Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity. Linguistic relativity hypothesis

We are glad to welcome you to the blog, dear readers! Today I would like to tell you about one interesting theory, which is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It concerns the relationship between our language, culture and cognitive processes. I suggest you figure out what this connection is and why scientists are so eager to understand it.

The concept of “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”

First of all, it should be noted that there are 2 options for how to briefly convey the meaning of the hypothesis.

1. Strict wording. Language determines thinking, with the result that linguistic categories determine and limit cognitive (i.e., cognitive) categories.
2. Soft wording. Thinking together with the categories of linguistics are the determining factors in the influence of traditions and certain forms.

It is important to take into account the fact that the concept of the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” is not true. This is due to the fact that American linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf did not work together on the relationship between speech, thinking and non-speech behavior. In addition, both of them did not put forward their ideas as scientific hypotheses.

A little history

The origins of ideas about linguistic relativity go back to the distant 19th century. Even then, the German philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt believed that language is the spirit of a nation.
But already at the beginning of the 20th century, American anthropological researchers tried to get closer to this theory. The group of scientists was led by Edward Sapir and Franz Boas. Sapir at that time was very critical of linguistic determinism. His point of view can be seen, naturally, in his scientific works.

At that time, the scientist had a student who supported him in every possible way. His name later became famous: Benjamin Whorf. At that time, in addition to being a supporter of the theory of relativism, he also studied the languages ​​of the American Indians. Whorf successfully published his work on the impact of linguistic differences on the cognitive abilities and behavioral characteristics of different people. Another student of Sapir, Harry Hoyger, introduced the concept of the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” into the scientific community.

And only at the beginning of the second decade of the twentieth century, the linguist from Germany Leo Weisgerberg clearly formulated the essence of the hypothesis of the teacher Sapir and the student Whorf.

The essence of the hypothesis

Let's figure out what the essence of this hypothesis is. And its essence is as follows: thinking and the ability to understand the world around is influenced by the structure of human speech. That is, based on the language we speak, our perception of reality is formed. Accordingly, the world around us is perceived and assessed differently by speakers of different languages.

The hallmark of this hypothesis is the idea that if a person knows two or more languages, he is able to think in different ways.

Based on the theory of linguistic relativity that we are talking about, the unique classification of the world around a particular person will be determined by the speech system that he speaks. After all, everything that enters our consciousness from the outside is images and impressions that are in a constantly changing flow.

Based on all of the above, we can determine the following main objects of the hypothesis. So, this list includes:

• awareness of time;
• thinking potential;
• cognitive processes;
• perception of shape and color;
• awareness of cause and effect relationships.

Sapir-Whorf theory in examples

In real life, naturally, there was confirmation of the linguistic theory of American scientists. First of all, I want to give two very clear examples of how the hypothesis works in practice.

Example 1

The linguistic relativity hypothesis has been applied to the perception of the real world by native English speakers and Navajo Indians. As a result, it became clear that there is a difference in how these people interpret reality.

By studying the classification of linguistic forms, scientists found that Navajo children were much more likely to use the category of forms when talking about certain objects. Children from English-speaking families resorted to categorizing objects much less often.

Linguists interpret this fact as follows. They argue that the Navajo linguistic system contains a unique grammatical relationship between the verbs and the forms of the objects being spoken about or with which the action is performed.

Example 2

The result of the experiment served as confirmation of the hypothesis of linguistic relativity of Sapir and Whorf. Linguists worked with children from two groups. The first is African Americans, the second is Europeans. It is important to take into account the fact that all children used English in their lives.

The essence of the task was that the subjects had to make geometric figures. The children coped with the task satisfactorily. However, there were also those who had a hard time figuring out what to do with the cubes. Difficulties arose for African-American children whose families have low incomes. There were also brilliant minds who were able to refute the theory of language relativism.

Having studied 78 languages, linguists and other scientists have confirmed the fact that speakers of different languages ​​and, accordingly, different cultures are very similar in characteristics such as color perception. This process is almost identical for them.

I would like to note that there are a number of scientists who do not perceive the result of this study as an absolute refutation of the hypothesis. This is due to the fact that the perception of colors depends on the characteristics of vision. From a biological point of view, all people perceive colors the same (or almost the same).

Important points of the theory

We draw your attention to the fact that the theory in question today can be verified through logical analysis or any other empirical methods. All methods that are used to confirm or refute this hypothesis are divided into 2 groups:

1. direct (used in ethnolinguistics - the relationship between language, thinking and national culture is studied);
2. indirect (work in the field of psycholinguistics - the relationship between language and human behavior is studied).

It is important to take into account that all the main provisions of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis are based on 2 main ideas:

1. Human language is a special system in which a person grows and thinks from birth. In addition, our awareness of the world around us occurs on the basis of speech. It is both a means and a way of cognition, which on a subconscious level occurs on the basis of speech skills. The society in which a person grew up and the language determine how that person will perceive his environment.
2. The language system in a society is closely related to living conditions and the characteristics of the cultural development of society. In reality, there are simply no languages ​​so similar in structure that it can be argued that they are used in the same social reality. Each society is a separate world, and the languages ​​of each of these societies reflect a special perception of this world. That is, the more languages ​​differ, the greater the difference in people's perception of reality.

Sapir draws an analogy between linguistic and mathematical systems. He argued that the form of speech imposes on us an orientation in reality. Speech, according to the scientist, influences the perception of reality, our experience, and performs a heuristic function.

Whorf tested Sapir's ideas based on specific sources. The result of the scientist’s research was a formulation that ultimately embodied the entire essence of the hypothesis. And his conclusion boiled down to the fact that people accept the world as a stream of impressions. Accordingly, human consciousness must perceive and organize it. This process occurs due to the language system that exists in our consciousness.

According to Whorf's works, linguists have received a certain principle by which the theory of linguistic relativity or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis operates: similar physical phenomena make it possible to reproduce a similar picture of the world, provided that language systems are similar (or, correlative).

The fate of the hypothesis today

Scientists interested in the theory of linguistic relativity still cannot come to a consensus regarding the veracity of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Also, at the moment there is no evidence that can confirm or refute this hypothesis 100%.

Many studies have been conducted on this issue. However, the results of these works can have many interpretations and be perceived from different points of view. This fact may explain why this theory does not have permanent followers who are professionals in their field.

The theory of Sapir and Whorf, as well as the interaction of language and thinking, quite often became an object of interest for representatives of various areas of science. In addition to linguists, philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists and other scientists worked on the problem. The results of these studies served as the basis for the creation of artificial languages, and many writers drew inspiration from here to work on their works.

Conclusion

Thank you, dear readers, for visiting this blog. I sincerely hope that my article has aroused your genuine interest.

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The material for the article was prepared by Yulia Gintsevich.

LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY HYPOTHESIS(also known as the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”), the thesis according to which the systems of concepts existing in a person’s mind, and, consequently, the essential features of his thinking, are determined by the specific language of which this person is a speaker.

Linguistic relativity is the central concept of ethnolinguistics, a branch of linguistics that studies language in its relationship with culture. The doctrine of relativity (“relativism”) in linguistics arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. in line with relativism as a general methodological principle, which found its expression in both the natural and human sciences, in which this principle was transformed into the assumption that the sensory perception of reality is determined by human mental representations. Mental representations, in turn, can change under the influence of linguistic and cultural systems. Since the historical experience of its speakers is concentrated in a particular language and, more broadly, in a particular culture, the mental representations of speakers of different languages ​​may not coincide.

The simplest examples of how differently languages ​​articulate (or, as they say in linguistics, “conceptualize”) extra-linguistic reality are often cited fragments of lexical systems such as names of body parts, kinship terms, or color naming systems. For example, in Russian, to designate the closest relatives of the same generation as the speaker, two different words are used depending on the gender of the relative - Brother And sister. In Japanese, this fragment of the system of kinship terms implies a more detailed division: an indication of the relative age of the relative is obligatory; in other words, instead of two words meaning “brother” and “sister,” four are used: ani"Older brother", ane"elder sister", otooto"younger brother", imooto"younger sister". In addition, in Japanese there is also a word with a collective meaning kyoodai“brother or sister”, “brothers and/or sisters”, denoting the closest relative(s) of the same generation as the speaker, regardless of gender and age (similar general names are also found in European languages, for example, English sibling"brother or sister"). We can say that the way of conceptualizing the world, which is used by a native speaker of Japanese, presupposes a more detailed conceptual classification compared to the way of conceptualization, which is given by the Russian language.

Similarly, the difference in the way the world is conceptualized linguistically is indicated by such textbook examples as the presence in English of the words hand"arm below the wrist, hand" (used in contexts like "shake hands", "wash hands", etc.) and arm“a hand above the wrist” or “a hand from the fingers to the shoulder” (used in contexts such as “to walk under the arm”, “to take in the arms”, etc.) – as opposed to the universal Russian word hand, or the presence in Russian of two separate words blue And blue– in contrast to many other languages, which use a single designation such as English to indicate the color of the corresponding part of the spectrum blue.

The idea that for the same fragment of reality natural languages ​​can provide several adequate, but not coinciding conceptual schemes, of course, existed in linguistics even before intensive research began in ethnolinguistics “under the banner” of the principle of linguistic relativity. In particular, already at the beginning of the 19th century. it was clearly formulated by W. von Humboldt, but was almost not in demand at that time in linguistic theory. At different periods in the history of linguistics, the problems of differences in the linguistic conceptualization of the world were posed, first of all, in connection with particular practical and theoretical problems of translation from one language to another, as well as within the framework of such a discipline as hermeneutics – teachings about the principles of translation, analysis and interpretation of ancient written monuments, especially biblical texts. The fundamental possibility of translation from one language to another, as well as an adequate interpretation of ancient written texts, is based on the assumption that there is a certain system of ideas that are universal for speakers of all human languages ​​and cultures, or at least shared by speakers of that pair of languages ​​with which and to which the transfer is carried out. The closer the linguistic and cultural systems are, the greater the chances of adequately conveying in the target language what was included in the conceptual schemes of the original language. Conversely, significant cultural and linguistic differences make it possible to see in which cases the choice of linguistic expression is determined not so much by the objective properties of the extra-linguistic reality they denote, but by the framework of intralingual convention: it is precisely such cases that do not lend themselves or are difficult to translate and interpret. It is therefore clear that relativism in linguistics received a powerful impetus in connection with the emergence in the second half of the 19th century. the task of studying and describing “exotic” languages ​​and cultures that are sharply different from European ones, primarily the languages ​​and cultures of the American Indians.

Linguistic relativity as a scientific concept originates from the works of the founders of ethnolinguistics - American anthropologist Franz Boas, his student Edward Sapir and the latter's student Benjamin Whorf. In its most radical form, which went down in the history of linguistics under the name “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” and became the subject of ongoing discussions to this day, the hypothesis of linguistic relativity was formulated by Whorf, or rather, attributed to him on the basis of a number of his statements and spectacular examples contained in his articles. In fact, Whorf accompanied these statements with a number of reservations, while Sapir did not have such categorical formulations at all.

Boas's idea of ​​the classifying and systematizing function of language was based on a seemingly trivial consideration: the number of grammatical indicators in a particular language is relatively small, the number of words in a particular language is large, but also finite, and the number of phenomena denoted by a given language is infinite. Therefore, language is used to refer to classes of phenomena rather than to each phenomenon individually. Each language carries out classification in its own way. During classification, language narrows the universal conceptual space, selecting from it those components that are recognized as the most significant within a particular culture.

Not only vocabulary, but also grammar has a classifying function. It is in grammar, as the most regulated and stable part of the language system, that those meanings that must be expressed are fixed. Thus, a speaker of Russian, German, English and many other European languages ​​cannot use the name of an object without indicating whether one such object or several of them is meant: the word cannot be used book“in no number”, in other words, any form of the word book contains mandatory number information. In such cases, in linguistics it is customary to say that a given language has a grammatical category of number. A set of grammatical categories of a particular language eloquently testifies to what meanings at a certain historical stage in the development of this language were identified as the most significant and established as mandatory. Thus, in Kwakiutl, the language of the North American Indians, which Boas studied for many years, the verb, along with the categories of tense and aspect familiar to us from European languages, also expresses the grammatical category of evidence, or attestation: the verb is equipped with a suffix that shows, was whether the speaker witnessed the action described by this verb, or learned about it from other people’s words. Thus, in the “world picture” of Kwakiutl speakers, particular importance is attached to the source of the information being communicated.

Born and educated in Germany, Boas was undoubtedly influenced by the linguistic views of W. von Humboldt, who believed that language embodies the cultural ideas of the community of people using a given language. However, Boas did not share Humboldt’s ideas about the so-called “stages”. Unlike Humboldt, Boas believed that differences in the “picture of the world”, fixed in the language system, cannot indicate greater or lesser development of its speakers. The linguistic relativism of Boas and his students was based on the idea of ​​biological equality and, as a consequence, the equality of linguistic and mental abilities. Numerous languages ​​outside Europe, primarily the languages ​​of the New World, which began to be intensively mastered by linguistics at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, turned out to be exotic from the point of view of vocabulary and especially the grammar of European languages, however, within the framework of the Boasian tradition, this unusualness was not considered evidence of “primitiveness.” » of these languages ​​or the “primitiveness” of the culture reflected in these languages. On the contrary, the rapidly expanding geography of linguistic research has made it possible to understand the limitations of Eurocentric views on the description of language, giving new arguments to supporters of linguistic relativity.

The most important stage in the study of language as a means of systematizing cultural experience is associated with the works of E. Sapir. Sapir understood language primarily as a strictly organized system, all of whose components - such as sound composition, grammar, vocabulary - are connected by strict hierarchical relationships. The connection between the components of the system of a single language is built according to its own internal laws, as a result of which it turns out to be impossible to project the system of one language onto the system of another without distorting the meaningful relationships between the components. Understanding linguistic relativity precisely as the impossibility of establishing component-by-component correspondences between systems of different languages, Sapir introduced the term “incommensurability” of languages. The linguistic systems of individual languages ​​not only capture the content of cultural experience in different ways, but also provide their speakers with diverging ways of understanding reality and ways of perceiving it. Here's a quote from Sapir's article: Status of linguistics as a science(1928): “The “real world” is largely unconsciously constructed on the basis of the linguistic habits of a particular social group. Two different languages ​​are never so similar that they can be considered a means of expressing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are different worlds, and not at all the same world with different labels attached to it... We see, hear and generally perceive the world around us exactly this way and not otherwise, mainly due to the fact that that our choice in interpreting it is determined by the linguistic habits of our society."

The intralinguistic capabilities of the system, which allow members of the linguistic community to receive, store and transmit knowledge about the world, are largely associated with the inventory of formal, “technical” means and techniques that the language has - the inventory of sounds, words, grammatical structures, etc. Therefore, Sapir's interest in studying the causes and forms of linguistic diversity is understandable: for many years he was engaged in field research of Indian languages, he owns one of the first genealogical classifications of the languages ​​of North America. Sapir also proposed principles of morphological classification of languages ​​that were innovative for his time, taking into account the degree of complexity of a word, ways of expressing grammatical categories (affix, function word, etc.), the admissibility of alternations and other parameters. Understanding what can and cannot exist in language as a formal system allows us to get closer to understanding linguistic activity as a cultural phenomenon.

The most radical views on the “picture of the speaker’s world” as a result of the action of linguistic mechanisms of conceptualization were expressed by B. Whorf. It is Whorf who owns the term “principle of linguistic relativity,” introduced by direct and deliberate analogy with A. Einstein’s principle of relativity. Whorf compared the linguistic picture of the world of the American Indians (Hopi, as well as Shawnee, Paiute, Navajo and many others) with the linguistic picture of the world of speakers of European languages. In contrast to the stark contrast to the vision of the world enshrined in Indian languages, such as Hopi, the differences between European languages ​​seem insignificant, which gave Whorf grounds to unite them into the group of “standard average European languages” (SAE).

The tool for conceptualization according to Whorf is not only the formal units identified in the text - such as individual words and grammatical indicators - but also the selectivity of linguistic rules, i.e. how certain units can be combined with each other, which class of units is possible and which is not possible in a particular grammatical structure, etc. On this basis, Whorf proposed to distinguish between open and hidden grammatical categories: the same meaning can be expressed regularly in one language using a fixed set of grammatical indicators, i.e. to be represented by an open category, and in another language to be detected only indirectly, by the presence of certain prohibitions, and in this case we can talk about a hidden category. Thus, in English, the category of definiteness/indeterminacy is open and is regularly expressed through the choice of a definite or indefinite article. One can consider the presence of an article and, accordingly, the presence of an open category of definiteness in a language as evidence that the idea of ​​definiteness is an important element of the worldview for speakers of a given language. However, it is incorrect to assume that the meaning of definiteness cannot be expressed in a language where there are no articles. In Russian, for example, a noun in final stressed position can be understood both as definite and indefinite: word old man in a sentence An old man looked out of the window can designate both a well-defined old man, who has already been discussed, and some unknown old man who first appears in the field of view of the speakers. Accordingly, in translating a given sentence into an article language, depending on the broader context, both a definite and an indefinite article are possible. However, in the initial unstressed position the noun is understood only as a definite: the word old man in a sentence The old man looked out of the window can only designate a specific and most likely previously mentioned old man and, accordingly, can be translated into article language only with a definite article.

Whorf should also be considered the founder of research on the role of linguistic metaphor in the conceptualization of reality. It was Whorf who showed that the figurative meaning of a word can influence how its original meaning functions in speech. Whorf's classic example is the English phrase empty gasoline drums"empty gasoline tanks." Whorf, who trained as a chemical engineer and worked for an insurance company, noticed that people underestimate the fire hazard of empty tanks, despite the fact that they may contain highly flammable gasoline vapors. Whorf sees the linguistic reason for this phenomenon as follows. English word empty(as, we note, is its Russian analogue adjective empty) as an inscription on a tank implies the understanding of “the absence in the container of the contents for which this container is intended to store,” however, this word also has a figurative meaning: “meaning nothing, having no consequences” (cf. Russian expressions empty chores,empty promises). It is this figurative meaning of the word that leads to the fact that the situation with empty tanks is “modeled” in the minds of the carriers as safe.

In modern linguistics, it is the study of metaphorical meanings in ordinary language that has turned out to be one of those areas that inherit the “Whorfian” traditions. Research conducted by J. Lakoff, M. Johnson and their followers since the 1980s has shown that linguistic metaphors play an important role not only in poetic language, they also structure our everyday perception and thinking. However, modern versions of Whorfianism interpret the principle of linguistic relativity primarily as a hypothesis in need of empirical testing. In relation to the study of linguistic metaphor, this means that the comparative study of the principles of metaphorization in a large corpus of languages ​​of different areas and different genetic backgrounds comes to the fore in order to find out to what extent metaphors in a particular language are the embodiment of the cultural preferences of a particular linguistic community, and which ones reflect the universal biopsychological properties of a person. J. Lakoff, Z. Kövecses and a number of other authors have shown, for example, that in such a field of concepts as human emotions, the most important layer of linguistic metaphorization is based on universal ideas about the human body, its spatial location, anatomical structure, physiological reactions, etc. . It was found that in a variety of languages ​​studied - areally, genetically and typologically distant - emotions are described according to the model “the body as a container of emotions”. At the same time, specific linguistic, intracultural variations are possible in, for example, which part of the body (or the entire body) is “responsible” for a given emotion, in the form of which substance (solid, liquid, gaseous) certain feelings are described. For example, anger and anger in many languages, including Russian (V.Yu. and Yu.D. Apresyan, a number of other authors), are metaphorically associated with the high temperature of the liquid-like contents - boiled with anger/rage, rage bubbles, vented his anger etc. Moreover, the seat of anger, like most other emotions in the Russian language, is the chest, cf. boiled in my chest. In Japanese (K. Matsuki), anger is “located” not in the chest, but in a part of the body called hara"abdominal cavity, inside": to get angry in Japanese means to feel that hara ga tatsu"the inside rises."

Even in closely related and typologically similar languages ​​of the “Central European standard”, when comparing metaphorical systems, the dissimilarity of individual details of the picture of the world within one conceptual area becomes noticeable. Thus, in Russian, as in English and many other European languages, the metaphor of sensory perception through vision is widely used to describe mental processes and actions - I see often means “I understand”: Now I see that this is a difficult task; We need to look at this issue from a different angle; point of view; belief system; despite.../despite(i.e. "not taking into account"), etc. In general, the metaphorical systems of the languages ​​of the “Central European standard” reveal much more similarities than differences, which indicates the legitimacy of their unification under this name. Nevertheless, differences occur even in fairly close languages. For example, in Russian the motives for an action can be hidden(inaccessible to observation and, therefore, according to the logic of the metaphor, inaccessible to knowledge or understanding). English uses an adjective of Latin origin in this meaning ulterior, originally meaning “on the other side, behind something.” At the same time, in order to find out about the true reasons for an action, in Russian you need to ask What's behind it??, and in English What lies behind it? (literally “What lies behind this?”).

Proposed more than 60 years ago, the hypothesis of linguistic relativity still retains the status of just a hypothesis. Its supporters often claim that it does not need any evidence, because the statement recorded in it is an obvious fact; opponents tend to believe that it can neither be proven nor disproved (which, from the point of view of the strict methodology of scientific research, takes it beyond the boundaries of science; however, these criteria themselves have been called into question since the mid-1960s). In the range between these polar assessments lie more and more sophisticated and numerous attempts to empirically test this hypothesis.

In particular, in the last two decades, these attempts have been actively made on the basis of the names of colors and shades in the languages ​​of the world. On the one hand, the set of color terms in the languages ​​of the world does not coincide, i.e. the continuum is broken down by each language in its own way; on the other hand, the neurophysiological basis of color perception is universal and quite well studied. The strictly universalistic approach to this problem goes back to the now classic work of B. Berlin and P. Kay Basic color terms (Basic Color Terms, 1969), in which 11 so-called basic colors were identified and it was shown that color naming systems in the world’s languages ​​obey a single hierarchy: if a language has only two basic color names, then it is black and white, if there are three, then it is black and white and red. Further, as the number of words denoting basic colors in the language increases, green and yellow are added to the list, then successively blue, brown and, finally, a group of four colors - purple, pink, orange and gray. Currently, several hundred languages ​​are already involved in research on color naming, including the languages ​​of Central America, Africa, New Guinea, etc. As the empirical base of these studies expands, it becomes clear that the universal scheme proposed by Berlin and Kay does not account for the full variety of facts, and in the later work of these authors, as well as in the work of others, there are many concessions to linguistic relativism. Since the late 1980s, significant results in the study of linguistic conceptualization of color have been obtained by the American researcher R. McLaury. According to the vantage theory he developed, the categorization of color is determined by what native speakers consider more significant - the similarity of a certain shade with similar ones or the opposition of this shade “by contrast.”

MacLaury's work, like many other studies aimed at empirically testing the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, is based on data from psycholinguistic experiments conducted taking into account modern requirements for careful design of the experiment and subsequent statistical verification of the reliability of the results. Thus, MacLaury’s experiments with speakers of more than 100 languages ​​of Central America, and later South Africa, were carried out using the so-called Munsell colorings - a standard set of 330 colored chips, known in psychology, each of which is assigned a cell of the same color in the classification grid. During the experiment, a native speaker first gave the color of each chip a name; at the next stage, the native speaker was asked for each name to mark the chips that most accurately corresponded to each of the names, i.e. highlight the most “exemplary” specimens of each color. And finally, at the third stage, the speaker was asked to place a grain of rice on all those cells of the table, the color of which can be designated by a given word, for example, on all the cells whose color the subject considers “red”, etc. The experiments were repeated both with the same carrier at certain intervals and with different carriers. Conclusions were made based on quantitative measurements of a number of parameters, including how compactly the grains lay around the cells recognized as exemplary representatives of a given color.

Psycholinguistic experiments are also used to empirically test the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis in relation to the categorizing ability of grammatical categories. One of the possible approaches to solving this problem was proposed in the works of J. Lucy, who studied the influence of grammatical categories on the linguistic behavior of native English speakers and speakers of one of the Mayan languages ​​(Yucatecan Maya, widespread in Mexico). In the Mayan languages, unlike English, quantitative constructions are built using so-called classifiers - a special class of service units that are attached to the numeral, showing which class the countable items belong to (partially similar functions are performed by underlined words in Russian expressions three hundred head of cattle, fifteen eggs or twenty students). Like many other languages ​​of the world that use classifiers, Mayan nouns are divided into classes based on features such as size, shape, gender, and several others. In order to express the meaning of the type “three trees”, the construction “three-piece-long-cylindrical-shaped tree” is constructed, “three boxes” appear as “three-piece-rectangular-shaped cardboard”, etc. Experiments by J. Lucy showed that nouns with an object meaning evoke different associations among English and Mayan speakers: English speakers associate the names of physical objects primarily with their shape and size, and Mayan speakers associate them primarily with the substance of which they are composed , or the material from which they are made. J. Lucy explains this difference by the fact that classifiers are “responsible” for shape and size in Maya and the object itself is conceptualized in the Mayan picture of the world as an amorphous fragment of some substance. This and other similar experiments are interpreted in the works of J. Lucy as evidence of the influence of the language system on mental processes.

Whorfian traditions can also be traced in a number of modern works on pragmatics - a linguistic discipline that studies real processes of speech interaction. First of all, this relates to the works of M. Silverstein, who studied the ability of speakers to understand the grammatical categories they use (Silverstein proposed to call this area of ​​research “metapragmatics”). How an ordinary native speaker is not a linguist! - able to explain a particular use of a grammatical category or construction depends, as Silverstein found, on a number of factors. For example, it is important how much the grammatical meaning is related to objective reality, and how much to the specific situation of verbal communication. Thus, the category of number, associated with the directly observable parameter of plurality, turns out to be much more “transparent” for the speaker than such a category as mood, because it is not so easy to explain, for example, why the Russian subjunctive mood ( I would go) can be used to express such different purposes of speech influence as a request (Would you go get some bread?!), wish ( If only he could go get the bread himself!), message about an unfulfilled condition ( If you had gone for bread in the morning, we could have already sat down to dinner).

The study of the relationships between the peculiarities of the linguistic structure and cultures of different peoples is given significant attention in the works of A. Vezhbitskaya, published in the 1990s. In particular, she presented numerous empirical arguments in favor of the non-universality of the principles of linguistic communication, which were considered in the 1970s and 1980s as “communicative postulates” that define ways of conducting conversations common to all languages.

“Pragmatic” categories, i.e. those, the correct use of which is subject to specific conditions of speech communication, can be integrated into the language system in different ways. For example, in Japanese, verbs have special grammatical forms of politeness, and in order to use them correctly, you need to know what the relative position of the interlocutors is in the social hierarchy. This grammatical category is obligatory, i.e. each verb must be framed as either "neutral" in politeness, "modest", or "respectful". The distinction has a similar pragmatic function Are you Wharf B.L. Grammatical categories. – In the book: Principles of typological analysis of languages ​​of different systems. M., 1972
Lakoff J., Johnson M. Metaphors we live by. – In the book: Language and modeling of social interaction. M., 1987
Lakoff J. Thinking in the mirror of classifiers. – New in linguistics, vol. XXIII. M., 1988
Bulygina T.V., Krylov S.A. Hidden categories. – Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary. M., 1990
Sapir E. Selected works on linguistics and cultural studies. M., 1993
Apresyan Yu.D. Integral description of language and system lexicography. M., 1995
Bulygina T.V., Shmelev A.D. Linguistic conceptualization of the world(based on Russian grammar). M., 1997
Alpatov V.M. History of linguistic teachings. M., 1998



Determinism (from Latin, determine - I determine) - recognition of the causality of all phenomena; According to linguistic determinism, language determines (determines) the structure of thinking and the way of knowing the world.

The belief that people see the world differently - through the prism of their native language - underlies the theory of "linguistic relativity" by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. They sought to prove that the differences between “Middle European” (Western) culture and other cultural worlds (in particular, the culture of the North American Indians) are due to differences in languages.

For example, in European languages, it is impossible to name a certain amount of a substance in one word - a two-term construction is needed, where one word indicates the quantity (shape, container), and the second indicates the substance itself (content): a glass of water, a bucket of water, a puddle of water. Whorf believes that in this case, language itself forces speakers to distinguish between form and content, thus imposing on them a special vision of the world. According to Whorf, this gave rise to such a characteristic category for Western culture as the opposition of form and content.

Unlike the "Central European standard", in the language of the Hopi Indians, the names of substances are at the same time the names of vessels, containers of various forms in which these substances reside; Thus, the two-term construction of European languages ​​corresponds here to a one-word designation. This is related to the irrelevance of the opposition “form - content” in Hopi culture.

Whorf, further, found a connection between the way objective time is conveyed in systems of verb tenses in European languages, and such features of European culture as dating, calendars, chronicles, chronicles, diaries, clocks, as well as calculating wages based on time spent, physical representations about the time. Whorf explained the obviousness of Newton's concepts of space, time, and matter by the fact that they were given by “Middle European” culture and language (New in Linguistics. Issue 1, I960, 135 - 168).

However, it is difficult to fully prove this “surprisingly beautiful” hypothesis, as Yu. D. Apresyan wrote about the theory of linguistic relativity. For an experimental approach to the hypothesis, see below.

Experimental tests of linguistic determinism*. In search of evidence for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, they often write about the differences between languages ​​in the division of the color continuum: in some languages ​​there are seven main (one-word) names for the colors of the rainbow (for example, Russian, Belarusian), in others - six (English, German), where - then - five, in the Shona language (Rhodesia) - four, in the Bassa language (Liberia) - two.

You can compare these divisions of the spectrum like this:

In one experiment, Shona-speaking and native English-speaking subjects were asked to name differently colored strips of paper. It turned out that colors that have one-word designations in their native language are perceived by the subjects as “pure”, and names for them are found faster than for colors that are transitional between “pure” colors.

So, for the yellow-green zone of the spectrum, Shona speakers were looking for a need?

Shsep's notation) faster than English speakers, who were forced to formulate the complex notation - yellow-green.

However, it is still difficult to consider such results as evidence of the dependence of cognitive processes on the lexical structure of language. At best, such experiments are interpreted as confirmation of a “weak version” of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: “it is easier for speakers of some languages ​​to talk and think about certain things because the language itself makes this task easier for them” (Slobin, Green 1976, 203 - 204). However, in other experiments with color designations, even such dependencies were not confirmed. Psychologists have come to the conclusion that in cognitive processes in the relationship between language and mental activity, the decisive intermediate variable is the activity of the cognitive person (Cole and Scribner 1977, 65).

It has been suggested that the dependence of thinking on language can be found in grammar rather than in vocabulary, since grammar is the sphere of obligatory meanings, “forcibly” and quite early known to all speakers (of a given language).

In the Navajo language (North America), verbs denoting different types of manipulation (Lie 1, “hold in hands 1, transfer,” “shift”, “handle 1, etc.) are conjugated differently depending on the form of the object of action .

Let's say the speaker asks to give him some object. If it is a flexible and long object, such as a piece of rope, then the verb should be in the A form; if the object is long and hard, for example a stick, then the verb is put in the B form; and if the object is flat and flexible, like cloth or paper, then the shape is C. This interesting grammatical difference has led researchers to theorize that Navajo children should learn to recognize the "shape" cues of an object earlier than English-speaking children.*

In the experiment, children were presented with three objects of different colors or shapes, and the child had to choose from these three objects the two most, in his opinion, “suitable” for each other. Here are some of these triplets: 1) blue rope, yellow rope, blue stick; 2) yellow stick, blue stick, blue cube; 3) yellow cube, yellow cloth, blue cube, etc. Children speaking

Navajo groups grouped objects by shape more often than English-speaking children.

Apparently, this allows us to recognize some influence of language on the development of cognitive processes. However, in both the Navajo and English groups, there was an increase in the perceptual salience of shape relative to color with age. If, in children’s activities and games, toys or objects were constantly used that required their shape to be taken into account, then the ability to distinguish shape

developed quite early and regardless of language. Researchers come to the conclusion that “language is only one of several ways in which a child can comprehend certain properties of the world” (Slobin and Green 1976, 214).

In experiments, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis loses its generalized philosophical impressiveness. We are no longer talking about different pictures of the world, seen through the prism of different languages, but about the participation of language in the processes of perception, memorization, and reproduction. It remains unclear how the results of such

individual studies can be correlated with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as a whole (for details, see: Frumkina 1980, 198 - 204). Nevertheless, the question of the degree and nature of the influence of a people’s language on its culture continues to excite the human mind. The high level of content of language, the participation of language in basic cognitive processes, the close connection between language and various forms of social consciousness (a connection that in some cases seems to be a perfect fusion, as, for example, in the art of speech) - this is the objective basis of these ongoing searches.

In search of linguistic and cultural correspondences. Modern linguistics, addressing the problem of “language and culture,” seeks to move away from one-sided determinism and not decide “what is primary and what is secondary”—language or culture.

The determinism of language and culture is most likely mutual. Apparently, it is more reliable to look for certain correlations (correspondences) between the structures of language and culture, and over a wide geographical and historical space. In line with such searches, B. M. Gasparov proposed the concept of a “linguocultural type,” which can be identified at the intersection of facts of social structure, everyday behavior, art and language characteristics (Gasparov 1977).

In the spirit of Whorf's terminology, two such types are called by the author the Western European Standard (WES) and the Eastern European Standard (WES). WES languages ​​are defined by Gasparov as “relational”; they are characterized by a clear boundary between grammar and vocabulary and a more abstract presentation of information in the utterance. VES languages ​​(including Russian) are “descriptive” (descriptive) languages; here the grammar is closer to vocabulary; the abundance of intermediate lexical and grammatical categories contributes to a more specific transmission of information (cf. the figurativeness of the Slavic verb form). According to Gasparop, the features of the VES are consistent with its middle position between the postal (Asian) and Western linguistic and cultural types. Western-type cultures are characterized by the ease of mastering writing, the accessibility of perceiving any texts and creating new texts. This is due to the fact that the structure of Western languages ​​is well adapted to the abstract type of message transmission, for which the contact of the speaker with the addressee is unimportant. The grammar here kind of models the situation of writing a text. Speech is structured in such a way that it can be understood without relying on a specific, directly perceived communication situation; it is not focused on a specific addressee. The abstract nature of message transmission is expressed in the fact that in such languages ​​the grammatical categories of social orientation (for example, the category of politeness), categories of verbal aspect and method of action are weakened. But categories are grammatically developed that indicate the external (temporal, spatial) coordinates of the reported event (categories of time, person). The East Asian (“traditional”) type of culture, which is characterized by a limited spread of writing, corresponds to the structure of the language in which each sentence contains a grammatical characteristic of the situation of oral communication, where all components of the communicative act are important: the nature of the contact of the speakers, their social status and relationships, specific details

the course of action, the modal plan and the actual division of the sentence.

Gasparov sees the dependence between certain features of the structure of a language and the nature of written culture as follows: the abundance of sound alternations in morphemes (such as friend - friends - friendly) facilitates the isolation of phonemes, and this contributes to the early creation of a letter writing, which, due to its simplicity (in comparison with hieroglyphic writing ) leads to the widespread spread of written culture.

Answer 37: Sociolinguistics: tasks, goals and methods.

SOCIOLINGUISTICS, a branch of linguistics that studies language in connection with the social conditions of its existence.

By social conditions we mean a set of external circumstances in which a language actually functions and develops: the society of people using a given language, the social structure of this society, differences between native speakers in age, social status, level of culture and education, place of residence, as well as differences in their speech behavior depending on the communication situation.

The task of sociolinguistics is not only to study the reflection in language of various social phenomena and processes, but also to study the role of language among social. factors determining the functioning and evolution of society. Thus, sociolinguistics studies the whole range of problems that reflect the two-way nature of the connections between language and society.

Problems of sociolinguistics. The main goals of sociolinguistics are to study how people who make up a particular society use language, and how changes in the society in which the language exists affect the development of the language. These goals correspond to two cardinal sociolinguistic problems - the problem of social differentiation of language and the problem of social conditioning of language development.

The original motivation of sociolinguistics was clearly formulated more than ten years ago: “...to show the systematic covariation of linguistic and social structure, and perhaps causation in one direction or the other.” This task led, as we will see, to a correlational approach, which assumes that linguistic and social structure are separate, distinguishable entities, partly already described by the “parent” disciplines - linguistics and sociology. It soon became clear, however, that the original definition was much more ambiguous than it initially seemed, and that there are at least two significantly different approaches to describing the socially determined use of language.

The first of them, properly called sociolinguistics, aims to include such social data that would strengthen the models of descriptive linguistics and give them a more general character, i.e. This approach is fundamentally linguistic and is associated with expanding the scope of linguistics beyond the sentence towards grammars of speaker-listener interaction. We will see below that a strictly sociolinguistic approach turns out to be, paradoxically, “self-liquidating”, since its success will be absolute when it is accepted as the norm by all linguists.

The second approach, the sociology of language, has broader interdisciplinary goals: the integration of linguistic and social structures in the form of some sign theory, combining linguistics with the social sciences through the study of how signs are used in the context of social life. This understanding of linguistics itself was anticipated by Saussure’s semiology, and later by K. Pike’s attempt to create an “integrated theory of human behavior.” A very broad definition was proposed by R. Kjolseth: “The sociology of language can be considered as an integrated, interdisciplinary, multi-method and multi-level approach to the study of the natural, developing in. a certain sequence and linguistic behavior determined by the social situation.”

Linguistic relativity hypothesis suggests that the structure of a language influences the worldview and beliefs of its speakers, as well as their cognitive processes. Linguistic relativity is commonly known as Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. There are two formulations of this hypothesis:

1. Strict version: Language determines thinking, and, accordingly, linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories.
2. Soft version: along with linguistic categories, thinking is formed by the influence of traditions and some types of non-linguistic behavior.

The term "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis" is essentially a misnomer, since Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf were never co-authors and never claimed their ideas as scientific hypotheses. The emergence of the strict and soft versions of the hypothesis is also a later innovation: although Sapir and Whorf never intentionally made such a distinction, both strict and soft descriptions of the principle of linguistic relativity can be found in their work.

The idea of ​​linguistic relativity (or linguistic relativism) was formulated in its main outlines in the works of 19th-century thinkers such as Wilhelm Humboldt, who believed that language is the embodiment of the spirit of a nation. At the beginning of the 20th century, representatives of the American school of anthropology, led by Franz Boas and Edward Sapir, approached this hypothesis, but it was Sapir who criticized linguistic determinism more often than others in his works. Sapir's student, Benjamin Lee Whorf, was one of the most active proponents of this theory; he published his work on the impact linguistic differences have on human cognition and behavior. Harry Hoyger, one of Sapir's students, himself coined the term "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis".

A rigorous version of linguistic relativistic theory was developed in the early 1920s by the German linguist Leo Weisgerber.

Whorf's principle of linguistic relativism was reformulated in the form of a scientific hypothesis by psychologist Roger Brown and linguist Eric Lenneberg, who conducted experiments to find out whether participants' color perception depended on how colors were classified in their native languages. As the study of the universal nature of language and cognition came into focus in the 1960s, linguists lost interest in the idea of ​​linguistic relativism. In the late 1980s, representatives of the new school of linguistic relativism, studying the implications that differences in linguistic categorization of cognition entail, were able to provide widespread experimental support for non-deterministic versions of the hypothesis.

Some effects of linguistic relativity appeared only in a few semantic domains, although they were generally quite weak. Currently, most linguists take a restrained position in relation to linguistic relativism: they support the idea that language influences certain types of cognitive processes, albeit in non-obvious ways, but other processes are themselves subjects in relation to universal factors. Research has focused on discovering these pathways of influence and determining the extent to which language influences thinking.

The principle of linguistic relativism and the relationship between language and thought have been of interest to various disciplines, from philosophy to psychology and anthropology, and have also served as a source of inspiration for literary works and the creation of artificial languages.

Question of definition and discussion of the problem

The concept of linguistic relativism suggests that cognitive processes, such as thinking and learning, can be influenced by the categories and patterns that language offers to humans. Empirical research on the issue is associated mainly with the names of Benjamin Whorf, who worked on this topic in the 1930s, and his teacher Edward Sapir, who was not actively involved in research on this topic. Whorf's work became the focus of empirical research in psychology in the mid-20th century. The tradition of calling the linguistic relativism hypothesis the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been criticized as a factual misrepresentation, since Sapir and Whorf did not actually formulate a hypothesis that could be tested experimentally, and also because it remains unclear to what extent Sapir actually subscribed to the theory of the influence of language on thinking. Currently, researchers, preferring to use Whorf's terminology, call it the principle of linguistic relativism. This formulation makes it clear that Sapir and Whorf were not the only, or even the first, scientists to theorize about the relationship between language and thought.

Linguistic determinism

The main stumbling block in the discussion of linguistic relativism is the problem of the correlation between language and thinking. The strongest form of correlation is linguistic determinism, which assumes that language completely determines all possible cognitive processes of an individual. This view is sometimes attributed to Benjamin Whorf and Ludwig Wittgenstein, but there is still no consensus as to whether these scholars actually espoused deterministic views about the relationship between language and thought. Linguistic determinism is also sometimes described as the "hard Sapir–Whorf hypothesis", while other forms of the proposed correlation are described as the "soft Sapir–Whorf hypothesis". The idea of ​​a soft and strict version of Whorf's principle of linguistic relativism is a misunderstanding propagated by Stuart Chase, whom Whorf viewed as "totally incompetent and not sufficiently educated to deal with such a theory." Neither Sapir nor Whorf ever even proposed a distinction between the hard and soft hypotheses. The linguistic determinism hypothesis is currently unaccepted, but weaker forms of correlation are still actively studied, and experimental evidence for this correlation is often published.

Linguistic relativism as an object of scientific and philosophical controversy

The problem of the relationship between thought and language is relevant to many significant philosophical, psychological, linguistic and anthropological debates. The main controversial question is whether higher mental functions are largely universal and innate, or whether they are primarily the result of learning and are therefore subject to cultural and social processes that vary depending on place and time. Universalist approach assumes that all people have a certain set of basic abilities and the variability provided by cultural differences can be neglected. The human brain, according to this approach, is viewed as a biological construct; therefore, all people perceive and perceive the world based on certain general principles. They are expected to have similar or even identical underlying cognitive patterns. Constructivist approach, opposed to the universalist, suggests that the properties of the human psyche and the general ideas with which a person operates are largely influenced by the categories formed by society and learned in the process of socialization, and, therefore, are not constrained by many biological restrictions.

Sometimes this approach is also called idealistic: it assumes that human intellectual and mental abilities cannot in most cases be limited by materialistic, biological factors. In addition, this approach is also called relativistic, which indicates its relationship to cultural relativism, which assumes that different cultural groups have different conceptual schemes for perceiving the world.

Another controversy concerns the question of the relationship between language and thought. Some philosophers and psychologists tend to understand thinking as a form of internal speech, innate or acquired during language acquisition. Others understand thinking as experience and reason that appeared and exist independently of language. The philosophy of language discusses the problem of the relationship between language, knowledge and the external world, as well as the concept of truth. Some philosophers (for example, H. Putnam, J. Fodor, D. Davidson, D. Dennett) see the problem as follows: language gives names to what already exists in the objective world, and, as a consequence, this categorization is fundamentally not variable , but to some extent predetermined. Other philosophers (for example, L. Wittgenstein, W. Quine, J. Searle, M. Foucault) believe that human categorization and conceptualization are learned and fundamentally subject to chance; objects in the world can be classified in many ways, which gives rise to many different ways to describe and understand the same phenomenon.

Philosophers also hold different points of view on the question of whether language is primarily a tool for describing and referring to objects that exist in the objective world, or whether it is a system that creates mental representations of the world that can be distributed between people. Since the question of the connection between thought and language is central to these debates, the problem of linguistic relativism has received the attention not only of linguists and psychologists, but also of sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, literary scholars and political scientists.

Story

The idea of ​​a connection between language and thinking goes back to ancient civilizations. Plato's famous debates against the Sophists, such as Gorgias, who believed that the physical world could not be known in any way other than through language. Plato, on the contrary, believed that the world consists of immanent eternal ideas, and that language, in order to be true, must try to reflect these ideas as accurately as possible. Expanding on Plato, St. Augustine, for example, believed that language is nothing more than labels that label pre-existing concepts, a position that remained prevalent throughout the Middle Ages. But others, such as Roger Bacon, believed that language was nothing more than a veil hiding eternal truths from real human perception. For Immanuel Kant, language was just one of several tools through which people understand the world.

Philosophers of German Romanticism

In the late 17th and early 19th centuries, the idea of ​​the existence of different national characters or "Volksgeister" of different ethnic groups was the driving force behind German Romantic philosophy and the emerging ideologies of ethnic nationalism. In 1820, Wilhelm Humboldt linked the study of languages ​​to the national romantic program, proposing the following point of view: language is the fabric of thought. Thoughts appear as part of an internal dialogue, which is subject to the same rules of grammar as the native language of the thinker. This view was part of a larger picture in which the national worldview, the "Weltanschauung", was accurately reflected in the grammar. Humboldt insisted that inflectional languages ​​such as German, English and other Indo-European languages ​​are the most perfect, which explains the dominant position of their speakers in relation to speakers of less perfect languages.

Franz Boas and Edward Sapir

The idea that some languages ​​are inherently superior to others, and that the use of primitive languages ​​means the intellectual poverty of their speakers, was widespread in the early 20th century. American linguist William Dwight, for example, actively fought for the destruction of the languages ​​of the indigenous peoples of America, insisting that their speakers were savages and it would be better to prohibit them from using their native dialects and teach them English so that they would adopt a civilized way of life.

The first anthropologist and linguist to challenge this position was the German-educated Franz Boas. During his geographical explorations in northern Canada, he became captivated by the lives of the local peoples and decided to become an ethnographer. In contrast to Humboldt, Boas always insisted on the equality of all cultures and languages, on the fact that there is simply no such thing as a primitive language, and on the fact that all languages ​​are capable of expressing the same content, although they do so through different means. . Boas believed that languages ​​are an integral part of culture: he was one of the first to express the idea that the ethnographer must know the language of the culture he is studying, and must also document folklore, myths and legends in the original language. Boas's student Edward Sapir returned to Humboldtian ideas: language held the keys to understanding different national worldviews. In his writings, he expressed the following point of view: due to radical differences in grammatical systems, no two languages ​​in the world are similar enough to each other to provide a perfect translation. Sapir also believed that language reflects reality in different ways, and it follows that speakers of different languages ​​will perceive it differently. On the other hand, Sapir explicitly rejected the strict concept of linguistic determinism. Sapir was convinced that the connections between language and culture are neither pervasive nor particularly deep, if they exist at all:

It is easy to show that language and culture are not really related. Completely different languages ​​are united by culture, closely related languages, even one language divided into dialects can function within different cultures.

Sapir shared the results of his observations about the speakers of living languages: nothing indicates that “a common language cannot serve as the basis for the creation of a common culture, while geographical, physical and economic determining factors are not common.”

Although Sapir never conducted detailed research in this area or directly explained exactly how languages ​​influence mental processes, some tenets of (perhaps soft) linguistic relativism are integral to Sapir's understanding of the nature of language and influenced his student Benjamin Lee Whorf. Turning to the question of the influence of Humboldt or Friedrich Nietzsche, it must be said that some European thinkers developed similar ideas to those expressed by Sapir and Whorf, but by and large they worked in isolation from each other. Considered outstanding in Germany from the early 1920s until the 1960s were the strict relativistic theories of Leo Weisgerber and his key concept of a “linguocentric world,” mediating between external reality and the forms given by language, in its own special ways for each language.

At the same time, opponents such as Eric Lenneberg, Noam Chomsky, and Steven Pinker criticized Whorf for being unclear about how he believed language affects thinking and for not providing reliable evidence for his conjectures. Most of his arguments were presented in the form of examples that were anecdotal or speculative in nature. Whorf's proofs, in their view, were attempts to show how "exotic" features of grammar were related to worldview.

Among the most common examples of linguistic relativism offered by Whorf is this: Native languages ​​have many words for a concept that is described by only one word in English and other European languages. (Whorf uses the acronym CEC, referring to the fairly similar grammatical structures of well-studied European languages, as opposed to the greater variety of less-studied languages). One of Whorf's examples of evidence for the existence of linguistic determinism is the supposed greater number of words for snow in the Inuit language. Another of Whorf's examples is the word for water in the Hopi language: a separate word for drinking water in a container and a separate word for water flowing along a natural channel. These examples of polysemy prove, firstly, that in native languages ​​sometimes more subtle semantic gradations and differences are formed than in European languages, and secondly, that direct translation from one language to another, even when it comes to such seemingly basic concepts like water or snow are not always possible.

Another example that Whorf uses to show that language influences behavior comes from his day-to-day experience as a chemical engineer working for an insurance company. While inspecting a chemical plant, Whorf discovered that there were two storage areas for gasoline tanks - one for empty ones and one for full ones. Whorf further noted that none of the workers smoked in a room with full barrels, but no one objected to smoking in a room with empty barrels, although they were potentially much more dangerous due to the high concentration of flammable fumes. Whorf concluded that the reason was that the word "empty" was used to refer to the barrels, which caused workers to unconsciously regard them as harmless, although they may have been aware of the danger of explosion. This example was later criticized by Lenneberg: the single case does not demonstrate a causal connection between the use of the word "empty" and smoking, but is a typical example of a "vicious circle of logic". Steven Pinker, in Language as Instinct, ridiculed this example, arguing that it evidenced human shortsightedness rather than an unconscious perception of language. Whorf's most elaborate argument for the existence of linguistic relativism is the fundamental difference in the Hopi's understanding of time. He argued that, in contrast to English and other Central European languages, the Hopi language does not perceive the flow of time as a sequence of discrete, countable stages such as “three days” or “five years,” but rather as a single process. Accordingly, the Hopi language does not have nouns denoting periods of time as understood by SES speakers. He suggested that this understanding of time is fundamental to all aspects of Hopi culture and explains certain behavioral patterns. However, later Eckhart Malotki, who studied Hopi, claimed that he found no evidence for Whorf's claims either in communications with native speakers in the 1980s or in historical documents going back to the era before the conquest.

E. Malotki used evidence from archaeological information, calendars, historical documents, records of oral speech of contemporaries and came to the conclusion that there is no evidence that the Hopi conceptualize time in the way that Whorf described. Universalist scholars such as Steven Pinker often view Malotka's study as a definitive refutation of Whorf's claim about the Hopi, while relativist scholars such as John Lucy and Penny Lee have criticized the work for mischaracterizing Whorf's premises and for that the universalists adjusted Hopi grammar to the given parameters of analysis. Whorf died in 1941 at the age of 44 and left behind a significant body of unpublished work. His line of thought was further developed by linguists and anthropologists such as Harry Heuer and Dorothy Lee, both of whom went on to study the influence of language on ordinary thought. George Trager prepared Whorf's remaining works for publication. The most important event for the dissemination of Whorf's ideas to the general public was the publication in 1956 of his major works on linguistic relativism in a single volume entitled Language, Thought and Reality.

Eric Lenneberg

In 1953, psychologist Eric Lenneberg published a detailed critique of the approach to the problem that was fundamental to Sapir and Whorf. He criticized Whorf's examples from an objectivist view of language, taking the position that languages ​​are intended to reflect events in the real world and that although different languages ​​express these ideas in different ways, the meanings of such expressions and therefore the thoughts of the speaker must be the same. Lenneberg believed that when Whorf described in English how a Hopi speaker's understanding of time differs from an English speaker's understanding of time, he was actually translating the Hopi understanding of time into English and therefore disproving the existence of linguistic relativity. Lenneberg did not pay enough attention to the fact that for Whorf the question of the possibility of complete translation was not a fundamental question; he was rather interested in how the use of language affects the everyday behavior of people. Whorf's position was that while English speakers can understand how Hopi speakers think, they are not capable of thinking in the same way. Lenneberg's main criticism of Whorf's work was that his work never actually showed a cause-and-effect relationship between a linguistic phenomenon and its reflection in the field of behavior or thought, but only indicated that there should be such a connection. Together with his colleague Roger Brown, Lenneberg proposed that to prove the existence of this cause-and-effect relationship, it is necessary to trace a direct correlation between linguistic phenomena and behavior. They set out to prove or disprove the existence of linguistic relativism experimentally, and published their research in 1954. Since neither Sapir nor Whorf had ever actually put forward a hypothesis, Brown and Lenneberg formulated their hypothesis by identifying the two main principles of Whorf's main thesis. Firstly, “the world is perceived and known differently in different linguistic communities,” and secondly, “language is the basis for the formation of cognitive structures.” These two principles were later developed by Roger Brown as soft and hard formulations respectively.

Since Brown and Lenneberg believed that the objective reality reflected in language is the same for speakers of all languages, they decided to test how different languages ​​describe the same objective reality. Brown and Lenneberg conducted a series of experiments that looked at the codification of colors. In the first experiment, they found out whether English speakers found it easier to remember a color for which their language had a word than a color for which there was no word. This allowed them to correlate linguistic categorization directly with the non-linguistic task of recognizing and remembering colors. In the following experiment, speakers of two languages ​​that identify colors differently, English and Zuni, performed a recognition task. Thus, it was possible to determine whether the discrimination of color categories by people speaking different languages ​​affects their ability to recognize nuances within general color categories. Brown and Lenneberg did find that Zuni speakers who group green and blue into one color category have no problems recognizing and remembering those colors. Brown and Lenneberg's study began a tradition of exploring linguistic relativity through color terminology.

Universalist period

Lenneberg was one of the first cognitive scientists to begin developing a universalist theory of language, which was eventually formulated by Noam Chomsky in the form of universal grammar, successfully arguing that all languages ​​have one basic structure. The Chomskyan school also takes the view that linguistic structures are inherent in nature, and that what we perceive as differences between individual languages ​​- the knowledge acquired in the course of language learning - is just a superficial phenomenon that does not affect the cognitive processes that are universal for all people. This theory was the dominant paradigm in American linguistics from the 1960s until the 1980s, and the idea of ​​linguistic relativism fell into disfavor and even became an object of ridicule. As examples of the influence of universalist theory in the 1960s, we can mention the studies of Brent Berlin and Paul Kay. They developed Lenneberg's research on the codification of flower names. Berlin and Kay studied the formation of color terminology in languages ​​and found that there are very definite trends. For example, they realized that although different languages ​​have different systems of color terminology, some colors are still perceived by people more vividly than others. They demonstrated that in languages ​​that have few words for colors, it is possible to predict that they will be very specific colors, for example, if a language has only three words for colors, then it is likely that they will be black, white and red . The fact that seemingly random differences in the names of colors in different languages ​​could demonstrate the presence of universal linguistic patterns seemed to be a major argument against linguistic relativism.

The research has been criticized by relativists such as John Lucy, who argued that Berlin and Kay's conclusions were distorted by their insistence that color terms contain information only about colors. This, Lucy argues, causes them to turn a blind eye to instances where color terms contain other information that could be seen as examples of linguistic relativism. Other researchers of the universalist school, who were engaged in criticism of other versions of the concepts of linguistic relativism, often criticize certain thoughts and examples from Whorf's works. Today, many followers of the universalist school and its interpretation of thinking are still opposed to the idea of ​​linguistic relativism. For example, Steven Pinker in his book “Language as Instinct” argues that thinking is independent of language, and language itself is meaningless and in no way related to human thinking; we all think in a kind of metalanguage that precedes the emergence of any natural language. This is a special language of thinking, or “thought code”. Pinker criticized what he called "Whorf's radical position," telling his opponents that "the more you study Whorf's arguments, the less sense you see in them." Pinker and other universalists who oppose linguistic relativism have been criticized by relativists for misinterpreting Whorf's views and turning scientific controversy into a battle with straw men.

Fishman's "Whorfianism of the Third Type"

He defined the first as a “structure-centric” approach. Research in this approach begins by observing the structural features of language and then moves on to examine possible consequences for thinking and behavior. The first example of such research is Whorf's observations of differences in tense grammar between Hopi and English. More recent research in this vein was carried out by John Lucy, who described the use of grammatical number categories and number classifiers in the Yucatecan language. These studies have shown that Yucatecan speakers tend to categorize objects according to their material rather than their shape, as English speakers tend to do.

The second direction of research is the “domain” approach, when a separate semantic domain is selected and compared across different linguistic and cultural groups to discover correlations between the linguistic means that are used in the language to denote certain concepts and behavior. The main research in this area is the study of color terminology, although this area, as Lucy argued and researchers in this area themselves, for example Paul Kay, admitted, is not optimal for the study of linguistic relativism, since color perception, although it is the most developed area of ​​research Linguistic relativism, unlike other semantic areas, does not have close connections with the nervous system and is subject to universal restrictions. Another semantic area in which the fruitfulness of research into linguistic relativism has already been proven is space. Spatial categories are remarkably diverse across languages, and recent research has demonstrated how speakers rely on linguistic conceptualizations of space to perform many everyday tasks. A study conducted by Stephen Levinson and other cognitive scientists at the Max Planck Society reported three basic types of spatial categorization; many languages ​​use combinations of these, but some languages ​​have only one kind of spatial categorization, corresponding to differences in behavior (guugu-yimitir). For example, representatives of the Australian Guugu-Yimitir people use only absolute directions when describing spatial relationships - the location of all objects is described using absolute coordinates. A Guugu Yimitir speaker will say that the person is north of the house, while an English speaker will say that the person is in front of the house or to the left of the house, depending on the speaker's point of view. This difference allows Guugu Yimitir speakers to perform better on certain types of tasks, such as locating and describing positions in open space, while English speakers are better at tasks where they need to determine the location of objects relative to the speaker (for example, asking a Guugu speaker If he sets the round table with forks to the right of the plates and knives to the left, this will be incredibly difficult for him).

The third direction of research is the “behavioral” approach, which began with observations of different behavior of representatives of different linguistic groups and subsequent searches for possible reasons for this behavior in different linguistic systems. This approach was used by Whorf when he explained frequent chemical plant fires by using the word "empty" to refer to tanks that contained explosive vapors. One of the studies in this direction was organized by Bloom, who discovered that native Chinese speakers encountered unexpected difficulties when they had to answer questions in an experiment in which the facts did not correspond to reality. He subsequently concluded that this was due to the way inconsistencies with reality, such as the subjunctive mood, are grammatically marked in Chinese. However, other researchers believe that Bloom owes this result to an erroneous translation of the questionnaire he used. Another study in this area aimed to find out why Finnish factories experience more occupational accidents than similar Swedish factories. He concluded that cognitive differences between the use of prepositions in Swedish and cases in Finnish may have contributed to the fact that Swedish factories place more emphasis on the production process, while Finnish factories place more emphasis on individual workers.

Another well-known project exploring linguistic relativism is Daniel Everett's study of the Pirahã, the language of an endangered tribe living in Brazil. Everett discovered several features in Pirahã culture, which he suggested were based on rare linguistic features such as a lack of numbers and color names compared to other languages, and the absence of certain cases. Everett's conclusions about the exclusive status of the Pirahã were met with skepticism by other linguists. Some scientists, having subjected further analysis to the materials collected by Everett, argued that they did not confirm his conclusions. Critics argue that the lack of need for numbers and problems with color discrimination explain both the counting problems and the narrow range of color symbols. Recent research based on non-linguistic experiments with languages ​​with different grammatical properties (for example, languages ​​with countable classifiers or with different gender categories) has shown the impact this has on people. But experimental studies also suggest that this linguistic influence on thinking does not last long and quickly disappears after speakers of one language are immersed in the environment of another.

Linguistic relativism and the flower naming debate

The tradition of using the semantic domain of color names as an object of study in linguistic relativism dates back to 1953, when Lenneberg and Brown studied color terms of the Zuni language and the color memory of its speakers, as well as in the 1954 work of Brown and Lenneberg, when they studied the same in English speakers . These studies have shown that there is a certain correlation between the existence of names for individual colors and how easy it is for speakers of both languages ​​to remember those colors. The researchers concluded that the primary colors of the spectrum are more likely to receive distinct definitions in language than others, and this is not due to the effects of linguistic relativism. Berlin and Kay's 1969 work on color terminology concluded that there are universal typological principles for naming colors that are determined by biological factors, leaving little or no room for relativistic effects. This study became the source for many works devoted to the typological universals of color terminology. Some researchers, such as John Lucy, Barbara Sanders, and Stephen Levinson, have disputed Berlin and Kay's work: it does not prove that linguistic relativism in color naming is impossible, since their work makes a number of unfounded assumptions (for example, that all cultures do have a category of "color" that can be defined and compared with that of Indo-European languages), and they interpret the data they receive on the basis of these assumptions. Other researchers, such as Robert MacLaury, have continued to study the evolution of color terms in individual languages; MacLaughry wondered whether a complete inventory of basic color designations was possible. Like Berlin and Kay, MacLaury found that linguistic relativism does not play a significant role in this semantic area. He came to the same conclusion as them: this area is largely determined by the biological parameters of color perception.

Linguistic relativism outside of science

The linguistic relativism hypothesis has inspired many to think about the impact that conscious manipulation of language can have on thinking.

Therapy and self-development

Already while Sapir and Whorf were formulating the idea of ​​linguistic relativism, the Polish-American engineer Alfred Korzybski was independently developing his theory of general semantics in order to exploit the influence of language on thinking to maximize human cognitive abilities. Alfred Korzybski's concept was influenced by logical philosophy such as Principia Mathematica Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead, and was also significantly influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Although Alfred Korzybski was not familiar with the works of Sapir and Whorf, his train of thought had something in common with the ideas of Whorf's admirer Stuart Chase, who combined Whorf's interest in the relationship of culture and language with Korzybski's program in his popular work The Tyranny of Words. Independent of Whorf and Sapir, Korzybski described the basic principles of his theory as similar to a strict version of the linguistic relativism hypothesis.

Constructed languages

In their works, some authors, such as Ayn Rand or George Orwell, have shown how linguistic relativism can be used for political purposes. Rand's book describes a fictional communist society in which individualism has been destroyed by removing the word "I" from the language. In Orwell's book, an authoritarian state created the language "newspeak" to deprive people of the opportunity to think critically about government. Many were inspired by the possibility of creating new languages ​​that would enable new and perhaps better ways of thinking. An example of such languages ​​created to probe the human mind is Loglan, developed in detail by James Brown to test the hypothesis of linguistic relativism: whether thinking could be made more logical by using logical language.

Programming languages

The hypothesis of linguistic relativity in culture

Hypothesis plays a vital role in the process of establishing contact with aliens in the film Arrival (2016). According to the plot, a special form of written language allows heptopods to perceive the passage of time differently and actually see the past, present and future at the same time.

see also

Notes

1. Hill & Mannheim (1992)
2. Kennison, Shelia. Introduction to language development. - Los Angeles: Sage, 2013.
3. "The Sapir-Whorff hypothesis", in Hoijer 1954:92-105
4. Koerner, E.F.K. "Towards a full pedigree of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: from Locke to Lucy" Chapter in Pütz & Verspoor (2000:17)"
5. Wolf & Holmes (2011)
6. Lee, Penny (1996), "The Logic and Development of the Linguistic Relativity Principle", The Whorf Theory Complex: A Critical Reconstruction, John Benjamins Publishing, p. 84, ISBN 978-1556196195
7. Penny Lee. 1996. The Whorf Theory Complex: A Critical Reconstruction. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. p16
8. Ahearn, Laura Living language: an introduction to linguistic anthropology(1. publ. ed.), Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, p. 69, ISBN 9781405124416
9. Leavitt, John (2011), Linguistic Relativities: Language Diversity and Modern Thought, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-76782-8
10. McComiskey, Bruce. Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001.
11. Gumperz & Levinson 1997:2
12. Trabant, Jürgen."How relativistic are Humboldts "Weltansichten"?" chapter in Pütz & Verspoor (2000)
13. Seuren 1998:180
14. Seuren 1998:181
15. Edward Sapir & Morris Swadesh (1946) American Indian Grammatical Categories. Word 2:103-112. Reedited for Dell Hymes in Language in Culture and Society, Harper and Row, 1964:100-107.
16. Sapir 1921:213–4
17. Sapir 1921:215
18. Vygotsky, L. (1934/1986). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
19. Lucy & Wertsch 1987
20. Pula 1992
21. See Carroll, J. B. 1956. Language, Thought, and Reality; Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Published jointly by Technology Press of MIT, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., Chapman and Hall, Ltd., London, 7.
22. Regna Darnell. 1990. Edward Sapir: linguist, anthropologist, humanist. Berkeley: University of California Press. p380-81.
23. Pullum 1991
24. Lenneberg 1953
25. Whorf, B. L. “The relation of habitual thought and behavior to language” in Carroll (ed.) 1956
26. Lee 1991, Lee 1996, Leavitt 2011:179-187, Lucy 1992b:286, Lucy 1996:43, Dinwoodie 2006
27. Lakoff (1987)
28. Brown and Lenneberg, 1954:455
29. Brown and Lenneberg, 1954:457
30. D'Andrade, Roy G. The Development of Cognitive Anthropology 1995: 185
31. Gumperz & Levinson 1997:3 & 6
32. Berlin & Kay 1969
33. Gumperz & Levinson 1997:6
34. Lucy (1992a)
35. Pinker (1994:60)
36. Casasanto (2008), Lucy (1992a), Lakoff (1987)
37. Fishman, 1978
38. Fishman, 1982, p. 5
39. Seidner, Stanley S., Ethnicity, Language, and Power from a Psycholinguistic Perspective. Bruxelles: Center de recherche sur le pluralinguisme, 1982.
40. Gentner, Dedre. Individuation, relativity, and early word development // Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development / Dedre Gentner, Lera Boroditsky. - Cambridge University Press, 2001. - P. 215–256. - ISBN 978-0-521-59659-6.
41. Levinson, Stephen. Covariation between spatial language and cognition, and its implications for language learning // Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development / Melissa Bowerman and Stephen Levinson. - Cambridge University Press, 2001. - P. 566–588. - ISBN 978-0-521-59659-6.
42. Hickmann, Maya. The relativity of motion in first language acquisition // Space in Languages: Linguistic Systems and Cognitive Categories / Maya Hickmann and Stéphane Robert. - John Benjamins Publishing, 2006. - P. 281–308. - ISBN 978-90-272-9355-8.
43. Perlovsky, Leonid (2009). “Language and emotions: Emotional Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.” Neural Networks. 22 (5-6): 518-526.

E. Sapir says that people live not only in the material and social worlds, but also in the power of their language. Their “real world” is built on the basis of the linguistic habits of their social group. The worlds of different groups are different worlds, and not one with different linguistic labels hung on it. E. Sapir gives a simple example demonstrating how different languages ​​segment the world in different ways. Even such a simple aspect of reality as the falling of a stone, in the Nootka language, for example, is represented by a verb form corresponding to our expression “stone down.” In Chinese it is modeled by the expression “stone to fall.” In German and French, a stone is assigned a category of genus, in English - a definite or indefinite species, in the language of the Kwakiutl tribe from British Columbia it is indicated whether the person speaking about it sees or does not see the stone and to whom the stone is closer - to the speaker or to a third party, etc. d.

In cases where concepts and constructions from them arise on the basis of sensory models or describe them, as in the case of a falling stone, the difference in the verbal meaning of the concepts does not play a fundamental role for understanding reality, because the sensory model still remains the leading one, and due to The biological community of people is very similar in all cases. In those cases when the verbal model of reality is based only on other verbal constructions, it is obvious that they cannot but influence different understandings of the surrounding world they represent, which is observed among speakers of different languages.

B. Whorf (2003) even put forward the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, according to which people who speak different languages ​​perceive and comprehend the world differently, since cognitive differences are associated with linguistic differences (the hypothesis of linguistic determinism). B. Whorf (2003) writes:

We dismember the world, organize it into concepts and distribute meanings in one way and not another, mainly because we are participants in an agreement that prescribes such systematization. This agreement is valid for a specific speech community and is enshrined in the system of models of our language. ...Similar physical phenomena make it possible to create a similar picture of the Universe only if the language systems are similar or at least correlative. ...Languages ​​divide the world in different ways... Various broad generalizations of Western culture, such as time, speed, matter, are not essential for constructing a comprehensive picture of the Universe. ...Other categories associated with experiences of a different kind can also control cosmology, and they function, apparently, no worse than ours. Hopi, for example, can be called a timeless language [p. 209–214].

Many studies have been devoted to attempts to confirm or refute B. Whorf's theory. It must be noted, however, with regret that they mainly used a research object that was not entirely adequate for solving the task at hand - the study of the influence of concepts denoting different colors formed in different cultures on the subjects’ perception of color.

G. K. Triandis cites the results of studies by Lander, Erwin and Horowitz, in which, using Munsell color maps, the authors found that different cultures give different responses to the same color ranges. Color charts were presented to representatives of different cultures and asked them to identify all the color areas that they named, for example, “yellow.” Great similarities in results within each culture and differences between them were found. The central (focal) colors in the selected color ranges turned out to be largely similar. While the colors on the periphery varied depending on cultural background. The authors concluded that culturally determined differences are found in the perception of different colors, due, among other things, to the characteristics of language.

Considered classic experiments by B. Berlin and P. Kay (B. Berlin & P. ​​Kay, 1969) were also devoted to the dependence of color perception on the cultural background of the observer.

The authors asked representatives of 20 different language groups to select the middle-of-the-range colored tiles that best corresponded to the basic color categories of their languages, and to indicate tiles of a different color that could be named by the same word. The boundaries of the categories denoting colors did not coincide in different groups of subjects, but the main ones they chose (or, in the authors’ terminology, focal colors) turned out to be the same. The focal colors were grouped around 11 primary colors - eight chromatic, corresponding to red, yellow, green, blue, brown, orange, pink and violet, and three achromatic - black, white and gray. It was found that languages ​​differ from each other in the number of color names. Every language has a name for black and white or gray and white. There are languages ​​where there are no other names for colors other than the ones mentioned above. If a language has three names for colors, then the third will be red. If a language has four names, then the next language after black, white and red will be either yellow or green. In languages ​​that have a more extensive vocabulary for color, names for blue and brown appear. Finally, in the languages ​​that have the most extensive vocabulary for color names, purple, pink, orange and gray appear. The English language has a rich palette of names for various colors (about 4 thousand designations), but most people get by with mentioning no more than 40 colors. Based on the results obtained, the authors rejected the hypothesis of linguistic relativity.

The experiments of B. Berlin and P. Kay (1969), as well as Eleanor Rosch (Heider Eleanor, 1972), put an end to the assumption that the perception of different colors depends on the culture of the subject. Eleanor Rosch devoted a series of works (1972, 1973, 1978) to studying the perception of focal colors, as B. Berlin and P. Kay called them - red, blue, green, etc. - in different cultural groups.

In one of them, Eleanor Rosch (1973) showed that speakers of Dani (the language of the Dani people widespread in New Guinea), which has only two color designations: mili (dark-cold) and mola (light-warm), However, they are easily able to understand and remember arbitrarily created names for eight focal colors, as well as even arbitrary names for eight non-central colors. Although in the latter case the subjects experienced great difficulties. They remembered the central colors and their names more easily. In other work, Eleanor Rosch (E. Heider, 1972) explored how focal colors are encoded in different cultural groups. The subjects spoke Indo-European, Australonesian, Tibeto-Chinese and Afro-Asian languages, as well as Hungarian and Japanese. She found that focal colors were “more encoded” than non-focal colors in all groups of subjects. This was expressed in the fact that their names were shorter and the subjects named them faster. The author, however, also made the absolutely correct conclusion that the perception of color is not only not a convenient object for studying the influence of language on thinking, but, on the contrary, is a striking example of the influence of perceptual-cognitive factors on the formation and content of linguistic categories.

Experimental work by many other authors has also shown that, despite differences in languages, people of different cultures perceive colors very similarly. These facts were unreasonably perceived by many researchers as a refutation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. J. R. Anderson (2002), for example, writes:

So, the evidence does not support the hypothesis that language has a significant influence on our thinking or perception of the world. It is certainly true that language can influence us (otherwise there would be no point in writing this book), but influence is about communicating ideas, not determining the ideas we think about [p. 355].

...our biological makeup plays a very important role in our perception of color and may provide a universal basis for the nature of this perception, regardless of linguistic differences in color names. It would be surprising, then, to find differences in color perception based on language. Thus, we cannot reject the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis simply because language appears to have little influence on how we perceive colors [p. 267].

The perception of colors really has nothing to do with confirming or disproving the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or any experiments concerning perception in general, because the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis relates mainly to people's verbal modeling of a reality inaccessible to their perception, and not to the verbal models that arise based on sensory representation models. Representation models are biologically determined and therefore very similar even among people from different cultures. Therefore, attempts to prove or disprove the hypothesis by studying the characteristics of the perception of objects of different colors, in principle, cannot achieve their goal.

B. Whorf (2003) writes:

It is believed that speech, that is, the use of language, only “expresses” what has already developed in its main features without the help of language. The formation of thought is a supposedly independent process called thinking or thought and in no way connected with the nature of individual specific languages. The grammar of a language is only a set of generally accepted traditional rules, but the use of language is supposedly subject not so much to them as to correct, rational, or logical thinking. Thought, according to this belief system, does not depend on grammar, but on the laws of logic or thinking, supposedly the same for all inhabitants of the universe and reflecting the rational principle that can be discovered by all intelligent people... it makes no difference whether they speak Chinese or Choctaw. ...Natural logic asserts that different languages ​​are basically parallel ways of expressing the same conceptual content and that therefore they differ only in minor details... [p. 203].

B. Whorf himself (2003) believes:

The formation of thoughts is not an independent process, strictly rational in the old sense of the word, but part of the grammar of a particular language and differs among different peoples... just like the grammatical structure of the corresponding languages ​​[p. 209].

Consequently, the influence of language lies not in its impact on the internal processes and mechanisms of thinking, but in the participation of language in the formation of a global verbal representation of the world, which determines a person’s understanding of the world. Perhaps B. Whorf does not always clearly and strictly express his thoughts, but his main idea is completely obvious:

...similar physical phenomena make it possible to create a similar picture of the universe only if the language systems are similar or at least correlative [B. Whorf, 2003, p. 210].

And he is absolutely right that different conceptualizations of the world in different languages ​​cannot but influence the knowledge of the world by different peoples. In every language there are both similar and different concepts, and, consequently, models of the surrounding world. Language is acquired by a person in a ready-made form, that is, people’s understanding of the environment may differ if the languages ​​they have acquired are conceptually different.

The influence of conceptual differences between cultural groups on the characteristics of their thinking can be identified only for concepts formed on the basis of verbal constructions, but not for concepts that arise on the basis of sensory models. In those cases when concepts arise on the basis of sensory models-representations, which are determined primarily by biological factors, the latter have a more powerful influence on thinking than cultural factors. Accordingly, the concepts denoting colors, even if they differ in different cultural and linguistic groups, do not affect the understanding of the world. They also do not determine the perception of color, since the latter depends on the similar biological characteristics of people, on their general physiology. It follows that the very experimental model used to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was initially unsuitable for these purposes.

M. Cole and Sylvia Scribner (1977) note:

Most scientists would probably unanimously reject Whorf's statements that emphasize the arbitrary nature of the relationship between language and experience, and the inevitable, rigid restrictions imposed by language on cognitive processes. However, despite the insufficiency of relevant data, it is unlikely that anyone would dare to completely deny the significance of linguistic relativity. …It is quite possible that the “filtering effect” of language will be greatest in relation to those phenomena that are described in terms not of physical characteristics, but of culturally determined characteristics. We mean such phenomena as, for example, social roles; the characteristics that define categories of people are established not by nature, but by culture (unlike the properties that determine colors) [p. 77–78].

The authors are talking in this case precisely about those concepts whose meanings are verbal constructions. Data on studies aimed at identifying just this kind of differences are given, for example, by J. W. Berry, A. H. Poortinga, M. H. Segal and P. R. Dasen (2007):

In English there is a conditional construction that shows that a statement is false. The statement “If I knew French, I could read the works of Voltaire” implies that the speaker does not know French. The listener concludes that the premise is false and that the meaning of the statement is false. There is no such conditional model of expression in Chinese. If the listener does not have any prior information, then the sentence should be preceded by a clear negative. For example: “I don’t know French; if I knew French, I could read Voltaire." According to Bloom (1981), the absence of a falsity marker negatively affects the ability of Chinese speakers to think in false ways. He presented Chinese and English speaking respondents with a story that included false implications with a flawed premise. The false statements were presented in conditional form in the English version, but certainly not in the Chinese version. Bloom found significant differences when he asked whether the unreal events actually happened. The percentage of false responses varied from 6 to 63% among samples of Chinese students in Taiwan and Hong Kong, depending on the wording of the stories and the educational level of the respondents. For the US samples, this percentage barely varied from 96 to 98%. According to Bloom, differences in linguistic form may be responsible for the way that English speakers, as opposed to Chinese speakers, categorize reality and cognitively interact with the outside world [p. 172].

As a result, it turns out that there is no proof of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis at the grammatical level. At least for the present, the hypothesis that the grammatical structure of a language has a significant influence on thinking can be put aside [p. 172–174].

First, having words for certain categories appears to make it easier to discern certain nuances of the external world. Second, having a large number of words within a given category should lead to significant ease of communication. If words are taken as codes, a large number of words for a given range of phenomena implies a more precise codability of the specified phenomena [p. 174].

In other words, they adhere to the “common sense” position, according to which our concepts only “reflect” the nuances of the external world, and the more of them, the more accurately they encode these phenomena.

It seems obvious to me that if concepts are the only possible mental representations “for a range of phenomena” (that is, for a certain inaccessible aspect of reality), then it would be strange not only to argue, but even to doubt that, firstly , without these representations, effective understanding (of these phenomena) is simply impossible. Secondly, it directly depends on the characteristics of the concepts used, that is, ultimately on the language, since concepts are potentially stored and transmitted only through language. There is therefore no reason to doubt that the features of our conceptualization of the inaccessible to perception of the world, preserved by our language, have a decisive influence on our understanding of the relevant aspects of the world and knowledge in general. Therefore, B. Whorf is absolutely right. But we should not talk about the fact that our language influences our thinking, but that it determines our worldview. Which is not exactly the same thing.

Let me emphasize once again that the Sapir-Whorf theory is true in relation to those concepts that are not directly based on sensory models. It is obvious that a person can create or assimilate, regardless of his cultural background, concepts denoting all the colors he sensually simulates, even two, even several thousand, since he is able to distinguish their shades biologically. At the same time, even the classical studies of Eleanor Rosch (E. Heider, 1972; E. Rosch, 1973, 1978) revealed the important influence of culture on the formation of concepts, including those denoting colors, that is, those that arise even on the basis of models - representations.

In addition, it is not at all a fact that the presence in the Dani language of only two concepts intended to denote color, and not several dozen basic and 4 thousand additional ones (as in English [see, for example: B. Berlin & P. ​​Kay, 1969] ), does not affect the subtle features of understanding the world, and therefore the behavior of speakers of these languages. I think it certainly has an impact, at least in the sense that a language with more concepts provides much greater opportunities for more adequate modeling and a better understanding of reality. Another thing is that this influence is difficult to detect experimentally.

By the way, despite the fact that a person is potentially capable of recognizing many colors, as shown by the studies of Eleanor Rosch (Heider E., 1972, Rosch E., 1973), people in different language groups know and use with understanding only those colors that are designated by specific concepts, even if there are only two of them. No wonder E. Sapir (2003) writes:

We see, hear and generally perceive the world around us exactly this way and not otherwise, mainly due to the fact that our choice in interpreting it is determined by the linguistic habits of society [p. 131].

J. W. Berry, A. H. Poortinga, M. H. Segal, and P. R. Dasen (2007) suggest that one can agree with Roberson who:

...demonstrated quite unequivocally the widespread influence of language on the classification of colors. …Later evidence has shifted the balance toward a greater influence of linguistic and cultural contexts in color classification than would have been expected based on earlier findings by Berlin and Kay (1969) and Rosch (Heider, 1972) [p. 182].

The authors also refer to the work of Levinson, who studied representatives of non-Western societies and showed that their concepts of natural space and spatial orientation may be fundamentally different from the same concepts in Western societies, due to the peculiarities of spatial terminology. In Indo-European languages, particularly English, the location of an object on the horizontal plane is given based on an “ego-related” orientation: left/right, front/back. The English say: “the table is to the right of the chair.” Other languages, such as the Aboriginal language of Australia, use geocentric spatial coordinates: north, south, east, west, which do not depend on the position of the observer and are determined, for example, depending on the direction towards sunrise and sunset. In this language one should speak, for example, of “your northern shoulder” or “the western edge of the table”; When talking about past events, it is necessary to remember how actions were oriented relative to the cardinal directions. In order to communicate in such a language, you need to constantly know your position in relation to the cardinal points. J. W. Berry, A. H. Poortinga, M. H. Segal, and P. R. Dasen report on a range of studies and conclude that different languages ​​challenge and support cognition in different ways.

G. Gleitman, A. Fridlund and D. Reisberg also talk about the existence of significant differences in how the spatial position of an object is described in language. For example, English speakers would say "fruit in the bowl" and "floppy disk in the computer" using the same preposition. People speaking Korean would use two different prepositions: the first would convey the idea of ​​a loose position (“fruit in a bowl”), the second would describe objects that “fit tight” (“a disk in a computer”). English makes a distinction between the position of one object above another with contact (on) and without contact (above), while Japanese and Korean use the same preposition to convey the position of both "on" and "above".

However, the authors note that despite these linguistic differences, Japanese, Korean, and English speakers think about spatial position in the same way. These studies, however, like the studies of B. Berlin and P. Kay, Eleanor Rosch and other authors, show a relatively weak influence of language on thinking in cases where concepts arising from sensory models of reality related to the perception of light and space are studied . Consequently, the proposed new test models are also not entirely adequate. The understanding of the world, and indeed the languages ​​themselves, among the people of Earth are based primarily on similar sensory models, so it is difficult to expect any radical differences between them, especially since in the process of experiments, subjects easily assimilate other people’s conceptual systems, as demonstrated, for example, by Eleanor’s experiments Rosch (E. Rosch, 1973). As D. Slobin notes, location words remain the only area in which we find convincing evidence of the influence of the referent system of language on thinking.

In order to find out the true influence of language, or more precisely, those denoted by the concepts of verbal mental constructions on the cognition and worldview of people, it is necessary to consider exclusively those verbal constructions that model a reality that is inaccessible to sensory modeling. Otherwise, attempts to study the influence of language on cognition are doomed to failure, since conceptualization is determined primarily not by verbal constructions, but by much more effective sensory models that turn into sensory meanings of concepts arising in different languages. That is why the model chosen by B. Whorf - the concept of time (see about this, for example: S. E. Polyakov, 2004) is much more successful, although extremely difficult to study.

K. Popper (2002) notes:

If Whorf is right (describing very specific ideas about time of the Hopi Indians. - Auto.), then our intuitive understanding of time, that is, the way in which we "see" temporal relations, is partly dependent on our language, our theories and myths included in the language, in other words - our European intuition of time is largely due to the Greek origin of our civilization with its emphasis on discursive thinking. In any case, our intuition of time may change as our theories change. The intuitions of Newton, Kant and Laplace are different from those of Einstein, and the role of time in particle physics is different from the role of time in solid state physics, especially optics. Particle physics asserts the existence of a blade-like unextended instant, a punctum temporis, which separates the past from the future, and thereby the existence of a time coordinate consisting of (a continuum of) unextended instants, and ultimately the existence of a world whose “state” can be given for any such an unextended moment. In optics the situation is completely different. Just as there are spatially extended rasters in optics, the parts of which interact over a considerable distance in space, so there are events extended in time (waves with parts), the parts of which interact over a significant period of time. Therefore, due to the laws of optics in physics, there cannot be any state of the world at some point in time. This argument should and does give a completely different understanding of our intuition: what was called the apparent present time in psychology is neither apparent nor characteristic only of psychology, but is genuine and already takes place in physics. Thus, not only is the general concept of intuition as an infallible source of knowledge a myth, but our intuition of time is also subject to criticism and correction... [p. 135–136].

From what K. Popper said it follows at least the possibility of different conceptualizations of what we denote by the concept time. Moreover, as I already wrote (S. E. Polyakov, 2004), other ways of conceptualizing this essence can be proposed, and a different conceptualization of time will dramatically affect all of our knowledge.

G. Gleitman, A. Fridlund and D. Reisberg (2001), criticizing B. Whorf's theory, write:

...numerous cases suggest that language does influence thinking, drawing attention to certain points and diverting it from others, highlighting certain topics, formulating questions in certain ways. However, these functions are far from those proposed by B. Whorf half a century ago. Whorf argued that language shapes what we can think about, so that there are literally some ideas that, for example, a Hopi speaker can think about but a French speaker cannot. Whorf also argued that once we have learned to speak one language, our thinking will always be governed by the categories and syntax of that initial linguistic experience. There is no convincing evidence to support these claims. When this is put to direct test, it turns out that there is no connection between the language we speak and the way we perceive the world; between the language we speak and the way we think about time, space or various objects in the world around us. Many aspects of thinking appear to be quite independent of language, and in these cases there is no reason to expect language to influence thinking. ...Language, of course, guides our thinking, but does not limit it [p. 421].

It seems to me that the authors are wrong. It is possible to believe that human cognition can be independent of the conceptual system only by assuming that there are concepts and there is some kind of independent thinking that is not very connected with them. However, this point of view is very widespread. Even J.R. Anderson (2002), for example, believes that:

…language and thinking can be independent. A special variant of this principle of independence is the so-called modularity position (Chomsky, 1980; Fodor, 1983). This position is expressed in the position that language is a separate cognitive component that functions separately from other cognitive processes. Fodor proved that there is a separate linguistic module that first analyzes incoming speech information and then transfers the results of this analysis to general cognitive processing. Similarly, when generating speech, this linguistic module receives the intentions to be expressed in words and it generates speech. This view does not deny the fact that the linguistic module may have evolved to convey thought. However, she argues that it functions on different principles than the rest of cognition and is "encapsulated" so that it cannot be influenced by general cognitive processes. It can be connected with general cognitive processes only through the transfer of its products to them and the acceptance of the products of their functioning. ...According to the modularity position, language acquisition and processing are independent of other cognitive systems [p. 356–357].

This position cannot be accepted because language naturally grows out of and is derived from the child's sensory patterns and is part of a person's cognitive abilities.

Thinking and understanding of the environment simply cannot be “independent” of our language, since we think either with the help of non-verbal images or with the help of concepts. Therefore, our thoughts are literally either images of words (verbal images with meaning, or concepts) or other (non-verbal) images and sensations. If only for this reason, our conceptualization of reality, and therefore our thinking, in principle, cannot be independent of concepts and constructions from them. It is through them and in them that we not only represent the world around us, but also understand it.

A metaphorical example can be given: a structure cannot be “independent” of the material of which it is composed. This is precisely why a person’s knowledge and ideas about the world cannot be “independent” of the concepts (concepts) that he learned in childhood along with the language of his society. Worldview and understanding of the world, being a combination of many constructions from concepts potentially present in the words of the native language, naturally cannot but be determined by the features of conceptualization characteristic of this particular language. Moreover, beings with different conceptual systems that represent the world around them differently will simply not even understand each other if these systems are very different.

Returning to the words of G. Gleitman, A. Fridlund and D. Reisberg that “there are some ideas that, for example, a person speaking Hopi can think about, but a person speaking French cannot,” and “our thinking will always be controlled by the categories and syntax of this initial linguistic experience,” it should be noted that, of course, a person operates only with those categories that he has. At the same time, another person will not be able to represent reality, also if he does not have the appropriate categories. Another thing is that people are very similar biologically, and human thinking is very flexible and easily assimilates other ways of conceptualizing the world, no matter how unusual they may be. The ability of people to learn a new categorization is demonstrated by the ease with which people learn foreign languages, including very exotic ones. Another example is the world of philosophical ideas, in which the most intricate concepts of authors are easily absorbed and understood by other researchers, despite the fact that almost all of them create their own concepts and constructions from them.

However, the conceptual systems of people living on Earth do not differ very radically. Firstly, due to the general physiology and anatomy, and therefore the general ability for sensory pre-conceptual modeling of reality, which underlies subsequent conceptualization. Secondly, due to similar conditions of existence on planet Earth, similar needs, again determined by similar biology. Thirdly, due to the growing processes of globalization. Nevertheless, the peculiarities of their conceptual systems inherent in different languages ​​sometimes lead to different understandings by people of the same reality surrounding them. Suffice it to recall the mythological thinking of primitive tribes [L. Lévy-Bruhl, 199; K. Lévi-Strauss, 222], which is based precisely on a different conceptualization of the same world around us compared to modern Western thinking.

Conceptual systems, indeed, form what we think about and with the help of which, since concepts and constructions from them form the content of our verbal thinking. And if we know only one language, our thinking will always be controlled by its categories. But at the same time, we are capable of a different conceptualization, that is, we can easily assimilate new concepts of another language and use them in our thinking. The statement that “many aspects of thinking are independent of language” is incorrect. Only the thinking of animals or very young children can be independent of language. Human verbal thinking is obviously dependent on language, since it is built from images of its words, which have verbal meanings that are quite clear and rigidly fixed in language in the form of linguistic constructions.

J. Lakoff recalls that the question of whether conceptual systems are commensurable or incommensurable has been raised repeatedly since the time of B. Whorf, especially in the philosophy of science. In particular, T. Kuhn and P. Feyerabend generally argued that scientific theories are incommensurable. The issue is complicated by the fact that there are several types of incommensurability. M. Cole and S. Scribner (1977) also note:

In recent years, the tendency to compare cultures as if each were a homogeneous whole and could be contrasted with each other has gradually weakened [p. 18].

As reported by A. Reber, there are “weak” and “strong forms” of B. Whorf’s hypothesis. The first argues that language only affects perception:

...for example, it has been assumed that the Eskimo, because its language has many words for snow, distinguishes variations in types of snow that would not be distinguished by, for example, an English speaker... [p. 306].

In the second:

...it is argued that the influence is on abstract conceptual processes, for example that ... the very understanding of time differs between Hopi and English speakers. - Auto.) languages ​​[ibid].

Despite intensive research into these issues, little or no convincing evidence has emerged to support this hypothesis [ibid.].

A. Reber (2001) also states, for example:

Even if some people’s language does not have separate words for red and orange, they will distinguish between them in the same way as those whose language has these words [p. 344].

It is difficult to agree with this, since they will not distinguish between them. They will be able to distinguish, having the necessary physiological apparatus for this, but they will not do this because they do not have the corresponding concepts, and therefore, the corresponding need and practice have never arisen. If they had such a need and practice, then they will naturally distinguish between them and their languages ​​will have concepts that allow them to do this. It is possible, however, that there will not be separate special concepts, but only complex verbal constructions from many concepts, which will nevertheless make it possible to distinguish between the entities they represent.

Many sources, for example, repeat that the peoples inhabiting the Far North distinguish up to 20 types of snow. G. K. Triandis writes that the Arabs use about 6 thousand words related to the breeding and use of camels, and about 50 of these words refer to the different stages of camel pregnancy. We are also potentially able to distinguish between 20 types of snow and different stages of camel pregnancy, but we did not have such a need and such experience, we do not have the appropriate concepts and we are not able to do this in practice until we are provided with the appropriate concepts and taught to do this. To teach means, among other things, to provide with appropriate concepts or constructions from concepts that allow something to be constituted in the surrounding reality. Thus, in order to use one’s own biological abilities in practice, it is not enough to have them. You also need to have experience in using them and the corresponding concepts or constructions from explanatory concepts.

The debate among researchers about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is surprising. It feels like researchers live in their laboratories and not in human society. And they believe that only in laboratories can one find answers to all questions, including the question of the truth or falsity of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Meanwhile, in order to find the answer to this question, you just need to look at how the people around the researchers - our contemporaries - live and whether the features of their language, and therefore their conceptualization of the world, influence their worldview and behavior. What other “convincing data are needed to support this hypothesis” other than those that we see around us every minute?

In general, we should avoid too theoretical talk about the fact that language and the conceptualization determined by its features influence “abstract conceptual processes.” Let's look at what exactly language influences. Conceptualization provided by the language the child acquires determines the structure of models of the world around him, representing to him the nature of his interactions with this world and with other people. Ultimately, conceptualization, and therefore language, determines the characteristics of human behavior in similar situations, which should be studied. Is the behavior of speakers of different languages ​​different now, in an era of rapid globalization and the erasure of conceptual differences?

Let's, for example, consider the features of conceptualization, and therefore the worldview and behavior of believers: an Indian Buddhist, an Arab Muslim and an Italian Christian, as well as an English or Russian-speaking atheist scientist, based on the concepts and verbal constructions that dominate in their minds.

A Buddhist operates with such main concepts as:

...dharma (element, law), karma (action), samsara (stream of being), nirvana (...extinction - a state of enlightenment), nidana (wheel of cause-and-effect relationships), sangha (community) [World Encyclopedia. Philosophy, 2001, p. 141].

His world consists of:

...three lokas (spheres): Kamaloka (sensual, real world), rupaloka (world of forms, illusory), Arupaloka (world without forms, sphere of pure consciousness). ...The world... seems to be an endless combination of dharmas, elementary particles, a kind of flashes of vital energy. The whole world is a “turbulence” of dharmas. …Suffering, as well as satisfaction, creates consequences for new births and combinations of dharmas. If you do not change the nature of experiences, then a person will not be able to get out of the circle of births and deaths (samsara). Through his actions, feelings, and thoughts, a person creates karma (fate). A noble and moral life improves karma. ...Liberation is achieved by the cessation of the “excitement” of dharmas, that is, the destruction of desires, passions, thoughts... Nirvana is a state of absolute calm, penetration into the true essence of things... [ibid].

Based on these concepts and verbal constructions, a system of values, a life goal, and the behavior of a Buddhist are formed - to get rid of the suffering of embodied existence, the cause of which lies in the thirst for self-satisfaction, illness, and general human imperfection. You can stop suffering by achieving a state of enlightenment (nirvana), which allows you to break the circle of constant reincarnation and transmigration of your own soul into more and more new creatures on Earth.

A Muslim is confident that the world was created by Allah - one God. He must follow the divine decree, which consists of:

…three basic elements: the “five pillars of Islam”, faith (imam) and good deeds (ihsan). The “Five Pillars of Islam” are: 1) confession of monotheism... and the prophetic mission of Muhammad... 2) daily prayer five times a day... 3) fasting in the month of Ramadan... 4) voluntary cleansing alms... 5) pilgrimage... to Mecca... [World Encyclopedia. Philosophy, 2001, p. 441].

The main concepts of Islam are “Islam”, “din” and “imam”. Islam in a broad sense means the whole world within which the laws of the Koran have been established and operate. This sphere is contrasted with “dar-al-harb” - the territory of war in which Islam must establish itself through jihad (“holy war”) [World Encyclopedia. Philosophy, 2001, p. 140–141].

A Muslim believes in angels and devils (demons), resurrection after death and Judgment Day. In Islam:

The main requirement for a person is to follow the path of improvement, observing the laws of the Koran [ibid].

Basic concepts of a Christian:

The Triune God (God the Father, God the Son - Jesus Christ and God - the Holy Spirit), the image of God in man, which makes the latter “participant in the Divine nature”, the virgin birth, the Fall - the phenomenon of original sin, sinfulness, the role of baptism and the church in salvation and achieving eternal life, redemption, salvation.

A Christian is confident that both the world and he himself were created by his God, that there is Heaven and Hell, angels and devils, that after death he will face the Judgment of God, as a result of which he will be rewarded for his sins or righteous life and he will go to Heaven or Hell .

Basic ideological concepts and constructions of an atheist:

There is no God, the Universe has always existed, and in its current form arose several billion years ago after the explosion of its super-dense core. Life emerged from inanimate matter as a result of its natural development and gradual process of complication, and man is the result of the evolution of the living world. Life is given to a person once. Human consciousness is a function of the human brain and is inextricably linked with the human body. After the death of the body, consciousness disappears along with the body. There is no other world, no transmigration of the soul, no eternal life, no punishment for sins or rewards for a righteous life.

It is obvious that the above conceptual structures sometimes force their owners to understand the world around them differently and even act in the same situation, which is what we constantly see around us. What can we say about actions, if these conceptual systems generally force people to live completely different lives. A Wahhabi does not eat pork, but blows up infidels, believing that thanks to jihad he will get to his Paradise. A Christian does not pray five times a day and eat pork. A Hindu is afraid of stepping on a butterfly or a beetle, not to mention eating the meat of an animal, because, in his opinion, this will end someone’s life, and he will ruin his karma. An atheist does not believe in either Heaven or the transmigration of souls and can be either a scoundrel or a very decent person by choice, and not out of fear.

It may be objected that the issue here is not the language, but rather the different concepts and theories that dominate people’s minds. But the fact of the matter is that these different concepts and theories were born and formed in different languages. And only then they were transferred to other languages. If these peoples and languages ​​arose on isolated continents, or even more so planets, the worldview and behavior of people would be much more strikingly different. It is religions and even philosophical teachings (materialism and idealism) that are the most obvious examples of how the features of the conceptualization of the world, initially associated with a specific language, since they were initially conceptualized in it, determine people’s views on the world, its understanding and behavior of people.

Yes, within the framework of one language different conceptual systems may be born, and, conversely, the same conceptual systems may now be present in different languages, transferred from one language, but this does not negate the fact that in the language of an isolated developing society a special unique conceptual system will necessarily be formed, which will determine the worldview and behavior of the members of this society, that is, it will influence the “abstract conceptual processes” occurring in their minds.

As a result of the process of globalization, there are practically no isolated societies left on Earth with their own special language and way of conceptualizing the world, but until quite recently they existed in the form of isolated primitive tribes. The worldview and behavior of their representatives were very different from ours. L. Lévy-Bruhl (1999) writes, for example:

Primitive thinking, like ours, is interested in the reasons for what happens, but it looks for them in a completely different direction. It lives in a world where countless omnipresent secret forces are always active or ready to act. ...The visible world and the invisible are one, and the events of the visible world at every moment depend on the forces of the invisible. ...This explains the habit of primitive people to neglect what we call natural causes and to direct all attention to the mystical cause, which alone is supposed to be real. …For consciousness directed in this way there is no purely physical act. No question relating to natural phenomena becomes the same for him as it is for us [p. 38–39].

The author reports that even the true reason for conception for representatives of primitive tribes, in their opinion, is mystical, while sexual intercourse is a secondary reason. Only thanks to the special concepts of the primitive society in question, preserved in language and transmitted to new generations through language, the visible and invisible world are united, any event has a mystical nature, and countless secret forces operate around. And researchers of primitive tribes were able to understand the peculiarities of the worldview of the societies they studied only after they had mastered their language and the concepts used in it, that is, reproduced these concepts in a form understandable to them in their own language. Consequently, the concepts of other languages ​​can easily be incorporated into another language, which we constantly see around us, but initially they are created in a society speaking a certain language, and determine the worldview and behavior of its members.

The emergence of such a specific worldview among representatives of primitive societies was ensured not by some abstract “social environment” and not even just specific people - fellow tribesmen who surrounded the child of a primitive tribe from childhood, but precisely by their language, their concepts, which they operated with and which each new member of society assimilated . It is linguistic constructions that are the form that preserves and transmits from generation to generation concepts and verbal constructions specific to a given culture, and, consequently, a special worldview, worldview and behavior. Thus, language simply cannot help but have a strong influence on the characteristics of people’s worldview and behavior. Therefore, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is true in its essence, although it should not be proven in the same ways that researchers mainly used.

See also:

1. Linguistic relativity: how our language affects what we see

© Polyakov S.E. Phenomenology of mental representations. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2011
© Published with the kind permission of the author