jagardner@watmath.UUCP (Jim Gardner) (09/23/85)
[...] It is my understanding that SOME of Sapir's observations among the Trobriand islanders and SOME of Whorf's observations among the Navaho have been declared invalid. At the same time, their hypothesis (that the language you use to frame your thoughts dictates what thoughts you can have and what perceptions you can make) is not entirely discredited. From my reading in linguistics, it seems that the general opinion is that the hypothesis is true to some extent. It does not tell the whole story, but it is an important principle that is occasionally applicable. The classic test (which has NOT been discredited) is colour perception among primitives and non-primitives. If you have a word for a particular colour, you can remember that colour longer. For example, experimenters have shown various colours to subjects (even North Americans), waited a while, then asked the subjects to pick out the colours they were shown. If a person had a ready name for the colour, his/her accuracy was much better. For example, if you use the word "peach" for a colour that is sort of yellowy-orange, you have a better chance of recognizing the colour than if you just say "yellowy-orange". This is somewhat related to selective inattention. You tend to ignore things unless you have been explicitly taught to pay attention. This is one reason why people have accents. In Japanese and Chinese, for example, there is no counterpart to our "L" and "R" sounds; instead, there is a single sound that is halfway between the two. Japanese and Chinese speakers honestly can't tell the difference between "L" and "R" (until they have been trained in English) -- their minds ignore the differences in the sounds because they haven't been taught to pay attention. The same thing happens the other way around, of course. I once spent a frustrating few minutes trying to learn to pronounce a single Chinese word, trying to imitate a Chinese speaker, thinking I had done so perfectly, and being told that I was way off. Odd how such things work. (By the way, much of Delaney's work is coloured by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It is very explicit in Babel-17, but is explained in clearer detail in Tales of Neveryon. I'm not sure this will sell people on the theory, considering the response to Dhalgren...) Jim Gardner, University of Waterloo
crm@duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin) (09/26/85)
On the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis ... in Japanese, there is only one word for both blue and green (or at least was circa 1550 -- I picked this up doing armor research): *aoi*. I always wondered: did that mean if you showed a Japanese person a blue something and a green something, the Japanese person couldn't tell them apart? It would certainly be hard to say "point to the blue one ... point to the green one." On the other hand, they certainly could perceive the difference (one would think) because the physical structures are the same. -- Charlie Martin (...mcnc!duke!crm)
franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) (09/30/85)
[Not food] Also see _The_Languages_of_Pao_ by Jack Vance, if you can find a copy. It deals with this idea (that language affects thought) directly. Frank Adams ihpn4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka Multimate International 52 Oakland Ave North E. Hartford, CT 06108