Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis
USAMA ZAHEER
SECTION 8A (MORNING)
ROLL NO. FM21502
What is it?
In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four,
language restricted the way in which people thought.
The rulers of the state deliberately used “Newspeak,”
the official language of Oceania, so that the people
thought what they were required to think. Orwell’s
idea is a version of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis explores the
relationship between language and thought.
Proposed by linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee
Whorf.
Suggests that the structure of a language affects how
its speakers perceive and think about the world.
Key Idea:
Language is not just a way to express thoughts; it
shapes those thoughts.
The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis comprises two related
ideas.
Linguistic determinism; is the idea that the form and
characteristics of our language determine the way in
which we think, remember, and perceive.
Linguistic relativity; is the idea that as different
languages map onto the world in different ways,
different languages will generate different cognitive
structures.
Three Versions:
Miller and McNeill (1969) distinguished between three
versions of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.
In the strong version; language determines
thought.
People cannot think outside the boundaries of their
language.
Example: If a language has no future tense, its
speakers may think less about the future.
Three Versions:
In a weaker version; language affects only
perception.
Language influences thought and decision-making, but
doesn’t fully control it.
Example: Different color words in languages influence
how people perceive colors.
In the weakest version; language differences affect
processing on certain tasks where linguistic encoding is
important.
Language reflects cultural priorities and values.
Different cultures express things based on what’s
important to them.
Example: Inuit languages having many words for snow.
Anthropological Evidence:
The anthropological evidence concerns the inter-
translatability of languages.
Whorf argued that each language imposes its own
“world view” on its speakers.
Analyzed Native American Indian languages such as
Hopi, Nootka, Apache, and Aztec.
Example: Hopi contains no words or grammatical
constructions for “time”, Hopi speakers must have a
different conception of time from us.
However, Whorf’s data are now considered highly
unreliable.
Vocabulary Differentiation:
The way in which different languages have different
vocabularies has been used to support the Whorf
hypothesis.
Culture which have more than one word for a concept
will have a different world view than cultures which have
only one word for a concept.
Example: Eskimo (or Inuit) language has four different
words for snow, where as English only has one.
Although vocabulary differences are unlikely to have any
significant effects on perception.
We can learn new words though this does not apparently
change the quality of people’s perception of the world.
Continue…
Color Perception: Some languages have more or fewer
terms for colors, which can influence how speakers
distinguish and categorize them.
Kinship Terms: Languages like Hindi have distinct
words for older vs. younger siblings, showing more
nuanced family roles
Grammatical differences between Languages:
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis suggests that not only
vocabulary, but also grammar, shapes how speakers
of different languages perceive and understand the
world. These grammatical differences can subtly
influence thought patterns, attention, and worldview.
Continue…
Class of verbs concerning handling used in Navaho depends on the
shape and rigidity of the object being handled.
Example: Stick vs rope.
Many languages, like Spanish or German, assign grammatical
gender to nouns.
Though the effects of gender on thought were highly constrained.
