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Well, you could claim that Sapir-Whorf never actually believed in hard
linguistic determinism ("god gave us speech, and speech created
thought"), and therefore as Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is shamed, it is
really just the kooks who misunderstood who are being humiliated. I
agree that Sapir and Whorf themselves were never hard linguistic
determinists. That's fine with me.
But in any case, it was honestly quite embarrassing. The whole idea was
very poorly tested and relied on anecdotes about other "primitive"
cultures to support itself. One of the key points they depend on was
this assertion that Chinese language does not have counterfactuals,
which is patently false if they had ever talked to a single Chinese
person. Many studies have been done which show, for example, natural
ability of Chinese language to handle counterfactuals. And piece by
piece the anecdotes have been dismantled.
Another angle on this is to look at the counter to linguistic
determinism. The counter is to see language as being purely a
manifestation of thought. There are compelling arguments that
grammatical patterns and logical structures exist in the brain at the
deepest levels. I personally think that linguistic determinism is
shockingly pessimistic. Yes, we use symbols to assist us in thinking
and communicating, but our symbols will *always* be a poor approximation
of the powerful and crisp capabilities of our brains. Our brains can do
things that will *never* be able to be represented in language, and to
shackle all thinking by language is diabolical.
In any case, I do not deny that language as a tool can impact thought
proficiency, but as I said I believe that this case has been *vastly*
overstated. It is by no means the high-order bit.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: jcowan@reutershealth.com [mailto:jcowan@reutershealth.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 10:44 AM
> To: Joshua Allen
> Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: Re: [xml-dev] The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint
>
> Joshua Allen scripsit:
>
> > Not to spiral too quickly off-topic, but I wanted to point out that
> > Sapir-Whorf has been thoroughly discredited,
>
> By no means. Certain strong forms have been discredited, but no SW
> supporter
> ever believed them anyway.
>
> > and although it [...] lends an air of mysterious
> > authority to persons like Chomsky;
>
> Which persons like Chomsky did you have in mind? Not Noam himself,
who
> seems to hold (incorrectly IMO) that UG is incompatible with SW.
>
> --
> You let them out again, Old Man Willow! John Cowan
> What you be a-thinking of? You should not be waking!
> jcowan@reutershealth.com
> Eat earth! Dig deep! Drink water! Go to sleep!
> www.reutershealth.com
> Bombadil is talking.
> www.ccil.org/~cowan
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