# Feminist linguistics (and Sapir-Whorf)



## sokol

*Split from **this thread**.*
*Frank, moderator EHL*



BenVitale said:


> Language is a social construct. Who decided of their features? Who made the rules?
> Men did them.
> So the point of views of the feminists are valid. I think.


 
To be fair to BenVitale - he is correct insofar as there *are *feminist linguists claiming that.
I really don't want to get involved into a discussion about gender in society and gender in language, but it seems I can't keep myself from doing so.
In my opinion the connection made by those linguists is hugely overdone if not wrong in many cases, but it is difficult to discuss with feminist linguists - I should know, I've done my share of it during my times at university.

Personally I think that feminist linguism is NOT about ancient languages at all but about our modern world - only about that one, our modern society, and not at all about the gender of words in ancient language.

Just read the English and German Wiki article (it is also available in Finnish, French, Hebrew, Norwegian and Swedish).
Feminist linguistics is about making the female gender more 'visible' in today's language; so gender neutrality in my opinion is kind of a political statement - it is definitely not about the historical development, or insofar as it is only to justify modern feminist linguistic positions.

The political statement as such of course is correct, very much so - this is a free world (or at least supposed to be), and political statements should not be suppressed.
But it is another thing to force other people to use the political statement of a group. And this is basically how I do feel about gender neutrality.

The main point is that you don't make this world a better world if you use 'frau' instead of 'man' (in German, as is done very often by feminists): *language does not change reality* - this is a misconception, a misunderstanding of the Sapir-Whorf-hypothesis.
In fact it is the other way round: *reality changes language!*

So 'non-sexist' language is not 'acting' as a means of change but only acting as a political statement. As such it may have an impact on reality - but this is a political impact, not a linguistic one!
I can assure you that 'non-sexist' language already has changed the linguistic reality here in Austria, politicians now already feel obliged to use 'non-sexist' terms. (Instead of 'Liebe Bürger' they now say 'Liebe Bürgerinnen und Bürger', and some feminists - both male and female - also say 'Liebe Bürgerinnen' even though this use is rather rare.)

There even have come about hypercorrect forms which never existed in language: in Austria 'die Kunde' = feminine means the customer (in German this is male, the use is specific Austrian; well: you could also say 'die Kundschaft' = feminine = meaning the same and also possible in Germany). This seems to come out of use, instead you can hear already 'die Kundinnen und Kunden'. 'Kundinnen' *never *existed, it is a phantasy product of 'non-sexist' language.
So strangely even a feminine word is probably in the process of becoming substituted with a feminine/masculine doublette ... very strange indeed.

What should be 'historical' or 'correct' (as in 'political correct') here, one may ask.
Certainly this change of speaking habits didn't change anything at all except that humorists now have a new chapter of our modern society to make fun off. The advances that were made in Austria towards a more equal society, giving women more rights in their lives, were completely different ones: for example the one declaring that child benifits ultimately will have to be paid to the mother only (!) and not, as it was before, to the one having an income (which, mostly, was the father).
This changed realities - very much so, and to the better. Now woman who are at home and have no income of their own at least have the child benifit, on their personal account: this gives them power.
This changed more than the tiniest change of speaking habits. 


One last thing still added to this topic: it is rather easy to use 'non-sexist' language in English because there isn't much of a gender category left in English.

It is quite difficult in German already; and if you have to read a text which is written completely in 'non-sexist' language this really is quite a challenge (I did, and got a headache).

But it is nearly impossible in Slavic languages. Therefore, furthermore, this concept of 'non-sexist' language also is one fit only for languages like English. 'Non-sexist' language thus is culutral imperialism towards languages where it doesn't work quite as well; it is not a very democratic concept at all - linguistically (that is, it is putting languages with grammatical gender at a disadvantage).


One last remark to BenVitale: you are of course not free to use my opinions and hypothesis as your own in your piece of work, this would be plagiarism. But you may refer to this website if your teachers think that a weblink is an appropriate source (many don't).


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## Schrodinger's_Cat

Thanks to all of you. I welcome suggestions and criticisms alike.

Sokol, don't worry about plagiarism. I won't do it on my essay. On this forum I borrowed ideas and concerns from feminists and other writers as a starting point/springboard for the essay. My philosophy teacher encouraged me to find out what psychoanalysts have contributed to this question.

This topic is not really a philosophical question but a matter of social sciences.

What about the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis? Is it true?

How much do words influence our perceptions?
Does a change in our thought result in a change of our words?
Do you agree that the way we speak does change or influence the way we act?

There are words in English that describe a profession or a skill containing the word "man" such as "Adman", "Aidman", "Airmanship", "Alsman", "Backcourtman", "Bagman" etc. that don't have a feminine words. I could be wrong. Maybe there are.

Words such as Businessman, businesswoman, salesman, saleswoman, congressman, congresswoman etc. Did they contribute to an increase of women in these professions? Is there any evidence to support that?


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## Athaulf

BenVitale said:


> Sokol, don't worry about plagiarism. I won't do it on my essay. On this forum I borrowed ideas and concerns from feminists and other writers as a starting point/springboard for the essay. My philosophy teacher encouraged me to find out what psychoanalysts have contributed to this question.


 
More or less, nothing useful. As far as I know, their philosophical ventures into the matters of language have never produced anything more sensible than their drivel about mathematics and other exact sciences (was Lacan the one whose reflections on general topology led him to conclude that the torus is somehow neurotic? ). 

By the way, for a great parody of psychoanalytic crackpottery, I recommend reading Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum", which features a character named "Dr. Wagner", who seems to be a thinly veiled parody of Lacan. 



> This topic is not really a philosophical question but a matter of social sciences.
> 
> What about the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis? Is it true?


"Sapir–Whorf hypothesis" is a name for a whole bunch of different statements proposed by a host of authors, some of which make a little bit of sense, but most of which don't. To get a precise answer, you'll have to define what exactly you mean by "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis". 



> How much do words influence our perceptions?


What exactly do you mean by "words influenc[ing] our perceptions"? Can you give a concrete example of what you have in mind? Without further clarification, your question is hopelessly vague. 



> Does a change in our thought result in a change of our words?


Well, duh. Whenever you speak, you'll say one thing or another depending on what you're thinking at the moment. 



> Do you agree that the way we speak does change or influence the way we act?


Again, how exactly? Are you asking whether forcing people to change the way they speak will also have a side-effect of changing the way they act? If that's what you have in mind, I'd say no. Google for "euphemism treadmill" for some good illustrations.



> There are words in English that describe a profession or a skill containing the word "man" such as "Adman", "Aidman", "Airmanship", "Alsman", "Backcourtman", "Bagman" etc. that don't have a feminine words. I could be wrong. Maybe there are.


Most of these words you mention are used very rarely nowadays. 

As for those ending in _-manship_, such as e.g. _craftsmanship_ or _statesmanship_, they are actually perfectly gender-neutral, even though they contain the "problematic" morpheme _man_. This suffix appeared a long time ago, back when _man_ meant "human being" in general -- and for hundreds of years,  all until recently, English authors had no problem talking about, for example, the "statesmanship" of Cleopatra, Elisabeth I, Catherine the Great, or Isabel of Spain. I think this is sufficient to demonstrate the silliness of the modern crusade against such words, especially since some of them, like _statesmanship_, don't have any good synonyms in English.



> Words such as Businessman, businesswoman, salesman, saleswoman, congressman, congresswoman etc. Did they contribute to an increase of women in these professions? Is there any evidence to support that?


I don't think you'll find any valid evidence for such a proposition. Generally, I find the idea that society can be influenced in any relevant way by linguistic dictates rather silly.


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> The main point is that you don't make this world a better world if you use 'frau' instead of 'man' (in German, as is done very often by feminists)



Wait a second... Are you actually saying that they're using _*frau_ instead of _man_, the impersonal pronoun?! The one that is used in, say, _"hier darf man nicht rauchen"_?!  Please tell me I'm misunderstanding something here!



> But it is nearly impossible in Slavic languages. Therefore, furthermore, this concept of 'non-sexist' language also is one fit only for languages like English. 'Non-sexist' language thus is culutral imperialism towards languages where it doesn't work quite as well; it is not a very democratic concept at all - linguistically (that is, it is putting languages with grammatical gender at a disadvantage).


I think it's a really tragicomic fact that the whole "gender-neutral language" business started in the English-speaking world and spread from there. Several unfortunate circumstances have combined to make this movement so infectious despite its fundamental silliness. 

First, as you mentioned, it's relatively easy to push such policies in English, since it has only faint vestiges of grammatical gender nowadays, so their campaigns have been very successful in the Anglosphere. Second, it's ironic that out of all modern advanced countries, the English-speaking ones have the lowest rates of knowledge of foreign languages among their native population, which also applies to their academics and other intellectuals. With very few exceptions, they are at best somewhat aware of the way genders work in Romance languages, but they have zero notion of the far more complicated way they work in, say, Slavic or Baltic ones. Therefore, the Anglophone proponents of "sexist language" theories feel competent enough to spread their messianic message to the whole world without even realizing how ridiculous their proposals would be if applied even to German, let alone Russian or Croatian and just how arrogantly moralistic and patronizing conclusions are reached when their theories are applied to such languages. 

And ultimately, since the Anglosphere is the economic and intellectual epicenter of the modern world (regardless of whether we're wiling to admit that fact), in every country there are people eager to revere and emulate every trend that happens to be popular in the politics and academia of the English-speaking countries. Ironically, the sort of people whose politics are most eagerly anti-American are usually at the same time extremely eager to copy and follow all the silliest trends coming from the U.S. academia. In Croatia, I once experienced a true pinnacle of irony when I saw a radical leftist pamphlet written in hideously butchered Croatian that resulted from their attempt to make it gender neutral -- and as you might guess, these people were, among other things, calling their audience to rebel against the supposed U.S. imperialism.


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## Flaminius

BenVitale said:


> Language is a social construct.


The fact that we use language for expressing complicated ideas necessary for various kinds of complicated interactions suggests that society is a linguistic construct.    

Man was a gregarious species from the beginning but I think the development of human language (as opposed to less generative animal languages) was indispensable for the development of society with all its human traits such as division of labour, hierarchy, data storage and transmitting them across generations, and the sense of future.  Grammatical genders may or may not have existed in the earliest languages, but I doubt language itself was the cause or one of the causes for a single specific social trait such as gender inequality.  Not being able to specify the connection to the current topic, I still think it is important to note that language has been an evolutionary advantage for the species of man but the advantage of gender/sex inequality is not known.  Anyone is welcome to comment and correct me who knows something about evolutionary theories about the early humans.  

Regarding one-on-one correlations between linguistic and social phenomena, the test case given by *Frank06* in the other thread says everything that needs to be said: it is highly doubtful that a linguistic characteristic is directly responsible for (or influenced by) a social characteristic.  Accounting for a phenomenon in one level by a similar one in a level one step down on the basicness scale (and less complex than the explained level) is a handy way of education but I doubt assuming _a priori_ such a relation can further scientific understanding.  In fact, in most of the disciplines I have taken a glimpse of, reductionism seems to be hated like plague.  In social science it was feminists who did away with a traditional reductionist view by discoverying a gap between biological sexes and social norms dictating the differences between men and women (genders).

Illustration of gaps between levels:
Molecular water particles are attracted to each other or to any other molecules by intermolecular force that is determined by the geometry of constituent atoms.  In a macro world such as the one where we live our daily life, we sense the intermolecular force as "wet".  There is no doubt that our sensation wet is underwritten by atomic geometry, but it is far insufficient to understand all about being wet.

Edit:
Enjoy, therefore, the gap between linguistic and related disciplines as well as emergence between them!


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## sokol

Athaulf said:


> Wait a second... Are you actually saying that they're using _*frau_ instead of _man_, the impersonal pronoun?! The one that is used in, say, _"hier darf man nicht rauchen"_?!  Please tell me I'm misunderstanding something here!


Why, certainly they do!
It is then "hier darf frau nicht rauchen", but of course (at the time being) this is only used by feminists, here in Austria. But *gender-neutral *terms ("LehrerInnen" with capital "I" to state that it is both meant for male and female teachers) already *are *used in some contexts in Austria even by those who aren't declared feminists, e. g. in new textbooks for school use you *have *to use them because else the textbooks won't be approved for school use.
This however is the situation in *Austria*. (The latter does not hold for Germany, while the use of "frau" instead of "man" also is done by German feminists.)



Athaulf said:


> Therefore, the Anglophone proponents of "sexist language" theories feel competent enough to spread their messianic message to the whole world without even realizing how ridiculous their proposals would be if applied even to German, let alone Russian or Croatian and just how arrogantly moralistic and patronizing conclusions are reached when their theories are applied to such languages.


I agree with you here, and I too would very much appreciate if language were left alone, but alas ...



Athaulf said:


> In Croatia, I once experienced a true pinnacle of irony when I saw a radical leftist pamphlet written in hideously butchered Croatian that resulted from their attempt to make it gender neutral -- and as you might guess, these people were, among other things, calling their audience to rebel against the supposed U.S. imperialism.


I can imagine.


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## sokol

BenVitale said:


> (...) What about the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis? Is it true?


 Sorry, but this is the wrong question. This is a yes-no-question, but the answer neither is yes nor is it no.

So, does the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis*) describe a psychological reality?
The answer to this question certainly has to be: yes, and no. That is, BOTH - which is most important:
- YES, because certainly the terminology of words we have influences our perception. Inuit have several words for different snows while most languages only have the one - snow (in German there are two: 'Schnee' and 'Firn'). If you only have one word for 'snow' then snow is just snow to you; Inuit on the other hand would not think of snow as being simply 'snow'.
- NO, because it is possible in every language to define new terminology through use (that is, without scholars saying that this should denote that, and so on, but through use in communication which is what gives words their meanings: that's basic semantics). If ever the need will arise for the English to have five or more words of snow because a new ice age settles in then they _will _'invent' them.

*) As Athaulf already has stated it is not a concise theory but the theory 'extracted' from works of several authors, first and foremost Edward Sapir & Benjamin Whorf, which - in its shortest version - goes approximately like that: _'Language influences the way you think.'_ And even though this version of the 'theory' is already shortened too much there's still an even _more _popular version of that one which goes approximately like that: _'Language determines the way you think.'_ *This latter, popular version is complete and utter nonsense* while the former has some truth in it (but you should be _very _careful not to make premature conclusions) and the real, individual theories would have to be discussed individually.
You can do some furhter reading on Wikipedia which however only should be a starting point: Wiki articles are NO scientific source (at least not here in Austria, and I only can hope it is the same in your country).



BenVitale said:


> Does a change in our thought result in a change of our words?


Again, wrong question; I guess what you realy meant was: 'Does a change of word result in a change of perception?'
The answer to this one clearly is no. An example which is a real one, it happened in Austria in the late 1990ies:
Gypsies of a rural community of Burgenland didn't want any more to be called by the 'Gadsche' (= Non-Gypsies) name for them = _Zigeuner_, they wanted to be called by their native name = Roma, because the connotations of the word Zigeuner were very much negative in this community.
They succeeded in exchanging the words: after 2-3 years locals called them 'Roma'; but something else happened: the word _Roma _took over the exact same negative connotations the word _Zigeuner _had.
So nothing had changed, except the name for the group.

This is the most important thing about political correctness: it does not change reality. If you want to change connotations of 'bad words', and if you want to work for equal rights for women and ethnic minorities you will have to change society first. (And if you have achieved that there's absolutely no need to change language anymore, because if society had changed in that rural community then _Zigeuner _also would have lost all negative connotations.)



BenVitale said:


> Do you agree that the way we speak does change or influence the way we act?


I didn't say that I agree, remember? (If not then please re-read my post. )


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## Schrodinger's_Cat

Thank you very much for your feedback. I have to hand in on Monday an essay and don't have much to show for with this particular topic. I'm gonna have to drop it and select another topic to write about. It'll still be in the philosophy of language. I'm still interested in what we can say about the gender of words and whether or not it matters.

I read that in the old English "man" was neutral and there were a word for man and a word for woman, and that "man" became masculin. Why is that?

Thanks to all
Cheers!


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## sokol

BenVitale said:


> I read that in the old English "man" was neutral and there were a word for man and a word for woman, and that "man" became masculin. Why is that?



We've now had a split of threads, BenVitale - with this subject left in the old one and this thread now centred only on feminist linguistics and Sapir-Whorf; thus we better keep both topics apart, as agreed with Frank, yes?


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> So, does the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis*) describe a psychological reality?
> The answer to this question certainly has to be: yes, and no. That is, BOTH - which is most important:
> - YES, because certainly the terminology of words we have influences our perception. Inuit have several words for different snows while most languages only have the one - snow (in German there are two: 'Schnee' and 'Firn'). If you only have one word for 'snow' then snow is just snow to you; Inuit on the other hand would not think of snow as being simply 'snow'.



Actually, as far as I know, the "Eskimo words for snow" urban legend is so deeply wrong that in reality, it is doubtful whether Inuit language has any more words for "snow" than typical European languages. First, Inuit is polysynthetic, so individual Inuit "words" may capture expressions that would require multi-word phrases in English. Based on this, one could claim that Inuit (and other polysynthetic languages) have an inordinate number of words for literally _anything_. Second, this supposed wealth of words for snow covers a bunch of phenomena that have their separate (sometimes multi-word) names in other languages too. Just observe the wealth of terms for different sorts of snow in English and German: _frozen snow_/_der Harsch_, _slush_/_der Schneematsch_,  _flurry_/_das Schneegestöber_, _snow slab_/_das Schneebrett_, and a bunch of other ones. 



> - NO, because it is possible in every language to define new terminology through use (that is, without scholars saying that this should denote that, and so on, but through use in communication which is what gives words their meanings: that's basic semantics). If ever the need will arise for the English to have five or more words of snow because a new ice age settles in then they _will _'invent' them.


Well, it seems like they've already been invented in both English and German. 



> Again, wrong question; I guess what you realy meant was: 'Does a change of word result in a change of perception?'
> The answer to this one clearly is no. An example which is a real one, it happened in Austria in the late 1990ies:
> Gypsies of a rural community of Burgenland didn't want any more to be called by the 'Gadsche' (= Non-Gypsies) name for them = _Zigeuner_, they wanted to be called by their native name = Roma, because the connotations of the word Zigeuner were very much negative in this community.
> They succeeded in exchanging the words: after 2-3 years locals called them 'Roma'; but something else happened: the word _Roma _took over the exact same negative connotations the word _Zigeuner _had.
> So nothing had changed, except the name for the group.


Another example are various words for mental retardation. A century ago, words like _idiot _or _imbecile_, which are nowadays just vulgar swearwords, used to be neutral, clinically-sounding medical terms with precisely defined technical meanings. Not so long ago, _retarded_ was still a respectful euphemism, and it's been only in the last generation that it also became an rude insult and swearword. (When I was a kid in Croatia in the 1980s, I remember my parents telling me that I should use _retardiran_ as the respectful term of choice - in Croatian, however, this word developed into an insult somewhat later.) The word "challenged" was introduced relatively recently as an ultra-PC euphemism, but in the last few years, people have already started using it as a sarcastic insult.

Thus, people who attempt to achieve social change by engineering the language are fighting against windmills. No amount of euphemisms and PC terms can ever hide people's real attitudes.


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> Why, certainly they do!
> It is then "hier darf frau nicht rauchen", but of course (at the time being) this is only used by feminists, here in Austria. But *gender-neutral *terms ("LehrerInnen" with capital "I" to state that it is both meant for male and female teachers) already *are *used in some contexts in Austria even by those who aren't declared feminists, e. g. in new textbooks for school use you *have *to use them because else the textbooks won't be approved for school use.
> This however is the situation in *Austria*. (The latter does not hold for Germany, while the use of "frau" instead of "man" also is done by German feminists.)



And once again, real life eclipses any attempts at parody...


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## sokol

Yes, Athaulf, I am guilty of quoting an urban legend - that one of 'snow' in Inuit.


Athaulf said:


> First, Inuit is polysynthetic, so individual Inuit "words" may capture expressions that would require multi-word phrases in English. Based on this, one could claim that Inuit (and other polysynthetic languages) have an inordinate number of words for literally _anything_.


This is a good point, and surely difficult to argue against.


Athaulf said:


> Second, this supposed wealth of words for snow covers a bunch of phenomena that have their separate (sometimes multi-word) names in other languages too. Just observe the wealth of terms for different sorts of snow in English and German: _frozen snow_/_der Harsch_, _slush_/_der Schneematsch_,  _flurry_/_das Schneegestöber_, _snow slab_/_das Schneebrett_, and a bunch of other ones.


I could add 'Kunstschnee' (artificial snow), 'trockener Schnee' (dry snow which has similar characteristics as artificial snow but is of natural origin) and 'nasser Schnee' (wet snow = snow near the melting point) which are important types of snow for skiers, very important also for ski waxers.

They are rather new and aren't really (yet) such fixed terms (they are mostly used by skiers, but gaining among the common people because skiing is very popular here) while German 'Firn' in fact is - it is a name for a specific kind of snow, and an old one.
'Harsch' is similar in category as 'Firn', so I would count 3 generic names for snow in German.
Plus the new names for snow gaining popularity from the skiers' world (artificial snow, dry snow, etc.).

'Schneematsch' is not quite in that category even though this _is _wet snow in the process of melting: but 'Matsch' is more a word for a mixture of snow and water than a generic name for snow - which certainly is a personal feeling, the case of 'Matsch' is a borderline case.
But others as 'Schneegestöber, Schneebrett' definitely are not (they aren't generic names for snow but only forms in which snow may occur: they say nothing about this snow being 'dry' or 'heavy' or 'frozen' or 'frozen and melted several times' as is 'Firn' etc.).


But apart from that I think we both agree on the main points of PC. It is rather pointless to think that you change reality with simply changing words; nevertheless this is what many people try nowadays (even though there are already some examples where this indeed did change language, but NOT the real world).

And further, notwithstanding this conclusion of mine it is nevertheless my opinion that different categories of words indeed do influence perception. The thing is that this (the semantics of words in a language, and also their connotations) is not a 'prison' from where no escape would be possible.
One's own language indeed sets limits, but you can go beyond them if you develop your language across and beyond those limits.

Another example: I guess there still may be languages where there is no word for snow at all.
Give the speakers of those languages a word for snow and they still won't be able to fill the word with any _real _content - unless they see (and probably feel) snow for themselves.
But do not give them a word for snow and instead *let it snow* in the region where they live and they will invent a word of snow on their own. They might it call 'the white thing' or 'the cold thing' or 'the-thing-melting-on-your-hands' or whatever, it doesn't matter at all what they will use: if this snow will become a regular occurence, then their word of snow also will become a generic word for the white flakes falling from the sky.

So my opinion is, as already described, and specified with this reasoning: reality changes language - and never changes language reality.


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> 'Schneematsch' is not quite in that category even though this _is _wet snow in the process of melting: but 'Matsch' is more a word for a mixture of snow and water than a generic name for snow - which certainly is a personal feeling, the case of 'Matsch' is a borderline case.
> But others as 'Schneegestöber, Schneebrett' definitely are not (they aren't generic names for snow but only forms in which snow may occur: they say nothing about this snow being 'dry' or 'heavy' or 'frozen' or 'frozen and melted several times' as is 'Firn' etc.).



Yes, but according to what I've read in reliable sources, these different Inuit words for snow - or rather, different word roots, since the very definition of "word" is problematic in polysynthetic languages - actually designate different sorts of snow-related phenomena, as different as the those in the English/German list above. See here for example:

_The idea that Eskimos have many more words for snow than English speakers is a myth. All eight Eskimo languages have extraordinarily rich possibilities for deriving new words on the fly from established bases. So where English uses separate words to make up descriptive phrases like "early snow falling in autumn" or "snow with a herring-scale pattern etched into it by rainfall", Eskimo languages have an astonishing propensity for being able to express such concepts (about anything, not just snow) with a single derived word. To the extent that counting basic snow words makes any real sense (it is often difficult to decide whether a word really names a snow phenomenon), Eskimo languages do not appear to have more than English has (think of snow, slush, sleet, blizzard, drift, white-out, flurry, powder, dusting, and so on).
_​


> But apart from that I think we both agree on the main points of PC. It is rather pointless to think that you change reality with simply changing words; nevertheless this is what many people try nowadays (even though there are already some examples where this indeed did change language, but NOT the real world).



Another excellent example that's occurred to me in the meantime: a century ago, the term "concentration camp" was coined as a bland-sounding euphemism, first used by the British in the Boer War. And yet, only several decades later, this phrase became one of the most evil and sinister sounding ones.


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## sokol

Athaulf said:


> Yes, but according to what I've read in reliable sources, these different Inuit words for snow (...) actually designate different sorts of snow-related phenomena, as different as the those in the English/German list above. (...)



Ah, in this case you are of course right. (I am no expert on Inuit language, as you have seen. I only know the basics, that is my knowledge doesn't go far beyond the knowledge that it is a polysynthetic language.)


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> Ah, in this case you are of course right. (I am no expert on Inuit language, as you have seen. I only know the basics, that is my knowledge doesn't go far beyond the knowledge that it is a polysynthetic language.)



Well, I think it would be extraordinary if any language had more than a handful of perfect redundant synonyms for anything. In fact, I can hardly think of any pair of synonyms in any language I know whose semantic overlap is a perfect 100%. Even if two words can be used interchangeably most of the time, they usually have different shades of meaning in at least some contexts. 

Thus, the idea that Eskimos would invent an extraordinary number of words that all denote just plain snow strikes me as totally implausible. Speakers of languages that I'm familiar with certainly don't go ahead and invent a bunch of redundant synonyms for something just because it surrounds them every day. Of course, they do invent a rich and subtle terminology for different sorts of stuff that they have to deal with often, and thus I wouldn't be surprised if Inuit had an unusually rich and precise terminology for snow-related phenomena, just like English has a rich and precise terminology for, say, different sorts of beer - even though it actually seems that English is no less rich than Inuit when it comes to snow-related terminology. But either way, at the end of the day, when facts are separated from myths and distortions, it's hardly possible to derive anything but quite banal and trivial conclusions from them.


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## sokol

Athaulf said:


> Thus, the idea that Eskimos would invent an extraordinary number of words that all denote just plain snow strikes me as totally implausible.



I don't see it as that implausible (though you're certainly right that hardly ever there is a perfect semantic overlap between words of two languages, even closely related ones - or especially them, if I think of the false friends between Slovenian and Croatian ... which are legion).
It would only be plausible to the degree that the different kinds of snow really were important to the world of an Inuit. Which isn't so very implausible; the snow of early winter is "wetter" than the dry one of mid winter, and the "Sulz" of spring (yet another word for snow in German I hadn't thought of ... it is for old snow of spring which isn't quite "Matsch", really hard to explain, I don't know if English has a word for it).
Because _Sulz _may be very bad for trying to conquer a plain in the sled (it is too soft) while deep winter snow or even wind-blown snow is hard and bears a sled, and so on. But as I've found still another word for a variety of snow in German I think we now can lay the "snow-Inuit-case" at rest: there exist numerous words for snow in German too (my guess would be more than in English, but who knows).

The main point isn't changed much by that: if the need arises a new category, a new word _will _be found or the meaning of an existing word will be changed; it is no use to try and change the world with language.


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## raptor

I agree with Athaulf about synonyms not being completely interchangable, especially about the difference in connotation/overtone/feel of the word. The idea of the Inuit snow myth is interesting, but it's true that all languages that come in contact with something will have more than one word to describe it. Especially if they are in contact with it for a long period of time.

The case for Inuit languages is made more interesting, however, by their polysynthestic aspect, resulting in descriptives many of our words long that are only one 'word' to them. They also have specific meanings, determined by the ideas used in the word. It may seem different though, because English uses multiple words to describe the same idea (or at least very similar) as one word in an Inuit language. However, they are both one noun phrase.

The language we use, read, hear, etc does impact our thoughts insofar as they have their own specific connotations and feel to them. Another example would be words for dog: dog, mutt, hound, mongrel, pet dog, attack dog, etc have very different feelings to them which convey semantic meaning. And as was stated earlier, in examples such as retard, idiot, imbicile, roma, words can change their semantic meaning, while the word stays the same.

A word is not only what it means, it is also what it conveys, the connotations, feeling, emotion, what it makes us think of/about, any hints or allusions that go along with it. Thus you can have many noun phrases to describe the same base thing, with different semantic meanings that tell a different story. That's how language affects our thoughts.

However, we don't think in words, as far as I've seen. We think in ideas that, if we slow our brain down, can be sorted and brought down to the level of being words and sentences. We think so much faster than words that the idea, images, feeling, and connotations (again!) mean more than the words they will be expressed as, because often enough, there are no words, or even noun phrases that can express exactly what our thoughts mean. Meaning is lost in trying to convert thoughts into words, just as it is lost in trying to literally translate a poem.

Words are empty without meaning. With meaning comes the variations and hidden allusions, which enrich a word into becoming a full-fledged idea. Words are an attempt at communicating, and the reason for the vast richness of vocabulary, spoken (tonal) differences, and the underlying allusions of individual words. Even so, words can be incomplete in transmitting meaning, where picture, sound, art, and other modes of communication work much better.

There is no verbal communication in giving a fiancee a rose, smiling, and seating her at a restaurant table, yet communication abounds in every action, detail, and nuance of what happened.


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## sokol

That's an excellent contribution to the thread, raptor - thanks.

This:


raptor said:


> A word is not only what it means, it is also what it conveys, the connotations, feeling, emotion, what it makes us think of/about, any hints or allusions that go along with it. (...) That's how language affects our thoughts.
> However, we don't think in words, as far as I've seen. We think in ideas that, if we slow our brain down, can be sorted and brought down to the level of being words and sentences.


certainly is true: yes, we think in _ideas _- words are only categories, or metaphorically one could say: a word is only a basket carrying certain ideas - and what matters to us (and what affects our thoughts) are the ideas in the basket and not the basket itself. (The basket itself in theory is arbitrary - to use a word that has become commonplace in linguistics and basically goes back to de Saussure.)

This goes even further, we can define the content of a word (a "basket") anew through using it - which of course only will make an impact on language and society if the new meanings conveyed are used by many peoples many times or if opinion leaders coin them.

Which leads further back to the original question (... always trying to stick to the topic, right? ;-), that is: in theory it would be possible to use political correct new words in new meanings, but in real life this cannot work because you only can motivate peoples to change the basket, but not its content, that is to change the word only but not its semantics and connotations.

New semantics and new connotations just can't be forced upon a culture: they will have to _develop _in our daily life. If we treat minorities respectful, such as Inuit for examples (whose name too is one of PC although being the native term, same here as with Roma and Gypsies), then semantics and connotations change - therefore there would be no need anymore for trying to change the word.



raptor said:


> Even so, words can be incomplete in transmitting meaning, where picture, sound, art, and other modes of communication work much better.
> 
> There is no verbal communication in giving a fiancee a rose, smiling, and seating her at a restaurant table, yet communication abounds in every action, detail, and nuance of what happened.



A very nice example you've given here. 

And verbal communication still is much easier than the written word because when you are talking to someone you always also use nonverbal communication (even on the phone though it's voice modulation there only). When written a word needs written context in order to at least partly convey the meaning it should have. This is what literature is about: to replace non-verbal context with words.


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## berndf

sokol said:


> The main point isn't changed much by that: if the need arises a new category, a new word _will _be found or the meaning of an existing word will be changed; it is no use to try and change the world with language.


 
By and large, I agree. But there are also examples of linguistic categorizations influencing mental concepts of speakers. Two examples from biology come to my mind here:
- Some German dialects subcategorize prunus domestica domestica (the common European plum) into round and oblong varieties, called _Pflaume_ and _Zwetschge_ (or _Zwetschke_) respectively while other dialects use only one of these words for all varieties of prunus domestica domestica (usually _Pflaume_ but I was told there are also dialects using only _Zwetschge/Zwetschke_). Speakers from regions where the difference is made generally regard the two as distinct fruits and plants while speakers of regions where the difference is not made usually won’t even recognize the difference unless someone points it out to them.
- French doesn’t have a common name for the order coleoptera (beetle, there is of course an assimilated scientific word, _coléoptère_, but no colloquial term). French has words for different families of coleoptera, e.g. _coccinelle_ (coccinellidae, English: ladybird) or _bousier_ (scarabaeinae, dung beetle). I few years ago, I did a brief survey among French native speaking friends and colleagues: They all said they never realized that _coccinelles_ and _bousier_ had anything in common except being insects while the similarity is striking for speakers of languages which have the term.


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## sokol

berndf said:


> By and large, I agree. But there are also examples of linguistic categorizations influencing mental concepts of speakers. Two examples from biology come to my mind here: (...)



Point taken, especially as the example with _prunus domesticus_ is one I do know very well.
But this really is not arguing against what I said above: yes of course, it is true that the categories, the words we have in a language _influence _our perception; this is true overall - no doubt about that. This is also what Sapir, Whorf and other authors wrote about - I never did say that they were wrong.

I only pointed out that it is very important to keep in mind:
a) that it is possible and in many cases very easy (in others not so easy) to add new terminology if required even if it didn't exist originally and
b) that the linguistic theory behind Sapir, Whorf and other authors does not work the other way round, that is you can't define meanings by words, it is always meanings that define the words' contents and not vice versa

In some cases it is difficult for people to think of concepts for which they do not have a word - simply because they never needed this concept in their life.
With "Zwetschke" and "Pflaume" it is different in my opinion because personally I think that in Austria once upon a time only "Zwetschke" was used and that "Pflaume" only later was importet as a word from Germany and assigned a new meaning - by the way, I wouldn't know about round and oblong, people around me claim that "Pflaume" are the "big ones" which usually you only get in the supermarket and "Zwetschke" the "small ones" which you grow in your garden.
The semantic differentiation here in my opinion is one of differentiation of dublettes - by the way this is something which also happened in Bosnia with Serbian and Croatian words coexisting which (over time) became new meanings assigned, in some cases (sorry, can't remember an example for that one right now).

It is not really essential for Austrians to differentiate between "Zwetschke" and "Pflaume"; the reason for this use having evolved are different ones - either the ones I proposed or probably there's another explanation.
And it is far from clear where the borderline between "Zwetschke" and "Pflaume" should be drawn ... therefore I would not be surprised if people not using these two terms but only "Pflaume" wouldn't even want to differentiate them (even after having learned that elsewhere this is done).


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> They all said they never realized that _coccinelles_ and _bousier_ had anything in common except being insects *while the similarity is striking for speakers of languages which have the term*.


 
I wonder if that is the case. I have known more than one native English speaker express horror at the idea that ladybirds are beetles. Also, many native English speakers refer to spiders as insects. Scientific classifications do not always coincide with "folk" classifications

It is in the nature of human beings that they classify and all languages are systems of classifcation. The systems of classification do not always coincide between one language and another.

What I think is more interesting than whether speakers of different languages divide the world as they perceive it in different ways is whether the speakers of languages that differ widely have different modes of thought. In the _Way of Zen_, Alan Watts suggests that the reason that Chinese philosophy is so different from western philosophy is because of the nature of the Chinese language. He points out that in Chinese the same word may be both a noun and a verb. This does of course happen to an extent in English with the difference that in English when the word is a noun it has to be inflected as a noun and when a verb inflected as a verb. He develops the idea by suggesting that the Chinese are not so ready as the speakers of English to distinguish between things and events. When you close your hand you make a fist, but when you open it the fist disappears - the thing is confused with the event. A mountain is just a slow event.

When I read the book 40 years ago I was convinced, but now I am not so sure. If an idea is universal should it not be capable of being expressed in any language?


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## berndf

sokol said:


> ...you can't define meanings by words...


 
But you can change thought patterns through changes in terminology. And that is what is important here. If I understand it correctly, we are debating here a theory which borrowed its epistemology from Marxism where the criterion of truth and of relevance of a scientific theory is measured solely by its usefulness to advance a certain political cause.
 
I didn’t say, I share this epistemology, heaven forbid! But to understand a theory you have to understand its epistemological basis too.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> I wonder if that is the case. I have known more than one native English speaker express horror at the idea that ladybirds are beetles.


How very interesting. I never knew that. The German name for ladybird is _Marienkäfer_ (_Käfer_=beetle) so there is no argument. This makes the point even stronger.



> When I read the book 40 years ago I was convinced, but now I am not so sure. If an idea is universal should it not be capable of being expressed in any language?


It doesn't convince me either. After all European languages also use nouns to describe events: _birth, death, morning, festival_, etc. And in some of these nouns the difference between an event and a thing becomes vague (e.g. _festival_).


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## sokol

berndf said:


> But you can change thought patterns through changes in terminology. And that is what is important here. If I understand it correctly, we are debating here a theory which borrowed its epistemology from Marxism where the criterion of truth and of relevance of a scientific theory is measured solely by its usefulness to advance a certain political cause.



Now this is exactly what I am arguing _against _in my posts above. And yes, there are connections to Marxism, but these are two different theories, so I would prefer not to mix them up.
It is also not about wether we two were sharing this theory or not - the discussion should be kept on the level what is the case and what isn't, wether we like it or not.

In my opinion it is not possible at all to change thought patterns through changes in terminology; this in my opinion is one great misconception of linguistic theory (also of Marxist theory, but let this be my last mentioning of Marxism here in this thread, this would have to be a different thread if one would like to discuss it, which I wouldn't).

While it is certainly true that the concepts and meaning you have at your disposal in your mother tongue (and probably foreign languages you also know) influence the way you express yourself and the way you perceive the world that surrounds you - in some cases even to a degree that you don't see something that for others is very obvious - it is *not possible *for this principle to work the other way around, that is to change the way you perceive your world, so to change thought patterns, by a change of words and terminology.
Of course many people are of different opinion - else PC wouldn't exist - but this is my opinion, as argued above, and I'll stick to it.

If I were wrong why then doesn't a change of words result in complete and immediate emancipation? (Gypsy -> Roma, also in many other cases with minorties like African Americans - we already had several name changes there -, Inuit, disabled persons etc.)
(And again this is not about your personal opinion but your statement that "thought patterns may be changed with terminology". Which seems to be, somehow, in conflict with your personal opinion.)

What is at work with PC is in my opinion not the Sapir-Whorf-theory turned around to work the other way round, PC in my opinion is politics and not linguistics. Further, the point here is *not *that PC wouldn't try for a better world - this it what it should achieve, at least - but that it is applying *the wrong means* to achieving that, from my viewpoint as a linguist, so not at all from my political viewpoint which is of no importance at all here in this context.

(And I really mean that: I wouldn't discuss politics here on this thread, nor anyway on WRF; I am talking _linguistics _here.)


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## Hulalessar

Insofar as I understand the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis I do not think it is so much about the lack of correspondences between languages, a fact which is patently obvious, but rather whether the whole package of a given language influences, and if so to what extent, the mode of thought of the speakers of that language. To take a specific instance: is the nature of Chinese philosophy attributable in any degree to the nature of the Chinese language, or can it be explained by other factors?

The hypothesis therefore casts doubt on the idea that the world/experience can be adequately explained by language by suggesting that each language has a different way of explaining the world/experience.

As to whether language conditions thought or thought conditions language, I think I would use the language of the _Tao Te Ching _and say that language and thought arise mutually.


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## Athaulf

Hulalessar said:


> Insofar as I understand the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis I do not think it is so much about the lack of correspondences between languages, a fact which is patently obvious, but rather whether the whole package of a given language influences, and if so to what extent, the mode of thought of the speakers of that language. To take a specific instance: is the nature of Chinese philosophy attributable in any degree to the nature of the Chinese language, or can it be explained by other factors?



Well, obviously it _can _be explained by other factors: people can radically differ in their worldview even if they speak the same language, and it's easy to find countless other factors in the history of Chinese and Western civilizations that were different enough to cause them to produce radically different philosophies. This of course doesn't _exclude_ the possibility that the language might play a role, but we don't really have much in its favor either.

Here is another interesting data point. I use both Croatian and English every single day, and with some people I switch back and forth between Croatian and English within every conversation. Now, if there existed an important difference in how Croatian and English influence thought à la Sapir-Whorf, then I guess I should be able to examine ideas in my head formed after a conversation and at least occasionally see that they bear obvious imprints of having been conveyed in one of these languages. And yet, when it comes to people with whom I speak both Croatian and English, whenever I reflect on things they told me, I can never remember what was said in English and what in Croatian unless I happen to remember the conversation so well that I can replay the sound of speaking in my head. 

Of course, one could object that Croatian and English are both just Standard Average European  languages and that one must look for more exotic languages to observe such an effect. But then we should ask a bilingual Chinese/English speaker who constantly switches between these two languages on a daily basis. Is there anyone like that around here?


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## Hulalessar

Athaulf said:


> Here is another interesting data point. I use both Croatian and English every Of course, one could object that Croatian and English are both just Standard Average European languages and that one must look for more exotic languages to observe such an effect. But then we should ask a bilingual Chinese/English speaker who constantly switches between these two languages on a daily basis. Is there anyone like that around here?


 
I am a native English speaker who lives in Spain. I certainly do not speak Spanish like a native, but I have a feel for it. One significant difference between Spanish and English is that Spanish makes copious use of the subjunctive. It is almost impossible to have a normal conversation without using it. Whilst it is perfectly possible to express the same thought in both Spanish and English, the point is that when you speak Spanish and use the subjunctive you are adding a dimension that is not available in English. Of course it works the other way too as there are many idioms in English that cannot be used in Spanish.

Anyway, I think that once you become imbued with a language you lose the ability to notice it and that means that you cannot use it to prove or disprove the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It seems that you need to restrict yourself to simply studying, rather than mastering, a language to do that.

It follows from the above that I am not sure that a bilingual English-Chinese speaker will be able to add more to the debate than a bilingual English-Croatian speaker!


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## raptor

> Originally Posted by Hulalessar
> I have known more than one native English speaker express horror at the idea that ladybirds are beetles.
> 
> 
> 
> How very interesting. I never knew that. The German name for ladybird is Marienkäfer (Käfer=beetle) so there is no argument. This makes the point even stronger.
Click to expand...

 
In Canada, I've almost never heard the term ladybird, and almost always ladybug. This also seems to strengthen it's 'bug-ness' to the point that I was surprised when Hulalessar remarked that other native English speakers were horrified at lady(bug/bird/beetle)s being beetles.

Regarding the idea that language influences culture, I would agree only to a point: if a language has copious honorifics, or very specific adjectives, or a large vocabulary of spiritual words, the speakers would use them more often than other cultures, and so be able to express ideas slightly differently (and so have a different take/idea on the matter).

However, if one were to categorize all languages available for study into groups, by sentence order/structure, specific vocabularies, conjugation styles, and so on, I doubt that similar languages would have similar cultures (excepting via colonization, or long-term relations).

Frankly, the idea that (indigenous) cultures from South America, the African Congo, the Kalahari Desert, Britain, China, and Australia would have similar cultures is quite odd. I think that environment, tribal system, religious beliefs, and contact with other cultures would (much!) more influence a groups culture than the style of it's language.

On the topic of bilingualism a la Sapir-Whorf, I agree with Athaulf and Hulalessar, it would be interesting to find out exactly how a bilingual person speaks differently from one language to another. If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is true, then the differences would have to be larger than simple language variation (ie the subjuntive mood as written by Hulalessar) and vocabulary.


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## Athaulf

Hulalessar said:


> Anyway, I think that once you become imbued with a language you lose the ability to notice it and that means that you cannot use it to prove or disprove the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It seems that you need to restrict yourself to simply studying, rather than mastering, a language to do that.





raptor said:


> On the topic of bilingualism a la Sapir-Whorf, I agree with Athaulf and Hulalessar, it would be interesting to find out exactly how a bilingual person speaks differently from one language to another. If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is true, then the differences would have to be larger than simple language variation (ie the subjuntive mood as written by Hulalessar) and vocabulary.




It seems like my above point wasn't understood precisely, perhaps because I didn't express myself clearly, but perhaps also because the whole concept I'm proposing might be nebulous. (I'm laying it out as a half-baked idea for discussion, not as something I'm firmly convinced about.)

What I'm referring to are ideas that exist in your head as the result of a conversation. When you talk to someone, some information is conveyed, and your knowledge and outlook on certain things is often changed -- some ideas will form in your head  as the result of the conversation. Now, if any of the propositions commonly referred to as the "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis" are correct, then these ideas that may form depend not only on the objective information content of the conversation, but also on the language in which the conversation has been carried out. In other words, some ideas can form in your head only as the result of a conversation in English, some only after a conversation in Chinese, etc.

It would follow that at least some ideas formed in your head bear an "imprint" of the language that was instrumental in creating them, since per the "S-W hypothesis", different languages will convey different views of reality even if you have the same conversation in them. Yet, in my own heavily bilingual life, I can't notice even the slightest trace of such a phenomenon. As I've written above, when I think about the ideas I got from reading something or listening to someone, I can't find anything that would specifically indicate that I got them via input in Croatian or English. At most, I might be able to recall the moment of reading or listening and then remember the language it was in. Often I will even wrongly remember in which language I heard or read something -- I perceive the ideas inside my head as entirely abstracted away from language. 

One possible objection, of course, is that the languages I'm dealing with are too similar to make any difference. This is why it would be interesting to hear similar introspective musings by someone bilingual in two more distant languages, such as e.g. English and Chinese.


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## Hulalessar

I once had an interesting conversation with a person bilingual in Swedish and Finnish, two languages as different from each other as English and Chinese. The gist of the conversation was:

1. When she speaks Swedish she thinks in Swedish and when she speaks Finnish she thinks in Finnish.

2. When she speaks Swedish she cannot think in Finnish and when she speaks Finnish she cannot think in Swedish.

3. She cannot tell if her Swedish thinking is different from her Finnish thinking as there is no communication between them.


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## sokol

As for the Sapir-Whorf-hypothesis: there is a lot of scientific literature about it, and it is outright impossible to give an overview here even if I had one about the subject - which I very clearly have _not_.
So just to put discussion straight on the topic here is what my two linguistic dictionaries have to say (Lewandowski and Bußmann, both German ones) plus Wiki:*)
- *Sapir *over time came to the conclusion that not only language were a mirror of thought and culture (which goes back to Boas) but that language would more or less define it, which his pupil:
- *Whorf *even developped further towards determinism. According to him people come _through language _to different worldviews, that is language gives the thought its direction, we see our world through the means provided by language - and if these differ different worldviews and different culture should be the result.
*) Actually the English Wiki article on Sapir & Whorf - which I've read now - is rather good and could be recommended; certainly some real-life linguists contributed here.
It mentions, as a sidenote, at its end that Kenneth E. Iverson obviously was of the opinion that the Sapir-Whorf-hypothesis in its most extreme version (i. e. linguistic determinism which wasn't the original idea of both of them) would apply to computer languages. And I would agree here with Kenneth E. Iverson - in computer languages you really can express only what is provided for, i. e. what can't be expressed by a specific computer language's words and syntax does not exist = is not programmable in this CL. Human language, however, here differs vastly.

For _me _already Sapir's point of view would be too extreme already, and Whorf's one certainly even more. It would be to say (according to these two authors, especially Whorf) that indeed Chinese philosophy probably could be explained through Chinese language.
(A step too far for me, as already stated, but still not going as far as to say that you could force basic semantics and connotations on a culture by changing language - this is a whole dimension never, as far as I know, proposed by the original proponents of the hypothesis.)

Nevertheless, even though I don't agree with all conclusions of Sapir, Whorf and the like these linguists certainly had much to say about language and culture: it is certainly clear that there is some influence between both.
It is only that one should be careful as to how far one should go here; *the post above of Hulalessar quoting Tao Te Ching* certainly is worth mentioning here again: _"... Tao Te Ching and say that language and thought arise mutually."_ - I am happy to agree with that one.

If we take the edge of some of the statements Sapir and Whorf (and others) made they even become very acceptable, at least to me.
For example it is certainly true that the so-called _zeitgeist _very much influences popular culture and even political and also scientific discussions. There was e. g. a very significant shift of paradigms between the 1970ies and the 1990ies - the shift happened during the 1980ies but I guess most people only became aware of it in 1989 and around it - with its historical bench-mark.
Before even the West was more or less leftist, and the world seemed to be devided forever - after the border between West and East became unsharp and penetrable, and there also was a pronounced political shift to the right both in the West and the East.
The younger generation clearly has problems to grasp the importance of the Has-Been-Iron-Curtain, and even my generation seems to forget about it already.

There you are: all these changes did happen *within one language* (that is, within several languages of course) - there is no need for languages to be different syntactically or morphologically (or lexically or whatever).

This for me is a clear sign _that first and foremost culture is what determines language and not the other way round._

Which is, to cut a long story short, basically my viewpoint on the matter.
(And the _real _difference, which realy seems to be a big one, that does exist between Amerindian languages and English in this light is a difference of culture which in turn did lead to a language with vastly different semantic entities, rather than a language leading to a vastly different cultural worldview.)


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## berndf

sokol said:


> Now this is exactly what I am arguing _against _in my posts above. And yes, there are connections to Marxism, but these are two different theories, so I would prefer not to mix them up.
> It is also not about wether we two were sharing this theory or not - the discussion should be kept on the level what is the case and what isn't, whether we like it or not.


As I said, I do share you opinion about the nature of science. But I'd like to advocate arguing the case for epistemological objectivism and not rejecting theories based on other epistemologies as unscientific refusing to talk.
 



> In my opinion it is not possible at all to change thought patterns through changes in terminology; this in my opinion is one great misconception of linguistic theory...


Sure not. You don't change your attitudes to back people just because you call them Afro-Americans. Inventing new labels for old things doesn't change thought patterns. What is different is whether or not your language allows you to express the categories which you need to formulate an idea. Hence my example with the missing word for beetle in French. It makes it less likely (but not impossible!) that you develop an idea about beetles, if your language doesn't have the category.



> (And I really mean that: I wouldn't discuss politics here on this thread, nor anyway on WRF; I am talking _linguistics _here.)


I don't think anybody is trying to drag you into a political discussion here.


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## jazyk

> - French doesn’t have a common name for the order coleoptera (beetle, there is of course an assimilated scientific word, _coléoptère_, but no colloquial term).



Scarabée doesn't qualify?


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## berndf

Before I came to the French speaking area I also thought so. But afer asking a few native speakers I realized they associate the term only with dung beetles and a few similar looking beetles.


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## sokol

berndf said:


> As I said, I do share you opinion about the nature of science. But I'd like to advocate arguing the case for epistemological objectivism and not rejecting theories based on other epistemologies as unscientific refusing to talk.



Well, certainly my point of view is of course only one of several possible (and existing ones), of course there exist many others and it is legitimate to discuss them. Only that in my opinion, as far as I have understood, dialectic materialism does not state that language determines thought but on the contrary that social and economical structures were what would determine thought.

One certainly might bring this point of view into this Sapir-Whorf-discussion, but I honestly do not see the direct connection here. (Apart from the fact that political correctness is something which is mostly associated with leftist movements which however is not quite the truth, or at least not the whole truth.)


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