Language

“LANGUAGE
Content
AND  What is language?
 Issues regarding language and
THOUGHT” thought
 Theories
a) Vygotsky Theory
b) Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
c) Chomsky's Theory
d) Fodor and Pinker Theory
 Criticism
• Language comparison: Parsing, Semantic
considerations, and utilization.
• Language and thought.
• Child Language acquisition
• Psycholinguistics
• Linguistic Determinism
• Transformational Grammar
 What is language?

 There is no fully accepted definition of Raymond Williams R.A. Hall

language. Language is an expressive
representation system that allows the
speaker to communicate ideas,
concepts, beliefs, and thoughts. It The institutions
A definition of language
communicates the speaker’s communicate and
is always, implicitly or
interact with each other
intentions. It is also a tool for behavior explicitly, a definition of
by means of habitually
control and social coordination. human beings in the
used oral-auditory
 Reading, writing, speaking, and some world.
arbitrary symbols.
gesture systems are all forms of
language. Most linguists agree that
there are some 6000 languages that
are actually used by people in
communication.
Issues Regarding
Language and Thought
 Thought and language are the same

 Thought is dependent on language

 Language is dependent on thought

 Language of Thought
Theories
Language of thought theories generally fall into two categories. Following are they;

First viewpoint Second viewpoint

Language of
Language of thought is not
thought is Innate innate

Supported By:
Supported By: • Vygotsky
• Noam • Sapir-Whorf
Chomsky • Jean -Piaget
• B.f. Skinner
 Chomsky’s Theory– Language and Mind
 Chomsky theorized that children are born with some form of a
language-acquisition device that enables them to analyze the
speech they hear and derive the rules of that language.
 Chomsky believes that when we study the deep structures of the
languages we see that there is very little differentiation in their
fundamental mechanisms and principles.
 Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, unlike
any communication systems in other animals. He disagrees with
the argument that human language is simply a more complex
form of communication found in the animal world.
 He believes children instinctively learn language without
any formal instruction. He also believes children have a
natural need to use language, and that in the absence of
formal language children will develop a system of
communication to meet their needs.
 He has observed that all children make the same type of
language errors, regardless of the language they are taught.
 Jean –Piaget Theory of Language and Thought
 Emergentism teaches that learning and using language come from some basic principles that are not
language specific. Language seems to be a gift that is human specific. No other creature on the
planet has the capability.
 Jean Piaget’s cognitive theory of language learning states that learning starts with adaptation. One
can achieve that adaptation through assimilation and accommodation.

 Assimilation is the way that a person takes in information and makes sense of it. This can include
changing the information to make it fit. Accommodation and assimilation go hand in hand. When
one accommodates, he or she is using assimilation to change his or her thought patterns.

 Piaget also showed that classification was also important to learning language. Certain words and
sounds needed to be grouped together to better understand and use them in speech.

 Classification needs to be taken a step further into sets and subsets. This can lead to a better
understanding and file system for the very complex structure of language.
 B.F. Skinner Theory of Language and Thought
 One of the earliest scientific explanations of language acquisition was provided by B.F. Skinner
(1957). As one of the pioneers of Behaviorism, he accounted for language development by means of
environmental influence in which the child uses association, imitation, and reinforcement.

 Skinner argued that children learn language based on behaviorist reinforcement principles by
associating words with meanings. Correct imitations and utterances are positively reinforced when
the child realizes the communicative value of words and phrases.

 For example, when the child says ‘milk’ and the mother will smile and give her some as a result, the
child will find this outcome rewarding, enhancing the child's language development (Ambridge &
Lieven, 2011).

 However, Skinner's account was soon heavily criticized by Noam Chomsky, the world's most famous
linguist to date. In the spirit of cognitive revolution in the 1950's, Chomsky argued that children will
never acquire the tools needed for processing an infinite number of sentences if the language
acquisition mechanism was dependent on language input alone.
 Vygotsky Theory– Thinking and Speaking

 Vygotsky studied language and thought as a connected

phenomenon and discovered how words and thought are
interrelated and both lead to ever expanding knowledge.
Vygotsky was of the school that thought is determined by
language, by the linguistic tools of thought and by the socio-
cultural experiences of the child.

 Cognitive skills and patterns of thinking are not primarily

determined by innate factors, but are the products of the
activities practiced in the social institutions of the culture in
which the individual grows up.

 Egocentric, or private, speech is a transitional phase in child

development. It is a precursor to verbal thought. Two issues
are involved in the merging of thought and language. First,
mental functions have social origins and second, children use
language for some time before they make the switch from
external to internal speech.
 Sapir and Whorf Theory
 Whorf believed that the structure of language plays a role in determining worldview. He based his
hypothesis on the study of the treatment of time and space in Hopi because they don’t speak English
that’s why they see the world differently.
 According to the hypothesis of each language represent a way of perceiving, analyzing, and acting in the
world. Sapir and Whorf studied the relationship between language, thought, and culture. They both
agreed that it is our culture that determines our language, which in turn determines the way that we
categorize our thoughts about the world and our experiences in it.
linguists have found two main ideas.

linguistic Determinism linguistic Relativism states that

states that the language language merely influences
you speak determines the your thoughts about the real
world. For Whorf, our
way that you will interpret
understanding of the world is
the world around you. one that has been structured by
Thought is determined by the linguistic systems at work in
language. our minds.
 Criticism or Drawbacks of All Four
Theories
“Vygotsky’s Theory”
“Chomsky’s Theory”
Not all aspects of the
His research does not identify
theory are supported.
areas of the brain or a genetic
ZPD is vague and little
basis that enables humans’
description of
innate ability for language.
developmental stages.

CRITICIS
M “Sapir-Whorf
“B.F. Skinner Theory”
Theory” “Jean- Piaget” linguistic determination of
Learning cannot Vygotsky claims that cognition has been widely
account for the rapid Piaget did not take cultural refuted due to its
rate at which children differences in absolutism. In its weaker
acquire language. consideration with his form, however, the
There can be an infinite theories on language proposal that language
number of sentences in learning. He also believed influences thinking has
a language. All these that some learning tasks frequently been discussed
sentences cannot be were too much for a child and studied.
learned by imitation. and assistance was needed
to successfully learn.
 “LINGUISTIC
DETERMINISM”

CONTENT
1) Definition
2) Explanation
3) Examples
4) Hypothesis
5) Difference
BY: AIMEN ALI 6) Criticism
1425 7) Relationship
with Psychology
 DEFINITION
 It is the idea that language and its
structures limit and determine human
knowledge or thought, as well as
thought processes such as
categorization, memory, and
perception.

 The term implies that people who

speak different languages as their
mother tongues have different thought
processes.
 EXPLANATION
 Language may determine our thinking
patterns, the way we view and think
about the world. Linguistic Determinism
is also called “strong determinism”.

 A moderate version is that thinking may

be influenced rather than unavoidably
determined by language: it is a two-way
process, so that the kind of language we
use is also influenced by the way we see
the world.
 EXAMPLES
 The language of the Pirahã people in Brazil. They
can count numbers up to only two, and any higher
than that, their accuracy diminished. They just
counted it as many.

 In English language you always give directions

according to your body. When pointing to a
landmark, you say, it’s over ‘there’. The entrance to
the subway is ‘behind’ me. While some aboriginal
groups like the Kuuk Thaayorre (one of language
spoken in Australia) have a hard time distinguishing
between left and right, and instead express
themselves according to the direction of the sun.
They never say, ‘my right foot is on fire’, but ‘my
foot on the northwest is on fire’.
 WHO INTRODUCED THE CONCEPT?
 linguistic determinism. the hypothesis, most
commonly associated with the U.S.
linguists Edward Sapir (1884–1939)
and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941), that the
semantic structure of a particular language
determines the structure of mental categories
among its speakers.

 Because languages differ in how they refer to

basic categories and dimensions, such as time,
space, and duration, native speakers of these
languages are assumed to show corresponding
differences in their ways of thinking.
 SAPIR- WHORF HYPOTHESIS

EDWARD BENJAMIN WHORF

SAPIR Language shapes the way we think, and

determines what we think about .

No two languages are ever
sufficiently similar to be
considered as representing the
same social reality.
HYPOTHESIS
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis revolves around the
idea that language has power and can control
how you see the world. Language is our guide to
reality, structuring our thoughts. It provides
framework through which we make sense of the
world.
 SAPR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DETERMINISM
AND RELATIVITY

LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY

 Language determines thought  Language influences thinking

 Different languages impose  Linguistic influences between cultures are
different conceptions of reality associated with cultural differences and
thinking
 CRITISISM OF LINGUISTIC
DETERMINISM
 Whorf only stated that people who speak
differently, think differently. He didn’t speak
the Hopi language to know how they
measured time. As 20 years later, Ekkehart
Malotki found no such evidence to the
contrary, and stated the Hopi have an
advanced vocabulary related to time.
 If linguistic determinism restricts language
within the boundaries, then how did poems
and stories from different countries get
accurately translated. Although some may
get lost in translation, people have a
general concept of right and wrong.
LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM AND COGNITIVE
PSYCHOLOGY
 Cognitive psychology discusses the ways
according to which people can identify,
interpret, and comprehend the
elements of language. From this point,
the language processing is complex, and
it is closely connected with the
man's cognition. Cognitive
psychology studies the aspects of
human cognition
 Language of thought theories rely on
the belief that mental representation
has linguistic structure. Thoughts are
"sentences in the head", meaning they
take place within a mental language.
 Language
comparison
Parsing, semantic
considerations, and
utilization.

Submitted by amna mazhar

Sap id 1555
 Semantic
parsing consideratio
n

Language
comparison

utilization
 1. Parsing
• Parsing is a grammatical exercise that which involve splitting a text
into its component parts of speech with an explanation of the form,
function, and syntactic relationship of each part so that the text can be
understood.
• The term "parsing" comes from the Latin pars for "part (of speech)."
 Traditional Methods of Parsing

• Traditionally, parsing is done by taking a sentence and breaking it down into

different parts of speech. The words are placed into distinct grammatical
categories, and then the grammatical relationships between the words are
identified, allowing the reader to interpret the sentence. For example, The
man opened the door.
• To parse this sentence, we first classify each word by its part of speech: the
(article), man (noun), opened (verb), the (article), door (noun).
• Traditional methods of parsing may or may not include sentence diagrams.
Such visual aids are sometimes helpful when the sentences being analyzed
are especially complex.
 Discourse Analysis
• Unlike simple parsing, discourse analysis refers to a broader field of study
concerned with the social and psychological aspects of language. Those who
perform discourse analysis are interested in, among other topics, genres of language
(those with certain set conventions within different fields) and the relationships
between language and social behavior, politics, and memory. In this way, discourse
analysis goes far beyond the scope of traditional parsing, which is limited to that
individual texts.
 2. Semantics
• •Semantics is the area of linguistics that analyzes the meaning of words, phrases
and sentences in language.
• •The study of semantics includes the study of how meaning is constructed,
interpreted, clarified, obscured, illustrated, simplified negotiated, contradicted and
paraphrased.
 Conceptual and Associative Meaning
• Conceptual meaning refers to the linguist function of the word, that provides its meaning.
• E.g. Money
• • Money: It’s an object (or series of them) that allow people to buy goods
• Associative meaning deals with the concepts that we add to the original word
• E.g. Money
• • Money: Rich, job, to work, tired, coin, poor, etc.
 3. Language utilization
• Meanings of words
• Words have two types of meanings: denotative and connotative
• • Denotative meaning: precise, literal and objective
• • Connotative meaning: more variable, figurative and subjective
 Using language vividly

• • Choose concrete words: words that refer to tangible things (like carrot, pencil, nose, versus
words like philosophy, science, humility - these are abstract words)
• • Eliminate clutter: clutter happens when you use more words than necessary to express an
idea Using
• Imagery: creating word "pictures" that allow the listener to "see" what you're describing
• •Concrete words: enhance clarity, as well as being the key to effective imagery. They call up
mental impressions of sights, sounds, touch, smell and taste.
• •Simile: an explicit comparison between things that are essentially different, yet, have
something in common. It always has the words "like" or "as."
 Conti..
Parallelism: the similar arrangement of a pair or series of related words, phrases or
sentences.
• • Repetition: reiterating the same word or set of words at the beginning or end of
successive clauses or sentences.
• • Alliteration: repetition of the initial consonant sound of close or adjoining
words.
• • Antithesis: the association of contrasting ideas, usually in parallel structure.
Language and
thought
Submitted by: amna mazhar

Sap id 1555
 Psycholinguistics
• Psycholinguistics or psychology of
language is the study of the
interrelation between linguistic
factors and psychological aspects.
The field is concerned with
psychological and neurobiological
factors that enable humans to acquire,
use, comprehend and produce
language.
 language and thought:

 The main use of language is to transfer thoughts from one mind, to another
mind.
 The bits of linguistic information that enter into one person's mind, from
another, cause people to entertain a new thought with profound effects on his
world knowledge, inferencing, and subsequent behavior.
 Thought comes first, while language is an expression.
 There are certain limitations among language, and humans cannot express all
that they think.
 Scientific hypothesis
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
the hypothesis in linguistics has two
versions
 The first is linguistic determinism (the
strong version)
 The second is called linguistic
relativity (the weak version)
 Linguistic determinism:
• • It
is the idea that language and its structures limit and determine human
knowledge or thought.
• • Whorf states that language does not only voice ideas but also shapes them.
• • The child's knowledge is socially constructed I interaction with adults, so child
logic develops only with the growth of child's social speech.
 Linguistic relativity:

 Speakers of different languages - perceive the world differently, resulting

cognitive systems are different.
 Accordingly the mental universe of an English speaker may be different
from that of a Chinese speaker because they happen to speak different
languages.
 Language influence thought.
 Linguistics differences between cultures are associated with culture
differences in thinking.
 Views of some theorists
• • Classical theorists like Plato and
Aristotle argued
• that the categories of thoughts
determine the
• categories of language.
• • Plato: Thought and language were
identical.
• • Aristotle: Mankind could not have
the same
• languages (because all don't think the
same).
 Language of thought - Mentalese
• Thinking is done in the form of a silent monologue.
• According to LOTH, thought and thinking are done in a mental language a kind of
'language' (not a verbal language) that Pinker calls 'Mentalese', On this model, the
mind functions like a computer, manipulating simple symbols to produce complex
results.
• Mental computations in a symbolic system physically realized in the brain.
CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
 Hajra khan (1536)
Language Acquisition

 The term language acquisition refers to

the development of language in
children.
 Language Acquisition is meant process
whereby children achieve a fluent
control of their native language.
 The ability to get and understand the
language is inherited genetically but
the particular language that children
speak is culturally and environmentally
transmitted to them.
 Language
learning vs
language
acquisition
 1. Pre-talking
stage / Cooing
(0-6 months)

6. Later 2. Babbling stage

multiword stage (6-8 months)
(30+months

Stages in First Language

Acquisition

5. Telegraphic 3. Holophrastic
stage (24-30 stage (9-18
months) months)
4. The two-word
stage (18-24
months)
 1. Pre
production (six
weeks or
longer)
6. Advanced 2. Early
fluency (4-10 production (six
years) months)

Second language
acquisition stages

5. Intermediate
fluency
3. Speech
emergence

4. Beginning
fluency
Child language acquisition
theories
oNature vs nurture
nurture
Language is learnt through environment.
Bf skinner; operant conditioning i.e. learning
occurs through rewards and punishment for
behavior hence language is learnt through
imitation.
Nature
Chomsky theory
 Noam Chomsky believes that we are born
with a predisposition to learn language.
human beings are pre-wired to learn
language.
innate knowledge of certain principles that
guide them in developing the grammar of their
language.
 SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY

Bruner

• language acquisition support

system.
- more knowledgeable others
- interactions with adults and
environment.
Vygotsky

•• Zone
They slowlydevelopment
of proximal become(particular
more task
can be almost performed independently but
independent
not in their
quite there yet. some help is thinking
needed in and
acquire
order new
to perform theskills and knowledge
task successfully.)
-scaffolding
and the support gradually fades
away.
 Cognitive theory
• The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget
placed acquisition of language
within the context of a child's
mental or cognitive development.
• If a child is able to arrange sticks in
order of size. Piaget suggested that a
child would be able to learn and use
comparative adjectives like "bigger"
or "smaller“ while who had not yet
reached this stage would not be
able to.
psycholinguistic
s
Hajra khan (1536)
scientific scientific
study of study of
the mind language
and and its
behavior structure
• Psycholinguistics is also known as
psychology of language.
• study of the psychological and
neurobiological factors that enable humans
to acquire, use and understand language.
• how the psyche responds to words and
languages; certain words represent traumatic
events for some people.
• primarily concerned with the ways in which
language is represented and processed in
the brain.
Psycholinguistics is interdisciplinary in nature and
is studied by people in a variety of fields
 • Developmental psycholinguistics
studies infants' and children's ability to
learn language.
• Cognitive psychology
explores how the brain processes and
retains information. (psycholinguistics; ‘how the
brain processes language’ is examined).
• Linguistics
analyzing language form, language
meaning and language in context.
Within psycholinguistics, research focuses on how
the brain processes and understands these sounds.
 Language processing
What happens in human mind when we speak.
• Speech production
process by which thoughts are translated into speech.
• Comprehension
ability to derive meaning from written and oral language
 Language acquisition
• How do we learn to speak; acquiring mother tongue
• the ability to be aware of language and to understand it.
• Psycholinguists specifically look at the theories behind language
acquisition and how the mind aids in a person’s ability to gain
language.
 neurolinguistics

Language disorders
Concerned with human brain. Central nervous system struggle to get the
Broca's area is meaning of what
responsible for others are saying…
producing language. It Some people struggle
controls with both using and
motor functions involv understanding languag
ed with speech e…
production. may occur in children
Wernicke's area is the with other
region of the brain that developmental
is important for problems, autism
language development. spectrum disorder,
Speech Recognition and
Voice on Set Time

Maryam (1404)
 Speech
Recognition

• Speech Recognition
(SR) is the ability to translate a
dictation or spoken word to text.
• Also known as
“automatic speech recognition”
(ASR), “computer speech
recognition”, or “speech to text”
(STT)
Components of
speech
 Form
Phonology Syntax
• A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound. • Deals with rules about the way that
• It is the study of speech sounds and how words go together to form sentences.
they change depending on certain • The arrangement of words and phrases
situations or placements in syllables, to create well-formed sentences in a
words, and sentences. language.
• Example: HELPS and CRABS • Examples include word choice,
matching number and tense, and
placing words and phrases in the right
order.
Morphology
• A morphemes is the smallest unit of
meaning.
• Morphology is the study of how
things are put together, like the make-
up of animals and plants, or the
branch of linguistics that studies the
structure of words.
• In language morphology, you might
study how prefixes and suffixes
added to a word change its meaning.
 • Semantics refers to the way language conveys meaning. It is made up of
morphemes, the smallest units of meaning that may be combined together to
make up words.
Content • Semantics or meaning is achieved by not only the choice of words, but the tone,
order and stressed placed on words. Facial expressions and gestures also play a
part.
• For Example: paper + s = papers
 Use

• Pragmatics is the contextualized purposes spoken language serves.

• Usually this component is taken for granted until teachers work with children with
autism spectrum disorder, where pragmatic skills are not developed.
• Pragmatic rules are our ability to speak appropriately in different situations, for
example, at home and in the workplace.
• Young children need to learn how to speak in the school or day-care environment,
where the teacher often asks questions.
• Learning the pragmatics is just as important as learning the other components since
people ae perceived and judged based on both what they say and when.
 Voice on Set Time

It is a feature of the production of stop consonants. It is

defined as the length of time that passes between the release of a stop
consonant and the onset of voicing, the vibration of the vocal folds,
or, according to other authors, periodicity.
 • The phonological component involves the rules for
combining sounds, it is the sound structure of speech.
• Phonology is how speech sounds are organized and
affect one another in pronunciation
• .It deals with the system and pattern of sounds which
exist within a particular language.
• The study of phonology of English looks at the
vowels, consonants and suprasegmentally features of
Phonology the language ( stress, intonation).
• When we talk about vowels and consonants, within
the discipline of phonology, we are referring to the
different sounds we make when speaking, and NOT
the vowel and consonant letters we refer to when
talking about spelling.
 Pitch in Speech

• The relative highness or lowness of a tone as perceived

by the ear, which depends on the number of vibrations
per second produced by the vocal cords.
• Pitch is the main acoustic correlate of tone and
intonation
• When the vocal cords are stretched, the pitch of voice
increases. ... These adjustments allow speakers to
use pitch changes to achieve certain meaningful effects
in speech. The most important of all factors for
the pitch of the voice is the vibration of vocal cords.
When frequency of vibration increases, so does
the pitch.
Linguistic
Determinism
Presented by
Syeda Zainab Naqvi
 Linguistic determinism is the
idea that language and its
structures limit and determine
human knowledge or thought,
as well as thought processes
such as categorization, memory,
and perception. The term
implies that people who speak
different languages as their
mother tongues have different
thought processes.

69
Language
shapes
the way
we think,
and see
world 70
 Few Questions

 Do you think language and its

structure shapes our world
view?
 Do you think language has
those worlds which are
important to us,and does not
have which are least important
to us?
 Do you think speaker of
different languages see the
world differently?

71
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
 Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is the theory
that individual’s thoughts and actions are
determined by the languages that
individual speak

 Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis types

1. Language determination
( strong version given by
Edward Sapir).
2. Language Relativism ( weak
version given by Benjamin
Whorf).

72
 Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

 Language determination  Language Relativism

( strong version given by Edward Sapir). (weak version given by Benjamin Whorf).

 The strong version of  Weaker version says that

hypothesis states that all language only somewhat
human thoughts and actions shapes our thinking and
are bound by restraints of behavior.
language.  Structure does not determine
 And is generally less accepted but influence speaker’s world
than the weaker version. view.

73
 Can the theory of language determinism
be accepted?

 If the theory of language

determinism is right the cross-
culture communication is
impossible.
 The translation toward foreign
language is impossible.
 Foreign language learning never
occur.

74
 Conclusion

The extreme version of idea, that all thoughts is constrained

by language, has been disproved.
The opposite extreme that language does not influence
thoughts at all is also widely considered to be false.

75
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April Hansson

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77
LANGUAGE AND
THOUGHT
Prepared by: Rida Batool (1467)
Language
A language is a structured system
of communication.
Language, in a broader sense, is
the method of communication
that involves the use of –
particularly human – languages.

.
 Thought

• Thought encompasses an "aim-

oriented flow of ideas and
associations that can lead to a
reality-oriented conclusion".
• an idea or opinion produced by
thinking, or occurring suddenly in
the mind.
 Relation between language and thought

• The principal formulations concerning the

relationship of language and thought, as follows:
(1) Speech production is fundamental for thought;
(2) Language is a fundamental basis of thought;
(3) The language system provides specifics of one’s
nature; and
(4) The language system provides specifics of one’s
culture.
• Perhaps because we typically think in words,
language and thought seem completely intertwined.
 Classical theorists
• like Plato and Aristotle argued that the categories of thought determine
the categories of language. To them, language is only the outward form
or expression of thought.
Plato: Thought and language were identical.
Aristotle: Mankind could not have the same languages
(because all don’t think the same)
• Another view was expressed by the behaviorist J. B. Watson, an
American psychologist and the founder of Behaviorism. According to
him, thought is language. He believed hat thought is sub-vocal speech,
that is , when we “think aloud,” it is called speech; when we “speak
covertly,” it is called thinking.
• A less radical position is that language determines thought. According to
this view, the categories of thought are determined by linguistic
categories. They think that language completely determines cognitive
categories.
The notion of language and
thought and their relation
subsequently got divided into two
groups mainly:
1. Whether thoughts are formed
in advance of the words that
we utter.
2. Or whether ideas are
formed in terms of the words
themselves.
CLOAK THEORY
1) Language reflects reality
2) People have thoughts first, then put
them into words.
3) Words record what is already there. MOULD THEORY
4) All humans think the same way, but • Language determines our thought:
we use different words to label what • The vocabulary and grammar
we think (structure) of a language determine
the way we view the world
• (“worlds shaped by words”).
 The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis

• The hypothesis in linguistics has two versions:

• The first is called linguistic determinism (the strong version)
• The second part is called linguistic relativity (the weak version)

o Edward Sapir (1884-1939) was a leading figure in twentieth century linguistics and anthropology.
o Benjamin Whorf (1897), began studying Linguistics at Yale University in 1931 because he was concerned
about the conflict between science and religion. Interested in the American Indians, he began to study the
Hopi language while at Yale University under the supervision of Edward Sapir.
• the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis states that
there are certain thoughts of an individual
in one language that cannot be
understood by those who live in another
language and that the way people think is
strongly affected by their native languages.
• It revolves around the idea that language
has power and can control how you see
the world.
• Language is a guide reality, structuring
thoughts. It provides the framework
through which you make sense of the
world.
 Linguistic Determinism & Linguistic Relativism

LINGUISTICE DETERMINISM
• Linguistic determinism:
• It is the idea that language and its structures limit
and determine human knowledge or thought.
• Whorf states that language does not only voice
ideas but also shapes them.
• [The child’s knowledge is socially constructed in
interaction with adults, so child logic develops
only with the growth of child’s social speech.]
• Speakers of different languages - perceive the world
LINGUISTIC RELATIVISM
differently.
- resulting cognitive systems are different.

• Accordingly the mental universe of an English

speaker may be different from that of a
Chinese/French speaker because they happen
to speak different languages.
• Their thought processes about any given notion
may differ due to nationality they belong to.
• Take rainbow as an example: perception of
colors come from color-naming influence of
the language.
• All languages do not divide the colors into
the same number of basic categories. Hence
a speaker of a language will not describe the
rainbow in the same way as English speakers
do.
• In Swedish -many different names for
colours (for example: blue, red, white, light
grey, purple, and cyan).
• Tiv (language of New Guinea) -there are only
two words for colour: light and dark.
• Yet both language speakers could distinguish
colours in similar manner
THANK YOU