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SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS

LANGUAGE

Language is natural tool to deal with people. Language occurs as a result of the process of conceptualization environment.

LANGUAGE

What is Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis argues that human thoughts influence by local languages. According to the hypothesis, thoughts and behaviours depend on language. This is mean, a person has a certain structure of thoughts in their language and this person truly understand language of another person. We can understand the world as much as our own language or words.

HYPOTHESİS

Who is Sapir and Whorf ?

Ideas of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf is same, but they never co-authored any works, and never stated their ideas in terms of a hypothesis.

CREATORS

WHORF

Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941)

Benjamin Lee Whorf was an American linguist and fire prevention engineer. Whorf is widely known as reveal the "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis", but Whorf called it the principle of linguistic relativity, because he saw the idea as having implications similar to Einstein's principle of physical relativity.

SAPIR

Edward Sapir(1884-1939)

Edward Sapir was an American anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics. Sapir studied the ways in which language and culture influence each other, and he was interested in the relation between linguistic differences, and differences in cultural world views. This part of his thinking was developed by his student Benjamin Lee Whorf into the principle of linguistic relativity or the "Sapir-Whorf" hypothesis.

LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY

The basis of hypothesis consist the theory of linguistic relativity. In other words, the differences between close concepts in language apply only to those languages. Benjamin Lee Whorf strengthened the hypothesis one step further and said that a person's worldwide affects the words and grammar that people speak. Whorf called it "linguistic relativity theory". It is presented in three phases.

THREE PHASES OF THEORY

LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY THEORY

  • Language definitely determine thoughts.
  • It is more than determine of the language, it affects perceptions.
  • It is only decisive in language-coded works.(This is highly controversial because it reveals to need to redefine the language.)

EXAMPLES OF THEORY

Although this hypothesis has been tried many times so far,it still can't be proved. Nevertheless, there are some examples of hypothesis.

EXAMPLES

1

1.

The two linguist have documented hypothesis with the empirical knowledge of Indian and Eskimo. When there is no camel or similar words in Eskimo language. There are many words about snow.

2

2.

Another example is that in language of Aboriginal, there are no directional concepts like right, left, front and back. There are directions as North, South, East and West. In this case, Aborigines have to know what direction it is.

3

3.

We can also see Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in the "Arrival" movie. One of the main character is linguist Louise Banks. She has been authorised by the government to communicate with the aliens. In the movie, hypothesis was used to say that aliens use the symbol language and that the complexity of sentences could not be translated into a single output of each sentence.

IN BRIEF

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