Linguistic relativity

[5][need quotation to verify] Nevertheless, research has produced positive empirical evidence supporting a weaker version of linguistic relativity:[5][4] that a language's structures influence a speaker's perceptions, without strictly limiting or obstructing them.

The distinction between a weak and a strong version of this hypothesis is also a later development; Sapir and Whorf never used such a dichotomy, although often their writings and their opinions of this relativity principle expressed it in stronger or weaker terms.

[6][7] The principle of linguistic relativity and the relationship between language and thought has also received attention in varying academic fields, including philosophy, psychology and anthropology.

Sapir's student, Benjamin Lee Whorf, came to be considered as the primary proponent as a result of his published observations of how he perceived linguistic differences to have consequences for human cognition and behavior.

But Plato has been read as arguing against sophist thinkers such as Gorgias of Leontini, who claimed that the physical world cannot be experienced except through language; this made the question of truth dependent on aesthetic preferences or functional consequences.

[19]In Humboldt's humanistic understanding of linguistics, each language creates the individual's worldview in its particular way through its lexical and grammatical categories, conceptual organization, and syntactic models.

"[28]Boas' student Edward Sapir referred to the Humboldtian idea that languages were a major factor for understanding the cultural assumptions of peoples.

[30]However, Sapir explicitly rejected strong linguistic determinism by stating, "It would be naïve to imagine that any analysis of experience is dependent on pattern expressed in language.

[34] Drawing on influences such as Humboldt and Friedrich Nietzsche, some European thinkers developed ideas similar to those of Sapir and Whorf, generally working in isolation from each other.

[35] Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky read Sapir's work and experimentally studied the ways in which the development of concepts in children was influenced by structures given in language.

[37] Drawing on Nietzsche's ideas of perspectivism Alfred Korzybski developed the theory of general semantics that has been compared to Whorf's notions of linguistic relativity.

He concluded that the use of the word empty in association to the barrels had resulted in the workers unconsciously regarding them as harmless, although consciously they were probably aware of the risk of explosion.

[43] Whorf's most elaborate argument for linguistic relativity regarded what he believed to be a fundamental difference in the understanding of time as a conceptual category among the Hopi.

For example, men speaking the Guugu Yimithirr language in Queensland gave accurate navigation instructions using a compass-like system of north, south, east and west, along with a hand gesture pointing to the starting direction.

Brown and Lenneberg found that Zuni speakers who classify green and blue together as a single color did have trouble recognizing and remembering nuances within the green/blue category.

In a similar study done by German ophthalmologist Hugo Magnus during the 1870s, he circulated a questionnaire to missionaries and traders with ten standardized color samples and instructions for using them.

[51] This, Lucy argues, made them unaware of the instances in which color terms provided other information that might be considered examples of linguistic relativity.

The Chomskyan school also includes the belief that linguistic structures are largely innate and that what are perceived as differences between specific languages are surface phenomena that do not affect the brain's universal cognitive processes.

Speakers of Spanish and German, which have different gender systems, were asked to use adjectives to describe various objects that were either masculine or feminine in their respective languages.

[86] Colin Murray Turbayne also argued that the pervasive use of ancient "dead metaphors" by researchers within different linguistic traditions has contributed to needless confusion in the development of modern empirical theories over time.

Researchers such as Boroditsky, Choi, Majid, Lucy and Levinson believe that language influences thought in more limited ways than the broadest early claims.

[50] In an early example of this method, Whorf attributed the occurrence of fires at a chemical plant to the workers' use of the word 'empty' to describe barrels containing only explosive vapors.

[97] Everett's work on the Pirahã language of the Brazilian Amazon[98] found several peculiarities that he interpreted as corresponding to linguistically rare features, such as a lack of numbers and color terms in the way those are otherwise defined and the absence of certain types of clauses.

[105] A 2013 study found that those who speak "futureless" languages with no grammatical marking of the future tense save more, retire with more wealth, smoke less, practice safer sex, and are less obese than those who do not.

This laboratory-based finding of elective variation within a single language does not refute the linguistic savings hypothesis but some have suggested that it shows the effect may be due to culture or other non-linguistic factors.

[clarification needed] A major question is whether human psychological faculties are mostly innate or whether they are mostly a result of learning, and hence subject to cultural and social processes such as language.

The contrary constructivist position holds that human faculties and concepts are largely influenced by socially constructed and learned categories, without many biological restrictions.

[clarification needed] Sapir/Whorf contemporary Alfred Korzybski was independently developing his theory of general semantics, which was intended to use language's influence of thinking to maximize human cognitive abilities.

It is not an exaggeration to say that it enslaves us through the mechanism of s[emantic] r[eactions] and that the structure which a language exhibits, and impresses upon us unconsciously, is automatically projected upon the world around us.In their fiction, authors such as Ayn Rand and George Orwell explored how linguistic relativity might be exploited for political purposes.

[126] Similarly, Sonja Lang's Toki Pona was developed according to a Taoist philosophy for exploring how (or if) such a language would direct human thought.