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Defining ‘Culture’ Linguistic Relativity Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Defining ‘Culture’ Linguistic Relativity Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Representation Who has the authority to select what is representative of a given culture/ outsider/ insider Culture is ‘heterogeneous’ 1/ social (members differ in age, gender, experience…) 2/ historical (changes over time)

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Defining ‘Culture’ Linguistic Relativity Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

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  1. Defining ‘Culture’Linguistic RelativitySapir-Whorf Hypothesis

  2. Representation • Who has the authority to select what is representative of a given culture/ outsider/ insider • Culture is ‘heterogeneous’ • 1/ social (members differ in age, gender, experience…) • 2/ historical (changes over time) • 3/ imaginings • Definition of ‘culture’: • Membership in a discourse community that shares a common social space, history, and common imaginings/ a common system of standards for perceiving, believing, and acting.

  3. Linguistic Relativity • ‘Languages affect the thought processes of their users’ • European scholars (18 c.) • interest in diversity of human languages/ oriental • revival of nationalism – interest in national languages and their unique cultural characteristics • Idea: ppl speak differently bc they think differently/ they think differently bc of their language. • Language Thought • American scholars • Edward Sapir / Benjamin Lee Whorf/ American Indian languages/ ‘interdependence of language & thought’ • Clips (5)

  4. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis • ‘Language influences thought & behavior’ • e.g. gasoline ‘empty’ sign (behave- called) • e.g. difference of ‘time’ perception between English (linear) & Hopi speakers (duration)/ difficulty in understanding each other/ clip (6) • Believed: there will always be an ‘untranslatable’ culture (inaccessibility of cultures) • Controversy/ rejected by scientific community/ scientific discoveries reliant on their languages/ leads to prejudice & racism/ always possible to translate/ ppl don’t understand each other bc they don’t share the same way of interpreting events not bc of the inability to translate.

  5. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis • 50 yrs/ Interest revived/ social science • Strong version: • Language determinism: ‘language determines the way we think’ • In other words:‘Language shapes thought’/ not accepted by scholars

  6. Weak version: • ‘Language users tend to sort out experiences differently according to the semantic categories provided by their languages (codes)’ • In other words: ‘Language is part of thought’/ accepted nowadays. • e.g. supporting weak version/ sorting shapes & colors (blue rope/ yellow rope/ blue stick) (Navajo children – American children) • e.g. color names in English & Russian (red/ blue)

  7. Therefore: • We are not prisoners of the cultural meanings offered to us by our languages, but can enrich them in our pragmatic interactions with other language users. (supporting the weak version)

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