Linguistic Relativism and Determinism
by Dr. Spencer B. S. III
The dictionary defines sociolinguistics as “the study of language and linguistic behavior as influenced by social and cultural factors,” and a study of the field makes this point very apparent. Whether chosen consciously or unconsciously, the language used by a speaker identifies them as a certain age, gender, class, ethnicity, and more. In general, how one speaks is a mark for their stance in society, and language plays a pivotal role in allowing a speaker to function as part of a certain group. In this sense, language is determined by society, and a change in social structure will most likely result in the creation of a new dialect. This aspect of sociolinguistics has led linguists to contemplate the antithetical theory: What affect, if any, does language have on how a speaker of a language views the world?
Societies are separated from one another by how its members interact with each other as well as the shared beliefs. On a more refined level, different characteristics such as age and class act to separate members from one another, creating smaller sociological groups within the broader society. These social constructs are marked by a variety of traits, including residence, ethnicity, appearance, and perhaps most importantly, language. The means by which a sentence is formulated and the context in which that sentence is created provides a picture of whom a person is by how those means relate to the general beliefs of the society. That is, how a sentence is structured reveals the relationship between the speaker and listener as well as the speaker and society. For example, the speech of a high school student would most likely differ when that student is conversing with his or her friends compared to his or her teachers. The variation in speech patterns exposes the student’s understanding of social hierarchy and the student’s place within that hierarchy. From this, one can see one case of how the social context determines the language.
While context greatly influences the selection of idiolect from situation to situation, it does little to manipulate the underlying grammar of the language. Context decides the vocabulary and syntax, but not the more basic rules of speech. It is here that the beliefs and ideals of a society influence language in a more subtle way. Ranges of linguistic items evolve based on the society in which the language exists. A society who does not have clear distinctions between past, present and future, for instance, will have this belief appear in its language through the language’s verb tenses and syntax. The connection between a society’s underlying beliefs and ideals and a language’s structure becomes especially important when considering whether the relation is only one way. How society influences language has long been the interest of both sociologists and linguists alike. That different classes, ethnicities, genders, and ages all speak differently is evidence not of a discrepancy in cognitive ability (except, perhaps, in the age category), but of society’s affect on language development. Studies of various languages show that a society’s beliefs materialize in that society’s language in both the grammar and vocabulary. An example of this is found in contrasting “Standard Average European” (English, French, German, etc.) to the Hopi language of Arizona. European languages are, like the societies, structured and temporal. Concepts and events exist in a specific time, whether it is past, present, or future. On the other hand, Hopi is a more continuous society, its beliefs blurring the line between different temporal positions. The Hopi see the world as a set of objects and events that are indistinct, and this is displayed in their language through the general absence of verb forms distinguishing actions based on when they occur. As sociolinguists went further in their studies of society’s effect on language, it became more and more apparent that language might influence society as much as society influences it. To be more precise, “when a speaker of Hopi or Standard Average European says something, he or she must make certain observations about how the world is structured because of the structure each speaks” (Wardhaugh, 223).
When sociolinguists discuss the topic of language’s effect on society, through the shaping of worldviews, they are discussing what is popularly known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Named after its originators, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, the hypothesis has garnered decades of argument and research. Although Sapir, and moreover Whorf, brought the idea to the forefront of linguistic debate, they were not the first to present the idea of language’s influence on the speaker’s perception. In the early 1800s, German linguists, most notably Wilhelm von Humboldt, theorized that conception is impossible without language, making society more a construct of language and communication than vice versa. In 1827, Humboldt presented a paper in which he said, “Language is by no means a mere means of communication, but the mirror of the mind and of the world view of the speaker (Humboldt, 19).”
Despite the fact that Humboldt was in contact with American scholars, his theories did not fully enter American academia until Sapir’s teacher, Franz Boas, brought the ideas with him after he immigrated to America from Germany. Humboldt had great influence on Boas’ work, but Boas was wary of linguistic relativity and it was not until “late in his life [that] Boas gave a very cautious endorsement of ideas similar to those adopted by Whorf (Lucy, 81).” Even so, he was one of the first to believe that language reflected culture and society. Sapir furthered this argument by noting that languages were systematic, formally complete systems. A language as a whole, not as merely a particular word, acted to express a mode of thought or behavior. This led Sapir to believe in his later years that language did not mirror ideals and beliefs, but had a deeper, more mutual interaction with the speaker’s perceptions. In 1928, at a meeting held in New York City, Sapir stated that, “We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation (Sapir, 210).” Whorf, a student of Sapir, still further refined this contention by studying exactly how thought might influence language. He argued that the grammar of each language acted to not only voice ideas but to shape them as well. It is this argument that has been garnered a revitalized interest in the past decade and has been put under the most scrutiny (Koerner, 1-16).The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis can be split into two main ideas, one of linguistic relativity and one of linguistic determinism. The first states that language influences a person’s interpretation of the world, and the latter states that more than influencing, language directly determines perception. In the seventy or so years since Sapir and Whorf began to write about the hypothesis, there has been an abundance of evidence for and against the two ideas. Although no definite proof has been shown to say that the hypothesis is true or false, scientists generally believe that language plays at least a small role in the generation of a worldview.
The largest problem with the debate of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis lies in the extreme difficulty in conducting objective research to test the validity of the idea. If the hypothesis is true, no study done could ever be completely objective. Any study would inevitably involve the use of language, and will thus result in a perpetuation of the worldview of the researcher. The hypothesis requires a measure of human thought, and such a measure is nearly, if not completely, impossible without the influence of language.
Still, opponents of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis dispute its theorizer’s basic assumption that one culture is to be attributed to one language. J. J. Gumperz’s introduction in Rethinking Linguistic Relativity points out that the correlations between language, culture, and society do not support this assumption (Hickmann 418). Instead, culture can vary dramatically even within speakers of the same languages. It becomes difficult to prove the influence of language when differences exist from speaker to speaker within languages.
Studies of color perception used to hold the largest collection of evidence against the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Past studies illustrated that speakers of languages that only contained a few words to distinguish colors could separate hues as easily as those speakers whose language contained a larger vocabulary for distinguishing colors. However, a 2002 study conducted by Emre Ozgen and Ian Davies supports the theory of linguistic relativity. Ozgen and Davies were able to show that when taught new color boundaries, subjects could more easily distinguish between colors on either side of the new boundary than between colors within a single color category. Moreover, the subjects began to unlearn pre-existing boundaries. The study shows that languages without certain color boundaries would limit its speakers’ ability to show categorical perception across that boundary. Still, the neurological mechanisms of sight and color distinction are not completely known and many argue that differences in perception are a result of neurology and not linguistic relativity (Benson 28).
Although most of Whorf’s discussions of linguistic relativity and determinism involve a language’s grammatical structures, much evidence points to the power of vocabulary to affect a person’s ability to recognize concepts. The simplest of example of this can be found in an essay by Friedrich Waismann:
Noticing a fact may be likened to seeing a face in a cloud, or a figure in an arrangement of dots, or suddenly becoming aware of the solution of a picture puzzle: one views a complex of elements as one reads a sort of unity into it, etc. Language supplies us with means of comprehending and categorizing; and different languages categorize differently… I would not dream for a moment of saying that I invent them; I might, however be unable to perceive them if I had not certain molds of comprehension ready at hand. These forms I borrow from language.
What Waismann is saying is that language does not create the truth, but instead contributes to the formation of that truth. That is, five birds set in a row will always be in truth five birds, but someone whose language does not contain the necessary linguistic tools to describe numbers beyond two may see conceptually five birds in the same way they would see six birds (Waismann, 140-141).
Perhaps the most convincing derivative of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is Daniel Slobin’s theory of “thinking for speaking”. Slobin argues that labeling mental and linguistic processes as “thought” and “language” invokes the assumption that such processes are objects that can be discovered. He proposes instead that “thought” and “language” be replaced with “thinking” and “speaking”, and more importantly “thinking for speaking”, a grammatical change that emphasizes the relationship between the two structures. “Thinking for speaking” then becomes a tool for perspective change as well as the name of a linguistic theory (Slobin).
Slobin’s theory deals with how a person selects and organizes information in discourse. During a lecture at the University of California at Berkeley, Slobin talked of cognitive scientists’ initial belief that people are born with the innate understanding of various organizational structures. However, linguistic studies have shown that the organization of various concepts such as “in”, “around”, and “above” is a result of the language of the speaker and not of intrinsic cognitive knowledge (Slobin). Slobin says that, “experiences are filtered through language onto verbalized events [… which are] constructed on-line in the process of speaking” (Hickmann 412). Language does not limit cognition, but instead molds thought into the form that is most easily expressed with the linguistic tools available to the speaker. Subsequently, speakers of differing languages as well as those with disparate comprehension of the language (adults and children, for example) will channel information differently (Slobin). The theory of “thinking for speaking” falls into the category of theories that support the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. If semantic representation is thought of as existing on atomic and molecular levels, the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis would be located on the atomic level while the weak version would be located on the molecular level. Gumperz and Levinson purport that Whorfian and anti-Whorfian ideals are entirely compatible on the molecular level, which concerns, as Hickmann states, “the particular ways in which languages combine atomic primitives to make up other meanings (lexical meanings and meanings of associated with morphosyntactic distinctions).” Psycholinguist Steven Pinker, a staunch challenger of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, best illustrated this point by saying “one's language does determine how one must conceptualize reality when one has to talk about it.” More specifically, Whorf stated in his seminal “Science and Linguistics” paper that,
We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds–and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way–an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees. (Whorf)
The underlying grammatical structure of a language and the other linguistic tools proficiency in that language offers the speaker may not shape a speaker’s world-view, but most likely categorizes experiences so they are readily available for use by the speaker’s language.
As stated before, linguists have spent years attempting to prove or disprove the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and though none have provided conclusive evidence, many have conducted studies whose results support, at least, the theory of linguistic relativity. Most recently, an experiment carried out by Peter Gordon in 2004 suggests that language may shape human thought.
Gordon, a psychologist at Columbia University, conducted a variety of tests involving a Brazilian tribe whose language does not define numbers above two. The Pirahã use a language that contains the words one and two, but use a single word for many to describe any number above two. A series of tests was given to the men (women and children were too shy to participate) to test how they dealt with the concept of numbers beyond one and two. Gordon’s findings show that the Pirahã could easily deal with tasks involving one, two, or three objects, but had difficulty when faced with higher numbers (Biever).
One of the most telling tests was one that dealt with the duplication of lines on a piece of paper. Gordon drew single and multiple lines on a piece of paper and asked the Pirahã members to copy those lines. For one, two, and three lines, the Pirahã had no difficulty completing the task. As the number of lines increased, the discrepancy between the number of lines and number of copied lines also increased. For instance, many only reproduced three lines when shown four (Holden). Besides that test, Gordon also asked the Pirahã to identify a box after being shown the box a few moments earlier. In addition, Gordon placed a piece of candy inside the box as an incentive to choose correctly. He would then show the original box along with another box that differed only by the number of fish pictured on the lid. The Pirahã performed the same on this task as they did on the others. Even with the candy reward, the men had trouble distinguishing the two boxes when more than three fish were pictured on the original (Holden).
This study suggests that humans do not possess an innate number sense, but have one that is influenced by language. It is agreed by experts that the results of Gordon’s experiment provide the strongest support yet for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Gordon agrees with the implications, but does not claim his findings hold for all thought. “There are certainly things that we can think about that we cannot talk about. But for numbers I have shown that a limitation in language affects cognition,” he says (Holden).
Even with the increase of empirical evidence supporting the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, there has been no research into the long-term sociological effects of linguistic relativity. For this, only thought experiments are available, and the literary world holds perhaps the greatest thought experiment of linguistic relativity; George Orwell’s dystopian world of Nineteen Eighty-Four. In this book, Orwell describes a nation in which the populace is equalized and controlled actively by a national police force, and passively by a constrictive language called Newspeak. The book’s appendix contains a description of Newspeak as “designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought,” and that “this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum” (Orwell 374). Although Orwell’s Newspeak is an entirely fictional construct, it provides a good example of a linguistically deterministic language. In addition, while Nineteen Eighty-Four speaks only little of the specific consequences of Newspeak in the story, but the book’s appendix provides a practical theory of linguistic determinism.An important aspect of linguistic relativity is the role of implied meaning in discourse. By organizing thoughts into structures that can be communicated by a speaker and understood by others, language predisposes the speaker to have certain assumptions based on the grammatical structure of the language. For instance, research shows that speakers of gender-based languages (such as German and Spanish) describe gender-specific words with adjectives that have been socially labeled as “feminine” or “masculine”. For example, participants in a study were asked to describe a bridge, a word that is feminine in German and masculine in Spanish. German speakers described the bridge as “beautiful”, “fragile”, and “pretty”. Spanish speakers, on the other hand, described the bridge as “dangerous”, “strong”, and “towering”. Of course, words can have any number of varying meaning, whether subconsciously as shown or consciously through different contextual definitions. Orwell’s Newspeak was devised to “give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a [speaker] could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods” (Orwell 373). The constrictive vocabulary and grammatical structure sought to not only provide a medium for expression, but to eliminate the possibility for any other expression as well.
Newspeak is referred to as a linguistically deterministic language, but it is more fittingly labeled as linguistically relative. Orwell’s admittance that Newspeak does not alter what is perceived but how it is organized and translated in the mind of the speaker displays the language as one forcing relativity, not determinism. Moreover, Nineteen Eighty-Four provides a provoking thought experiment that supports Slobin’s theory of “thinking for speaking”, even though Orwell wrote his novel decades before Slobin. However, the categorization of Newspeak, and even “thinking for speaking”, as relative and not deterministic is a technical one, and the effects, if actual, would result in seeming determinism.
A person growing up with Newspeak as his sole language would no more know that equal had once had the secondary meaning of ‘politically equal', or that free had once meant 'intellectually free', than for instance, a person who had never heard of chess would be aware of the secondary meanings attaching to queen and rook. There would be many crimes and errors which it would be beyond his power to commit, simply because they were nameless and therefore unimaginable. (Orwell 383)
Although there is no dramatic evidence supporting the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the ramifications of the idea and its years of research can be seen in modern society. Linguistic relativity easily explains the implementation of “political correctness”, a trend that can be likened to a weak Newspeak. In recent years, many civil rights groups have worked towards the removal of any words that have been deemed offensive, whether because of racist, sexist, or other implication. Their politically correct counterparts of foreperson and chairperson have replaced words such as foreman and chairman, respectively. In addition, to remove underlying negative connotations, words such as cripple have gone out of use, with new phrases such as person with a disability being placed into common usage (Holmes 320). In essence, the politically correct movement seeks to expunge offensive words and phrases from common use in an attempt to lessen the likelihood of outdated or offensive views when considering certain topics.
The study of linguistic relativity and determinism has come a long way since its inception from Sapir, Whorf, and their predecessors. Every year, new evidence either supporting or opposing the theory is spotlighted. The rival camps seem to be at a standstill, but future research will hopefully provide definite correlations between cognition and language. Study of the subject has already garnered attention in the literary world as well as in society in general, resulting in popular works of fiction and social movements. Whether the theory proposed by Sapir and Whorf is proven true or shown to be entirely false, the effects of the decades-old controversy will be long lasting. Either way, an explicit proof of the reality of relativity and its sociological consequences could be years away.
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