..
.
.
| The
work of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf about seventy years ago was based
on a mistake; they incorrectly thought the Hopi language had no tenses
(past, present, future). |
.
| Most
importantly, they suggested that our common sense notion that words were
simply labels we attach to things
–– was
wrong. Instead, each language has embedded in it ways of looking
at the world. |
.
| In
English, we have no precise word equivalent to the German "Weltshautung,"
or the French "prise de conscience," meaning that language has perception
built into it. |
.
| Much
was made of the Innu language where there is no precise equivalent to the
single English word "snow." |
.
| Because
snow is such an important part of survival of people of the north, they
had nineteen different words that varied according to the condition of
snow. |
.
| At
first, some argued that this was only a matter of what sizes and shapes
of boxes are the words we use in which to put experiences. |
.
| In
English, however, we have no single word meaning the chemical, di-hydrogen
oxide (H2O). |
.
| If
you want to object and say, "But we have the word 'water,'" let me point
out that the word "water" does not apply to conditions of H2O when it is
frozen, crystallized or vaporized, for which we have other words (ice,
snow, steam, fog, clouds, humidity). |
.
| From
the time we are born, we are inundated with hundreds of thousands of bits
of information per second, as sound, smell, touch, temperature and sight. |
.
| They
are many and random. In themselves, they have no meanings. |
.
| It
is only through our interaction with other human beings that we begin to
apply meaning, and we start to put a range of different information bits
into the same categories, words. |
.
| Those
words, or categories of large numbers of information bits, differ from
language to language. |
.
| When
you observe something, eg your sociology instructor in class, you do not
obtain exactly the same set of information bits as your neighbouring student. |
.
| Two
things (including students) can not occupy the same space at the same time. |
.
| Yet
you would usually agree that you have both seen the same thing at that
time. |
.
| A
lot of work has been done with the language of colours, because we can
use colour charts from culture to culture, then draw comparable maps of
the boundaries between colours. |
.
| English,
for example, has two separate words for red and a mixture of red and white
(pink) but does not have two separate words for blue and a mixture
of blue and white. |
.
| In
my own work among the Kwawu of West
Africa, I found that there were three basic colours, black, white and red,
which were at the base of the traditional cosmology, and all other colours
were combinations or colours "of" concrete things. |
.
| The
word "yellow," for example, would be translated into "the colour
of chicken fat" (which is reminiscent of the Yiddish word "schmaltz"). |
.
| Some
observers have attributed to language a factor in the winning of the space
race by the Soviets in 1957, putting Sputnik, the first human made satellite,
into earth orbit. |
.
| The
Russian language has a discontinuous tense, where something continues,
stops, then continues again. |
.
| That,
in turn, allowed Russian mathematicians to more easily work with the concept
of something divided by zero, derivatives. |
.
| This,
in turn, allowed Russian mathematics and calculus to get far ahead of the
Americans and Western Europeans. |
.
| That
advanced mathematics, in turn, was a factor in the Soviets putting Sputnik
up. |
.
| It
does not matter if you "believe" this or not. |
.
| Your
task is not to believe in something, but to learn the hypothesis and be
able to explain it in some ordered and understandable manner. |
.
| Your
beliefs, opinions and feelings are for class and email discussions, not
for exams. |
.
| There
are lots of debates around the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and, if you study
sociolinguistics, you will discover many of them. |
.
| At
first (eg in this introductory course), however, you need to learn what
the hypothesis is. |
.
| The
languages we learn have profound impacts on how we see the world around
us. |
.
| To
some sociolinguists, this means that language determines reality. |
.
| The
implications of this are immense. |
.
| Our
entire way of life is based on language, although (like strange
fish knowing water) most of that linguistic base is invisible to us. |
.
| While
language is a tool, and belongs to the technological dimension of culture,
it appears to be one of our earliest. |
.
| It
allows us to go far beyond our primate cousins in terms of complexity and
connections with other families, other communities, other nations and world
wide, to develop a world wide economy (and think about that next time you
eat an orange or drink a cup of coffee). |
.
| It
is an essential requirement for international and other co-operation, even
if it is not a guarantee for it. |
.
.
| It
means learning another way of dividing up perceptions into different schemes
of categories, learning a different culture and therefore reality, and
deepens our depth of the nature of culture. |
.
| Like
having binocular vision gives us 3-D depth of vision, so does having fluency
in more than one language give a "3-D" depth of cultural awareness. |
.
| In
the 1930s, the author, George Orwell, warned us against "Newspeak" where
words and phrases were given new meanings and uses them support of political
oppression (a tyrannical regime is called "big brother" in his book). |
.
| Today
we have a profession called "spin doctoring," no matter what it
might be called, where there is deliberate and conscious alteration and
manipulation of traditional meanings so as to interpret unpleasant news
in ways that are favourable to a party in power. |
.
| Here
we have, as mentioned in class by a student, a new term like "collateral
damage" as a soft and guiltless phrase to rename the senseless deaths and
injuries to innocent women, children and others standing nearby a military
action. |
.
| The
pen is, indeed, mightier than the sword. |
.
| The
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is not accepted by all social scientists. |
.
.......
Footnotes:
1. For some of my writing
on learning a language, see "An Aural Method to Learn an Oral Language,"
which you can get by clicking on www.scn.org/cmp/aural.htm
2. Today's tool, which
serves the purpose once served by the pen, is the computer. |
. |
