Discuss the ways in which the study of tribal,aboriginal cultures has influenced the development of theories about language and the mind since the 20th century.

Discuss the ways in which study of EITHER tribal, aboriginal cultures OR child

language acquisition OR adults with language disabilities have influenced the

development of theories about language and the mind since the 20th century.

When considering how the study of tribal and aboriginal cultures and languages has influenced theories concerning the relationship between language and the mind since the 20th century, one particular theory springs to mind, so to speak: the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. A theory that has had its critics, and by no means the first study of how native languages shape the intellectual lives of nations, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is nonetheless a particularly well known study which has had, and continues to have, much influence on theories on language and the mind.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was formulated by Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Whorf, and deals primarily with the relationship between thought and language. Sapir, an anthropologist and linguist at Yale University, specialised in Native American languages, and it was through the study of these languages that he first became interested in the differences between linguistic groups and their perceptions of the world; the speakers of Native American languages, Sapir found, had difficulty in perceiving the phonetic distinctions in European languages. Whorf was a student of Sapir’s who became interested in languages and went on to develop and extend Sapir’s ideas. He was particularly interested in the relationship between language and culture, and how this relationship extends beyond the vocabulary.

Sapir and Whorf were not the first scholars to be interested in such linguistic and cultural relationships. In fact, the beginnings of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis can be traced back to the work of Franz Boas, the German-American anthropologist who is often accredited with founding anthropology in the United States. Whilst in the USA, Boas studied many Native American languages from a number of different linguistic families, all of which were different from the standard Semitic and Indo-European languages he was familiar with. He discovered how greatly grammatical categories and ways of life differed from region to region, and as a result came to believe that the culture and customs of a society are reflected in their language.

Sapir was a student of Boas’, and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is in part an extension of Boas’ ideas. Sapir asserted that languages are formally complete, systematic, institutions that are interacting at a deeper level with thought and behaviour, and that particular words do not express a certain mode of thought or behaviour.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is in effect two propositions, which in their most basic forms could be summed up as Linguistic Determinism, or the ‘strong’ version of the hypothesis, and Linguistic Relativity, which can also be called the ‘weak’ version of the hypothesis.

Linguistic Determinism refers to the idea that language shapes thought, and as a term can be used to refer broadly to a number of specific viewpoints. In the context of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Linguistic Determinism is the idea that individuals experience the world based on the language they speak; that is, language determines thought, and if a person ...

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Linguistic Relativity is the idea that rather than being determined by language, thought is instead only influenced by it, meaning that speakers of different languages think in different ways as their language determines the cognitive processes in different ways. This side of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the ‘weak’ version, is also sometimes referred to as Whorf’s hypothesis as it was Whorf who came up with the idea of Linguistic Relativity. The following well known quote illustrates Whorf’s somewhat radical position:

“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, 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 suggestion here is that reality is split up in different ways by different languages, meaning that language differences influence the world view of their speakers; Whorf also described language as ‘the shaper of ideas’. Also, there is the notion that language differences are subconscious or covert, that they are part of the psyche.

The idea of language changing or influencing the way a person actually thinks, as put forward by the concepts of Linguistic Determinism and Relativity, is an interesting one, and one that, in theory, can sound valid and convincing. For example, in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the language Newspeak is used by the totalitarian Party to ultimately control the way people think and make rebellion and defiance impossible. In the appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell describes how by narrowing the scope of language by reducing the vocabulary, the Party are using Newspeak to control people’s thoughts:

“The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought -- that is, a thought diverging from the principles of IngSoc -- should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.”

This is a particularly interesting quote in relation to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for a number of reasons. That Newspeak is described as a ‘medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc’, links directly to the idea of language influencing the way a person sees the world, and the way they think. There is also the idea that once Newspeak has been learned it will be impossible to think a rebellious thought as there will be no medium with which to think or express it, which is clearly influenced by the concept of Linguistic Determinism.

Orwell states that Newspeak’s control of thought is possible ‘so far as thought is dependent on words’, and this is a fascinating idea as surely thought is entirely dependant on words, making the concept of language-based mind control seem plausible. In this context, though, I believe it is necessary to separate thought from instinct; thought being the coherent ideas that are formed and verbalised in one’s mind, and what occurs in one’s imagination, and instinct being more closely linked to the senses, in that a person knows when they are hungry or cold without having to verbalise that feeling in their minds. Of course, this is only a hypothetical idea of what a thought actually is, but if we take thoughts to be what are verbalised in our minds, then surely we can only think in the language we know. Therefore, if a particular word or concept does not exist in our language, then how can we think it?

However, the fact that Orwell also writes that this control could only be possible once Oldspeak- modern English- had been forgotten and its speakers had died out, suggesting that simply learning a new language cannot change the way one thinks: if you know other ways of thinking, then you will use them. But if you do not, if Newspeak, or any language, is the language you are brought up on, all you have ever known, then you can only think on the terms laid down by that language. The following quote illustrates how, as a new and different language, Newspeak would restrict the range of thought of those who spoke only Newspeak:

“To give a single example - The word still existed in Newspeak, but could only be used in such statements as "The dog is free from lice" or "This field is free from weeds." It could not be used in its old sense of "politically free" or "intellectually free," since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless… Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum”

With this example in mind, the idea of language influencing or determining thought arguably seems entirely believable, and Whorf experimented with his theory through the study of a number of native languages. Whorf was particularly interested in the idea of differentiation, or the number of words in a certain category such as colour, animal names, foods etc, in the vocabulary of a certain language. If a certain domain has a large number of words for its contents, the vocabulary expresses finer distinctions of meaning, and all languages display higher levels of differentiation in some domains than others, and Whorf wanted to show if this lead to different ways of thinking.

To illustrate how different cultures split up reality in different ways, Whorf used the example of the large number of words for snow there are in the Eskimo languages. However, problems with the translation of the Inuit languages mean that this was a bad example, as Whorf counted words with different suffixes as entirely different words rather than regarding them as part of the same root word.

Whorf also looked at the way in which the Hopi Indians categorised time. It had been discovered by Boas that the Hopi language had no concept of time as an objective entity, and Whorf wanted to show how this affected the lives of the Hopi Indians. He claimed that the way the Hopi rely on preparation, for example the way they announced events well in advance, showed a concept of time as more linear instead of being divided up, as it is in Western societies, which matches the linguistic differences. According to Whorf, this shows language determining thought, the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Additional support for this view later came from Carol and Casagrande in 1958. they proved that children who speak the Navaho language were better at form recognition than children from America, because Navaho has different word forms for different types of object.

However, Whorf’s methods have come in for much criticism, most of which concern problems with Whorf’s evidence and his lack of knowledge and familiarity with the cultures and languages he wrote about (Indeed, Brown (1958), and Lenneberg (1953) point out that Whorf never actually met a Hopi Indian). This, though, is perhaps understandable as there are inherent difficulties in detaching oneself from ones own culture and world view. Therefore, any researcher is looking at another culture and language from the point of view of their own, so a more intimate and thorough knowledge of other cultures is needed to form an objective argument.

Nonetheless, despite its criticisms and unpopularity throughout the 1970s and 1980s, enduring popular ideas about language and perception mean that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is often revisited. Indeed, recent discoveries in the cognitive sciences have led to the re-evaluation of Linguistic Relativity. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis may be contentious and maligned, but it has always had, and still has, a large influence on theories on language and the mind.

Bibliography

Whorf, Benjamin (John Carroll, Editor) (1956). Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf.
Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four, "Appendix: The Principles of Newspeak", pp. 309–323. New York: Plume, 2003.
Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language.
Sapir, Edward. ‘The Status of Linguistics as a Science’ .