Search for “Indo-Europeans” and Whorfian Linguistic Determinism

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" But while we all know when drawing on common sense that thoughts

can't be pushed around by words, many people hold the opposite belief

when they intellectualize. The idea that the language people speak

controls how they think—is a recurring theme in intellectual life.

It was popular among twentieth-century behaviorist, who wanted to

replace airy-fairy notions like " beliefs " with concrete responses

like words, whether spoken in public or muttered silently. In the

form of the Whorfian or Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (named after the

linguist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf), it was a

staple of courses on language through the early 1970's by which time

it had penetrated the popular consciousness as well. (While writing

this book, I (Pinker) had to stop telling people that it was

about " language and thought " because they all assumed it was about

how language SHAPED thought—the only relation between the two that

occurred to them.). The cognitive evolution in psychology, which

made the study of pure thought possible, and a number of studies

showing meager effects of language on concepts, appeared to kill the

hypothesis by the 1990s', and I gave it an obituary in my book The

Language Instinct (Pinker 2007, p. 124, parentheses and emphasis in

the original).

" The nagging problem with Linguistic Determinism is that the many

ways in which language might be related to thought tend to get

blurred together, and banal observations are often sexed up as

radical discoveries (Pinker 2007, p. 125). "

" As it happens the words for snow in languages like Yupik and Intuit

are probably no more numerous than in English (it depends on how you

count), but that hardly matters. The idea that Eskimos pay more

attention to varieties of snow BECAUSE THEY HAVE MORE WORDS FOR IT is

so topsy-turvy (can you think of ANY OTHER REASON why Eskimos might

pay attention to snow?) that it's hard to believe it would be taken

seriously were it not for the feeling of cleverness it affords at

having transcended common sense. Not only does a Whorfian

explanation of Eskimo words for snow reverse cause and effect, but it

exaggerates the depth of cognitive difference between the peoples

involved in the first place. As Newsweek noted, even if an Eskimo

typically does pay more attention to varieties of snow, all it would

take is a shovelful of slush to get a non-Eskimo to notice the

differences (Pinker 2007, pp. 125-126, parentheses and emphasis in

the original). "

" The stock of words in a language reflects the kinds of things its

speakers deal with in their lives and hence think about. This, of

course is a non-Whorfian interpretation of the Eskimo-snow factoid.

The Whorfian interpretation is a classic example of the fallacy of

confusing correlation with causation. In the case of varieties of

snow and words for snow, not only did the snow come first, but when

people change their attention to snow, they change their words as the

result. That's how meteorologists, skiers, and New Englanders coin

new expressions for the stuff, whether in circumlocutions (wet snow,

sticky snow) or in neologisms (hard pack, powder, dusting,

flurries). Presumably it didn't happen the other way around—that

vocabulary show-offs coined new words for snow, then took up skiing

or weather forecasting because they were intrigued by their own

coinages (Pinker 2007, p. 127). "

Comment: Whorfian Determinism is very much alive in Indo-European

linguistics when they try to locate the original " Indo-European "

speakers based on reconstructed words for horse, wheel and the

chariot. People pay more attention to weather forecasts these days

because they don't want their cars to get stuck in snow; not because

the English language itself originated in snow capped mountains! The

misleading and racially charged corollary of Whorfianism is that

Eskimos are too dumb to notice water in its various states of

precipitation. So they have a different word for each one.

Pinker, Steven (2007). The stuff of thought: language as a window

into human nature. London, England: Viking Penguin. ISBN: 978-0-

670-06327-7

M. Kelkar