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A single letter includes opinions on Kierkegaard—"I came across a few dazzling pages at the end of the selections from Preparations for a Christian Li fe , so I've at least decided to get through Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death such jolly titles"—and comments on Rainer Maria Rilke, Aldous Huxley and a book by the linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf.
Gorey's Flights of Fancy Karen Wilkin 2011
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This will be shattering news to millions of people who attended college after about 1958, when the theories of the great amateur linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf began to appear in college psychology texts.
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Linguistic determinism is historically associated with the writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (Whorf 1956).
Concepts Margolis, Eric 2006
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"During the late 1930s, amateur linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf posed the theory that language can determine the nature and content of thought."
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A study just published in Science scroll down to "Numerical Cognition Without Words: Evidence from Amazonia; Peter Gordon; Published online August 19 2004; 10.1126/science.1094492"—linked article and abstract only available to subscribers; brief Scientific American story, longer Science Daily piece attempts to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in terms of number:During the late 1930s, amateur linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf posed the theory that language can determine the nature and content of thought.
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Benjamin Lee Whorf, author of Language, Thought & Reality, uses the example of the word snow and the fact that the Eskimos have so many words for it because they see it in so many different forms.
FXstreet.com 2009
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Benjamin Lee Whorf, author of Language, Thought & Reality, uses the example of the word snow and the fact that the Eskimos have so many words for it because they see it in so many different forms.
FXstreet.com 2009
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Notable among writings dealing with the ways in which man's view of his universe are tempered by the language he speaks is the classic "Four Articles on Metalinguistics," by Benjamin Lee Whorf, originally published by the U.S. Department of S.ate, now available in a collection,
fbharjo commented on the word Benjamin Lee Whorf
Whorf was an American linguist. Whorf is widely known for his ideas about linguistic relativity, the hypothesis that language influences thought. An important theme in many of his publications, he has been credited as one of the fathers of this approach, often referred to as the "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis", named after him and his mentor Edward Sapir.
...Whorf's primary area of interest in linguistics was the study of Native American languages, particularly those of Mesoamerica. He became well known for his work on the Hopi language, and for his principle of linguistic relativity. Among Whorf's beliefs about the Hopi was that: “… the Hopi language is seen to contain no words, grammatical forms, construction or expressions or that refer directly to what we call “time”, or to past, present, or future…” His understanding of Hopi has been questioned by subsequent scholars. According to Guy Deutscher, for example, Hopi does have a variety of different tenses, but Whorf did not visit the Hopi in their native habitat and his understanding of the language came from one Indian who was living in New York.
..."My analysis was directed toward purely physical conditions, such as defective wiring, presence or lack of air spaces between metal flues and woodwork, etc., and the results were presented in these terms. ... But in due course it became evident that not only a physical situation qua physics, but the meaning of that situation to people, was sometimes a factor, through the behavior of people, in the start of a fire. And this factor of meaning was clearest when it was a LINGUISTIC MEANING Whorf's emphasis, residing in the name or the linguistic description commonly applied to this situation. Thus, around a storage of what are called 'gasoline drums,' behavior will tend to a certain type, that is, great care will be exercised; while around a storage of what are called 'empty gasoline drums,' it will tend to be different — careless, with little repression of smoking or of tossing cigarette stubs about. Yet the 'empty' drums are perhaps the more dangerous, since they contain explosive vapor. Physically, the situation is hazardous, but the linguistic analysis according to regular analogy must employ the word 'empty,' which inevitably suggests a lack of hazard. The word 'empty' is used in two linguistic patterns: (1) as a virtual synonym for 'null and void, negative, inert,' (2) applied in analysis of physical situations without regard to, e.g., vapor, liquid vestiges, or stray rubbish, in the container." a Whorf quote
Less well known, but important, are his contributions to the study of the Nahuatl and Maya languages. He claimed that Nahuatl was an oligosynthetic language (a claim that would be brought up again some twenty years later by Morris Swadesh, another controversial American linguist). In a series of published and unpublished studies in the 1930s, he argued that Mayan writing was phonetic to some degree. Although many details of his work on Maya are now known to have been incorrect, his central claim was vindicated by Yuri Knorozov's syllabic decipherment of Mayan writing in the 1950s.
- Wikipedia
December 24, 2010