Name: 語言塑造了我們的思維方式嗎？語言相對性與語言決定論--語言學101篇 (Does language shape how we think? Linguistic relativity & linguistic determinism -- Linguistics 101)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T06:45:28.000Z
Duration: 3 min 17 s
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When we talk about language, we often dig down to universal categories like

nouns and verbs, consonants and vowels, phrases and sentences.

We end up with these cross-language concepts that individual languages are

almost as if the colorful diversity found in the world's languages is just

icing on the strong unity of the linguistic cake

and language is grounded in our way of thinking and processing information

which is itself universal among humans. So languages and cultures are

superficial, but language and cognition run deep.

But this isn't the only way to look at language.

What if the language we are brought up to speak actually relates to the way we

From this perspective a language is a particular way of conceptualizing the

In the 1930's, Benjamin Lee Whorf talked about language this way.

He argued that different languages represent different ways of thinking

This view has come to be called linguistic relativity.

Exploring the grammar of the Hopi language, he concluded that

the Hopi have an entirely different concept of the time than European

and that the European concepts of "time" and "matter"

are actually conditioned by language itself.

linguistic relativity: direct translation between languages isn't always possible.

ways of expressing the same thing in different words,

you can't actually preserve thoughts or viewpoints when you translate between them.

In its strongest expression, linguistic relativity - the idea that viewpoints vary

from language to language - relies on linguistic determinism -

the idea that language determines thought.

In other words how people think doesn't just vary depending on their language but

is actually grounded in - determined by - the specific language of their community.

has been abandoned and criticized over the decades

with critics aiming to show that perception and cognition are universal,

but some psychologists and anthropologists continue to argue

that differences in a language's structure and words may play a role in determining

Experiments on how speakers of different languages approach

non-linguistic tasks continue to spark this debate.

Thank you for joining me on this quick tour of linguistic relativity and

Please subscribe if you'd like to keep on learning with me.