Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

In the discussion about the relationship between language and culture, one of the essential
issues is that between language and thought. Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, through
their studies of American Indian languages, proclaimed that the structure of the language
people habitually use influences the ways they think and behave. That is to say, different
languages offer people different ways of expressing the world around, they think and speak
differently.
Sapir and Whorf believe that language filters people's perception and the way they
categorize experiences. This interdependence of language and thought is now known as SapirWhorf hypothesis (SWH). Since its formulation, the hypothesis was subject to fierce
controversy and scorn. Until recently with the revival interest in this issue, it regains people's
attention.
The hypothesis is now interpreted mainly in two different ways: a strong version and a
weak one. While the strong version believes that the language patterns determine people's
thinking and behaviour, the weak one holds that the former influence the later. So far, many
researches and experiments conducted in various disciplines provide support to the weak
version. The studies have shed new light on our understanding of the hypothesis: people tend
to sort out and distinguish experiences differently according to the semantic categories
provided by their different codes.
Here is an example. English-speaking culture teaches its people to name what is practical,
useful and important. In a general sense, the important things take on specific names while the
less important things have general names that must be modified through additional words to
become specific. A good illustration of this point is the word snow in Eskimo and English.

The Eskimos have countless words for snow. For them snow is extremely important and so
crucial to life that each of its various forms and conditions is named. In English-speaking
cultures, snow is far less important and the simple word snow usually suffices the needs.
When some needs become more specific, however, longer phrases can be made up to meet
these needs: "corn snow", "fine powder snow", and "drifting snow". Once again this proves
that there is a connection between the words a culture selects and the ideas and things of that
culture. In short, each culture presents to its members, either consciously or subconsciously
through words, the ideas and concepts that culture transmits from generation to generation.
To conclude this section, the study of the linguistic relativity or SWH has shed two
important insights:
(1) There is nowadays recognition that language, as code, reflects cultural preoccupations
and constrains the way people think.
(2) More than in Whorf's days, however, we recognize how important context is in
complementing the meanings encoded in the language.