Sapir-Whorf

A colour sorting task reveals the limits of the universalist/relativist dichotomy: colour categories can be both language specific and perceptual.

by Yasmina Jraissati

Co-authored with Nicolas Claidière and Coralie Chevallier. 2008. Journal of Culture and Cognition 8: 211-233

We designed a new protocol requiring French adult participants to group a large number of Munsell colour chips into... more We designed a new protocol requiring French adult participants to group a large number of Munsell colour chips into three or four groups. On one, relativist, view, participants would be expected to rely on their colour lexicon in such a task. In this framework, the resulting groups should be more similar to French colour categories than to other languages categories. On another, universalist, view, participants would be expected to rely on universal features of perception. In this second framework, the resulting groups should match colour categories of three and four basic terms languages. In this work, we first collected data to build an accurate map of French colour terms categories (Experiment 1). We went on testing how native French speakers spontaneously sorted a set of randomly presented coloured chips and, in line with the relativist prediction, we found that the resulting colour groups were more similar to French colour categories than to three and four basic terms languages (Experiment 2). However, the same results were obtained in a verbal interference condition (Experiment 3), suggesting that participants rely on language specific and nevertheless perceptual, colour categories. Collectively, these results suggest that the universalist/relativist dichotomy is a too narrow one.

Categorical perception of color: assessing the role of language

by Yasmina Jraissati

Research on color categorization in recent years has focused on ‘categorical perception’ (CP), a phenomenon first... more Research on color categorization in recent years has focused on ‘categorical perception’ (CP), a phenomenon first observed in speech perception in the 1950’s. CP refers to the fact that adjacent color patches are more easily discriminated when they straddle a category boundary. The further fact that this effect is observed at language specific boundaries suggests that CP in adults is acquired, and that language plays a determining role. It is suggested that linguistic labels determine CP through a naming strategy to which participants resort while discriminating color patches. In this paper, I examine the notion of CP and re-assess the role of language. More specifically, I reject the naming strategy account of CP in the light of several results. I suggest further that what seems to play a role in CP is category structure, not category labels. This observation has consequences on our understanding of categorization in general.

A cross‐cultural study of colour grouping: Evidence for weak linguistic relativity

by Greville G. Corbett

Ian R. L. Davies and Greville G. Corbett

A cross‐cultural study of English and Setswana speakers on a colour triads task: A test of the Sapir—Whorf hypothesis

by Greville G. Corbett

co-authored with Ian R. L. Davies, Paul T. Sowden, David T. Jerrett, Tiny Jerrett [GGC is last author]

The Word "Rape" : A Sociolinguistic Exploration

by Jerad Grimm

published in Make Out Magazine #1, November, 2011.

Das Wort „Vergewaltigung" verliert seine Bedeutung. Es wird nicht mehr ausschließlich als Bezeichnung einer... more Das Wort „Vergewaltigung" verliert seine Bedeutung. Es wird nicht mehr ausschließlich als Bezeichnung einer sexuellen Gewalttat verwendet, sondern steht zunehmend als Attribut für besonders schwierige Situationen, hält als schmutziger Ner-venkitzel in Comedyshows her und verkommt zu einer rhetorisch beliebig verwendbaren Sprachfigur. Der Autor Jerad Grimm er-forscht die Ursachen und Folgen dieser Entwicklung.

A nyelvi relativizmus és az idegrendszeri plaszticitás

by István Fekete

in Hungarian

Aveva ragione Whorf? : La lingua embodied / embedded

by Vito Evola

Evola, V. (2011). Aveva ragione Whorf?: La lingua embodied/embedded. Reti, 1(2).

Questa è una bozza finale. Per eventuali citazioni fare riferimento alla versione definitiva pubblicata in: Reti. Rivista del Dipartimento di Scienze cognitive della formazione e degli studi culturali. Università di Messina, a cura di Domenica Bruni e Edoardo Fugali, ISSN 2239-7000. Vol. 1, Num. 2, 2011

(Italiano)
Abstract: Uno degli assunti fondamentali della linguistica e psicologia cognitive è che ogni... more (Italiano)
Abstract: Uno degli assunti fondamentali della linguistica e psicologia cognitive è che ogni percezione ed espressione è connessa alla nostra biologia, e più di quanto si pensasse in precedenza. Dopo una panoramica della letteratura cognitivista orientata per l’indipendenza tra linguaggio e pensiero, evidenzierò punti problematici di questa posizione avvalendomi di ricerche empiriche da un lato condotte in ambito neuro-cognitivista e dall’altro di tipo psicolinguistico. Proporrò degli spunti a favore della ‘contro-tesi’ per cui il pensiero implica la lingua naturale: linguaggio e pensiero, cioè, si influenzano l’un l’altro.
Questa posizione implica che la mente umana sia in corpore (embodied) in un corpo fenomenologico e strutturata dalle nostre esperienze, e gli stimoli esterni quotidiani offerti dall’ambiente in cui si è situati (embedded) formino dinamicamente il modo di pensare degli esseri umani. La mente intesa come prodotto dell’interazione delle proprie introspezioni con le interazioni quotidiane è influenzata, e in una certa misura persino condizionata, dalla lingua parlata e da come è usata. Conoscere la natura dinamica del rapporto tra linguaggio e pensiero permette una migliore comprensione della natura del linguaggio e di come la lingua motivi il modo in cui si ragiona del proprio mondo.

Parole chiavi: Sapir-Whorf, linguaggio e pensiero, linguaggio e cultura, embodiment, cognizione


(English)
Abstract: One of the fundamental premises of contemporary cognitive linguistics and psychology is that human perception and expression are intimately coupled with human biology, to a much greater degree than linguists and psychologists had previously thought. In this essay I provide an overview of contemporary literature from cognitive linguistics and psychology that posits language-thought independence. I also highlight the theoretical problems and the further neurocognitive and psycholinguistic empirical research specific to these issues which make this position problematic. I then provide evidence for the counter-theory, that thinking in fact involves natural language and that language and thought influence one another.
This position indexes the supposition that our minds are embodied in a phenomenological body built on our everyday experiences, and daily external stimuli offered by the cultural environment in which we are individually embedded dynamically form our way of thinking. The mind is the product of the interaction of introspections and daily interactions; it is influenced, and to a certain extent even conditioned, by language and how it is used. Understanding the dynamic nature of language and thought will guide us in better understanding figurative language in general and metaphor in particular as well as how they motivate our way of reasoning about our world.

Keywords: Sapir-Whorf, language-thought, language and culture, embodiment, cognition

Sapir and Quantifiable "Crudeness"

by Rick Hauser

This paper was published in the semi-annual Newsletter of the Coroplastic Studies Interest Group.

The remainder of the Newsletter has to do with a wide range of topics all dealing with figurines in their many permutations.

In this paper, I explore how the word "crude" has been applied in the domain I study, using techniques of... more In this paper, I explore how the word "crude" has been applied in the domain I study, using techniques of linguistic analysis pioneered by Edward Sapir in what will be for me, I sense, "un écrit charnier" in my further studies of hand-modeled clay figurines, particularly as I seek to work across cultures and out of my accustomed time-frame. Here, I will often refer to his essay, “Grading: A Study in Semantics” (Sapir, in Mandelbaum1951 [1949], 122-149).

"bhaSar ottacar: ekti paTher upokrom" [ Sukumar Ray’s “Torture of Language”: An Attempted Reading.”

by Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay

2002. “Sukumar Ray’s “Torture of Language”: An Attempted Reading.” Ababhas. II:2.(pp.25-35) Jul-Sept. Kolkata.http://www.scribd.com/doc/66779899/%E2%80%9CSukumar-Ray%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9CTorture-of-Language%E2%80%9D-An-Attempted-Reading
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/papers/browse-papers-action.cfm?PaperID=9882

This paper is a meta-commentary on a pioneering paper “bhaSar ottacar” (“Torture of Language”, first published in... more This paper is a meta-commentary on a pioneering paper “bhaSar ottacar” (“Torture of Language”, first published in probaSi, joysTho, 1322 Bangabda [May 1915 A.D.]) by Sukumar Ray. The author of this paper interpreted the discourse of Ray in the light of contemporary or “modern” linguistic theories. Thus, this paper is also a formal elaboration of Ray’s hypotheses on the problems of language.

When I first went through the reprint Ray’s paper, I was flabbergasted as I found that Ray commented on some fundamental linguistic issues, which were almost unknown at that time, i.e., in 1915, in that short paper written in Bangla.

Ray started his discourse with “familiarity principle” that disrupts the understanding of “too familiar phenomenon” (it is to be noted that Chomsky, 1972: 24 initiated his discourse on language and mind with this principle). The issues, inaugurated by Ray, include: (a) arbitrariness of signs (in Ray’s phrases: “relations of artificial illogical sounds”) and different types of signs (symbol, icon and index were exemplified by Ray) ; (b) cultural relativity [as proposed later by Sapir-Whorf in 1929] ; (c) The relationship between thought and language and the domination of language over the thought due to the burden of ideology; (d) the existence of signifier without “real” signified and condensation of thought; (e) ideological problems of interpretive translation and changes in meaning (Ray exemplified it with two almost different Bangla translations of Vedic hymns); (f) Problems of polysemy, metaphor and metonym; (g) neutralization of meaning; (h) problems of metalinguistic functions.

However, the main emphasis of Ray was on the controlling power of linguistic order of things over the thought process or cognition and the hermeneutic gap between perception and understanding. As we are living within the prison-house of language and our thought processes are regulated/telescoped/condensed/appropriated/approximated by the linguistic order of things, Ray justifiably called this as “torture of language”.

Note: Downloadable document is in Bengali.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 6

Keywords: Sapir-Whorf, language-thinking, discourse Analysis