which claims that people perceive the world differently if they speak different languages. As a result of such thinking, a translation from one language to another becomes quite problematic, sometimes even impossible. It is also claimed that any reformulation of words result in change of the meaning.

Worfianism is ver broad. For egzample it sees realing as a kind of translation. According to Whorf, the meaning does not reside in text but in the interpretation of the text, so while reading there is always a slight change of sense of words. In common usage, we often talk about different ways of expressing the same thing, but Whorf thought that it is impossible to have the same meaning and different ways of expressing it. Reformulating the words will affect the understading and perceiving the meaning.

Of course, the importance of what is lost in translation varies. The issue is largely considered to be the most important in literary writing. It shows how the translator felt about the translation and the poem itself. With more pragmatic and less expressive and creative translations are usually seen as those in which the usage of particular words in not important.

The Whorfian perspective stands in strong opposition to linguistic universalism and representatives of the cloak theory, who said that language is simply a dress of thought and that one thing can be expressed in manz different ways. Universalists saw no problem in translating the text from one language to another. Thez claimed that whatever we saz in one language can be easily translated and expressed in another. This is the most common negation of Whorfs thesis. No matter how logical thoughts of universalists may appear, many linguists and philosophers find various difficulties in translations. The philosopher Karl Popper once said The fact is, 'that even totally different languages are not untranslatable.

There are supporters of both extreme and deterministic form of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and its weaker, more moderate form. Here are some differences between moderate and extreme Whorfianism:- the weaker form puts the emphasis on the potential of thinking to be influenced rather

than determined by language- it is a two-way process: not onlz the language influences our thought but also the waz

we perceive the world influences, to some extent, our language- emphasis is given to the social context of language use rather than to purely linguistic

considerations

The Usage of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Presence in the literature

There are several examples od Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis present in the literature, for instance:- A striking example of linguistic determinism and relativity in Newspeak - an artificial

language created by George Orwell in his famous book Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell’s presumption was that if people cannot create the words to express the ideas underlying revolution, they cannot rebel.

- In an ancient language (also known as Old Speech) created by Ursula LeGuin in Earthsea series every object has only one true name. In another novel The Dispossessed LeGuin creates an artificial language which has possibly little ways of expressing possessive relations

- In the novel Anthem (1938) by Ayn Rand the word I is banned and those who use it are killed

- In novella Gulf (1949) by Robert Heinlein the characters were taught to use an artificial language which allows them to think logically.

- One of the characters of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune (1965) is shocked by the violence of the language of native people of Dune and she believes that a culture of enormous violence is reflected by the choice of words and grammatical stucture of the speakers.

How language affects our understanding of soccer

Being extremely logical, the Sapir-Whor Hypothesis can explain a lot about how the game of soccer is viewed by the people around the world. The opinion coined by Sapir and his student says that the language not only helps us to describe the world but also shapes it. Combination of linguistic hypothesis and the name of the game of soccer looks a bit unusual, but still there is an explanation for that.

Soccer, the game bound by a single set of 17 laws, varies from one country to another. SWH is useful in explaining these differences. According to the hypothesis people see the game differently because they use other words to describe it. But why the way the Spaniards and Costa Ricans perceive the game differently. In both countries people speak Spanish, but the Costa Rican terms describing positions of players are not even similar to these which are used by people from Spain. Spanish word for defender is defensa, for midfielder – mediocampista and for forward – delantero. Costa Ricans have a word enganchar. It is very difficult to day which position is sescribed by this word because the

word itself literally means “a hook”. Enganche turns out to be a playmaker. For a foreigner it is very difficult to understand the word because it is perceived in a different way.

In the history of soccer it is easy to find a case when it was necessary to create a new term decsribing a player. Franz Beckenbauer was a player who developed his own unique style of playing. He started his carrier as a midfielder, but then he shifted further back to be a sweeper. He was not really satisfied with his role in the team, he prefered playing in the front and creating attacks, so he was no longer either a sweeper or a midfielder, and this forced soccer players and fans to creating a new term for the player namely libero. Future player who played in similarly hybrid way were also described as liberos. Again, the word itself is not a name of position, it shapes our view on the play, gives us an image of a particular style of playing soccer and it also can shape the reality – some players may just want to be like Beckenbauer, so they practise his way of playing to became a libero.

Linguistic differences may also affect the view of fauls. Spanish speaker often use a word la plancha which literal meaning does not have much to do with the soccer. It describes a straight-legged, cleats-up tackle. As they have a single word to describe this particular king of tackle, people from Spanish-speaking regions are more likely to ba aware of the offense. It does not claim that Spanish players are less sensitive to such tackles, but possibility of using only one word describing it hightens up the people’s awarness of the meaning. Often Spanish players gesture to the referee after whet they interpret to be la plancha. It is certain that players all over the word see this tackle as very offensive. But Latin Americans perceive them as twice as huge offence. In Argentina red cards are often given to players for using la plancha while similar play in Premiere Ligue stays unpunished.

Enganche, trequartista, libero, and la plancha are examples of words widely used in the game of soccer but they do not really describe a position of a player or a particular tackle. They rather shape the way the players and fans see the game. The usage of these word can affect the feedback and reactions of both groups. We cannot be sure whether they would have the same power over people if they were translated into English or German or any other language.

And here another problem appears: is it possible to translate them? If yes, what would be lost in the translation? Or maybe is it better to leave them as they are, using Spanish terms to describe not positions, styles of playing or types of tackles, but rather certain images like Beckenbauer’s typical behaviour during a match, or the feeling of enormous offence after la plancha which is not only a straight-legged, cleats-up tackle, but something even whorse.

No matter how strange the words: linguistic theory and the theory of soccer may look when they are combined together in one sentence, they just make a new field of research for the linguists. It only shows how broad the language and also the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is. Understanding of soccer with the help of SWH is just one egzample. We can study every single part of our life using the hypothesis as a mean of understanding. There are people who agrue about whether some hypotheses are right or wrong. I, personally, prefer to judge them in terms of being useful or not. The one I described is undeniably very useful.