Chapter 8: Language, Culture And Thought

Overview
The nature of the relationship between language thought, and culture
was under consideration long before anthropology became recognized as a
scholarly field in its own right.
Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) wrote, “The spiritual traits and the structure of the
language of a people are so intimately blended that, given either of the two, one should be able to
derive the other from it to the fullest extent. . . . Language is the outward manifestation of the spirit
of people: their language is their spirit, and their spirit is their language; it is difficult to imagine any
two things more identical.”
To modern anthropologists, these statements are unacceptable in their forms. But this
shows people's concern about how language reflects the culture of the society it is spoken in
and the thought processes of those who speak it. This chapter will look at some relationships
between language, thought, and culture, particularly the so-called Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
(SWH). It argues that:
1. the language one speaks determines how one perceives the world, and,
2. the distinctions encoded in each language are all different from one another.

Objectives
At the end of the chapter, students can:
1. demonstrate understanding of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis;
2. describe linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity; and,
3. appreciate the inseparable relationship of language, thought, and
culture.

Lesson 1: Linguistic Determinism and Linguistic Relativity

What to Expect?
At the end of the lesson, students can:
1. explain the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis;
2. describe linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity, and
3. provide an extended version of the hypothesis.

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 Pre-discussion
Watch the YouTube video, “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis,” by Larry Loh (See
references). What is this hypothesis all about?
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Lesson Outline
In the first half of the 20th century, language was seen as important in
shaping our perception of reality. This was mostly due to Edward Sapir and
Benjamin Whorf, who said that language predetermines what we see in the
world. In other words, language filters reality - we see the real world only in the
categories of our language.
This has become known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It starts from the premise that
everyone needs to make sense of the world. We impose order on the world to make sense of
it, and language is the principal tool available to us for organizing the world (Mills, 2000).
Sapir and Whorf set forth a double principle: linguistic determinism, namely, that the way
one thinks is determined by the language one speaks, and linguistic relativity, that differences
among languages must, therefore, be reflected in the differences in the world views of their
speakers. Linguistic Determinism argues that language may determine, affect, predispose, or
influence cultural thought and perception.
Sapir suggested that the lexicon and syntax of a language may compel a speaker to
attend to certain environmental features and pay less attention to others. For example, when
using pronouns in English, we must know something about the sex of the referent we are talking
about, as we have to choose among “he,” “she,” or “it” when speaking.

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 Thus, another way of looking at the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis needs to be addressed: the
cognitive or mental schema that underlies the categories and, ultimately, the language itself
(Stanlaw, Adachi & Salzmann, 2017). This extended version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,
then, might look something like this:
1. culture, society, and environment interact to produce physical-
psychological reality;
2. people handle this reality through mental models and cultural schemas;
3. these mental models and cultural schemas are instrumental in the creation
of categories;
4. languages obtain these categories from the above models and schemas;
5. therefore, languages have categories.
6. these categories are encoded in linguistic features; and,
7. these linguistic features affect cognition and behavior.
The reason we pay attention to an object’s sex when speaking English, therefore, is not
because we use the word “he,” “she,” or “it” when choosing a pronoun, but because we know
ahead of time that we must be making a gender-based pronoun choice and that we will be
looking at the sex of things as we speak. It means we must have a mental construct or schema
for how reality works—in this case, a world where gender is so important that it is encoded in
our particular language.
Noting that speakers of a particular language might neglect objects or events that
speakers of another language normally take into account, John Carroll also restated the
hypothesis of linguistic relativity and determinism in a more modest but more acceptable form:
“Insofar as languages differ in the ways they encode objective experience, language users tend
to sort out and distinguish experiences differently according to the categories pro- vided by
their respective languages. These cognitions will tend to have certain effects on behavior”
(Carroll, in Stanlaw, Adachi & Salzmann, 2017).

Summary
The implications of Whorf’s ideas concerning linguistic relativity and
determinism are quite serious. If the worldview and behavior of a people are
significantly affected by the structure of the language they speak, and if
languages differ in structure, then cross-cultural communication and
understanding are likely to be noticeably impaired, if not impossible, to achieve.

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 This is why Whorf’s ideas received much attention and stimulated much
discussion for several years after World War II.

Assessment/Enrichment
True or False: Encircle your answer.
Yes No 1. Every language in the world basically has the same set of color terms.

Yes No 2. There are no areas in the world where societies have very similar
cultures but speak completely unrelated languages.

Yes No 3. In anthropology, the term society always refers to a homogeneous

Yes No 4. According to Edward Sapir, easily analyzable words (for example,

Yes No 5. There is very little correlation between the vocabulary of a language

Yes No 6. Gender is not a distinctive component of cousin terminology in

References
Jourdan, C., & Tuite, K. (Eds.). (2006). Language, culture, and society: Key
topics in linguistic anthropology (Vol. 23). Cambridge University Press.
http://196.189.45.87/bitstream/123456789/29011/1/18%20pdf.pdf

Loh, L. (2012). Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis [Video File]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAy-

Mills, J. (2000). Linguistic relativity and linguistic determinism: Idiom in 20th century
Cornish. Online Submission. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED540362)

Salzmann, Z., Stanlaw, J., & Adachi, N. (2014). Language, culture, and society: An introduction to
linguistic anthropology. Westview Press.
https://dspace.ttu.edu.vn/bitstream/handle/123456789/3457/

Stanlaw, J., Adachi, N. & Salzmann, Z. (2017). Language, culture, and society: An introduction to
linguistic anthropology. New York: Routledge. https://b-
ok.asia/s/language%20culture%20society

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