Since language determines vocabulary and its relationships, we know that language determines what is easy or hard to express, and therefore, language determines what is ``simple'' and what is ``complex''

that does not determine what can and cannot be considered, but it does affect what is efficient or cumbersome to express and consider

in that sense, and only in that sense (complex vs. Simple yes instead of impossible vs. Possible no), i agree with the sapir-whorf hypothesis that language affects what can be considered

humans are remarkably creative in their use and creation of language - that fact, all by itself, dooms the strong version of the hypothesis (e.g., ``iron horse'')

Weak determinism seems to be the consensus, but it's not my specialty.

Thanks, Chelsea. I tend to agree with you, although lately I've seen that the subject is complex and there is new evidence to assimilate. We'll see if anybody else chimes in. I just came across an interesting lecture on YouTube by a serious scholar, Lera Boroditsky, who argues for a greater role for language in determining culture (although one must look critically at any claim for a direct cause-and-effect relation, since language reflects culture in many ways). See http://fora.tv/2010/10/26/Lera_Boroditsky_How_Language_Shapes_Thought

She has an article in Scientific American that sums up some of the same material, for those who have access:

Boroditsky, Lera, “How language shapes thought, the languages we speak affect our perceptions of the world,” en Scientific American (Nature Publishing Group), vol. 304, no. 2, Feb. 2011, pp. 43-45.

Thanks for your answer, Matías. I think that's essentially what Chelsea was trying to say, in a more diplomatic way. I have an article (albeit in Spanish) on my ResearchGate page where I basically reject Whorf's views, although I try to maintain objectivity (as much as is humanly possible) and consider the evidence that tends to run counter to my views. I'm still in the process of trying to assimilate Boroditsky's work, and this process involves applying the critical view I mentioned in my last post. So far I have found a few probable cause-and-effect relations, which lead me to moderate my stance somewhat, although my previous views remain largely unchanged. Do you have any specific criticism of Borodistsky's research, or perhaps a citation of someone who does, that might help me sort things out further? The article I mentioned is here (it's a post-publication version in which I added a very brief review of Boroditsky's article in Scientific American, among other revisions not present in the original article): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234798890_La_hiptesis_Sapir-Whorf_una_evaluacin_crtica?ev=prf_pub

Article La hipótesis Sapir-Whorf: una evaluación crítica

I am very grateful for the links, Matías. As for your question, I was doing what I usually try to do: looking for evidence that challenges my views, to see if they really hold up, and I was conceding, based on the evidence cited, that in some limited cases Whorf wasn't totally wrong, although he seems to have greatly exaggerated the role of language in determining our cognitive processes.

Here are some thoughts. One is that language and other aspects of culture mutually influence one another. There is no one determining factor that decides what or how a community of human beings will think. I have been a great fan of Whorf, but the idea of one- way determinism just doesn't work.

However, human beings are the only creatures with language. We are almost certainly hard-wired to learn some language with syntax , semantics, imagination, and the certainty that the language will adapt over time to changing circumstances. Human language is essential to human culture. This is true of language in general. It us also probable that humanity needs to create many languages. A single language is not able to express all possible human thought. That is why translation is always not perfect.

Does this help?

That's very helpful, Margaret. All of this discussion is just what I was hoping to see: what the scholarly community thinks these days about how language relates to culture in general. Thank you.

I realize I am late to the conversation, but I think there is a lot missing here. I believe what Chelsea was trying to say is that nobody nowadays argues for strong determinism, following Whorf's Principle of Linguistic Relativity. Instead, what is generally tested (since the Principle of Linguistic Relativity was later rephrased as a hypothesis) is whether the domains of language and cognition have any effect on each other, particularly whether the domain of language has an effect on the domain of cognition or thought. This can be clearly illustrated in the work by John Lucy (1992) and more recently by many researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (Nijmegen) in the Language and Cognition Group (see the work by Stephen C. Levinson, David P. Wilkins, Gunter Senft, Eric Pederson, Sergio Meira, Eve Danziger, Jürgen Bohnemeyer, among others). Michael Silverstein has also contributed to reworking the Principle of Linguistic Relativity into a testable hypothesis. For a summary of the original work of Boas, Sapir and Whorf, see Bill Foley's textbook "Anthropological Linguistics: An Introduction". Part IV of Foley's book might help you orient yourself a bit better with respect to the history of linguistic relativism. If you would like particular citations, let me know.

What Matías fails to mention is that there are extremely few (maybe no??) linguists who believe in strict or strong determinism and likewise there are few and probably no linguists who claim to be Whorfianists. Instead, there was a change to weak determinism and neo-Whorfianism. This distinction is made clear in this paper by Boroditsky, for instance (http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/mandarin.pdf). She does not argue for strong determinism. However, I agree with Chris' (aka the Lousy Linguist) take on Boroditsky's work -- there are methodological problems. I remember at some point, maybe in 2006 or 2007, some folks at the CUNY sentence processing conference tried to replicate Boroditsky's work on comparing Mandarin and English speakers (following the paper I just linked to) and they could not replicate the results. That was one particular criticism of her work, for instance.

I guess to sum up, I think you should consider other empirical work (not just that of Boroditsky) that has been conducted in the last 20 or so years regarding neo-Whorfian questions.

Thank you, Caroline. I especially value your input because this is clearly a subject you have been researching over the last few years. Following your indication, I downloaded and read Boroditsky's article from 2001: Boroditsky, Lera, “Does language shape thought?: Mandarin and English speakers’ conceptions of time,” in Cognitive Psychology (Elsevier), no. 43, August 2001, pp. 1-22 (http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/mandarin.pdf; access: 30 abr. 2013). Her description of "weak determinism" does clarify Chelsea's shorthand comment at the beginning of this conversation.

I noticed that from 2001 to 2011 (see Boroditsky, Lera, “How language shapes thought; the languages we speak affect our perceptions of the world,” in Scientific American [Nature Publishing Group], vol. 304, no. 2, February 2011, pp. 43-45), Boroditsky seems to have shifted toward a stronger position defending linguistic determinism, of course without going to Whorf's extreme view as expressed in the mid-twentieth century. The same can be said of her online lecture, mentioned in an earlier post.

I like William Foley's summary of this topic, as well as the rest of his book. I used it in a paper on this subject, mentioned earlier (available here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234798890_La_hiptesis_Sapir-Whorf_una_evaluacin_crtica).

I wrote most of this text as part of my dissertation, about a decade ago, when I was trying to understand the relations between culture, language and pictorial writing in early colonial period Otomi manuscripts and other manifestations of the central Mexican tradition of pictorial writing. Since essentially the same pictorial signs were used by several language groups in this region, the role of mental images in the formation of metaphors and other cognitive categories is particularly interesting (for example, the use of calques for verbally reading pictorial semasiograms in languages from distinct families, such as Otomí and Nahuatl).

Any criticism you might have of this paper would be welcome; in spite of it having been published, I consider it (along with everything else I've ever written) to be a work in progress.

I'll try to follow up on some of the other leads you provided. Again, many thanks.

Article La hipótesis Sapir-Whorf: una evaluación crítica

The history of empirical research on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is reviewed. A more sensitive test of the hypothesis is devised and a clear Whorfian effect is detected in the domain of color. A specific mechanism is proposed to account for this effect and a second experiment, designed to block the hypothesized mechanism, is performed. The effect disappears as predicted. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is reevaluated in the light of these results.

from:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1984.86.1.02a00050/abstract;jsessionid=928CD317AFA1163B10ABF5A4849896D0.d02t03?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false

The idea of snow among the eskimos is one metaphor or legend that I recall from school.

From my own experience, concerning color, in the Japanese language a traffic light has three colors: red, yellow and blue. I have looked and that blue looks like green to me. Was there a shift in perception and usage over time. Might not our own definitions of colors determine how we feel emotionally or how we are affected by color in our sanity?

Likewise, leaving the idea of color and moving to sensory notions of light and other reifications, I think of the German word "Austrahlung", which means basically radiate or radiant in describing personality and charisma of another. When speaking and thinking in German, the word 'Austrahlung" seems to be less a description and more of a fact to the speaker.

Better late than never. Whereas I am not familiar specifically with Sapir's work, I believe that there are feedback loops among language, culture and cognition, each one influencing the other two. The way we think is influenced by culture and what a culture deems important is reflected in the language. The language offers humans a way to express thoughts, (and at times to hide thoughts under ambiguity in some languages). Language also influences thinking. For example, the word "on" in English translates differently in other languages, depending whether it is on a vertical or horizontal surface. The grammar forces us to distinguish between cases that really do differ in some way.

The grammar might remind us of a concept that we took for granted in one language, but now we must be explicit about it in another language. In some languages, grammar requires us to be very precise about how we know something is true. In others, such as English we are not required to have such precision but we can still be grammatically correct.

What is important in a culture will be reflected in a large vocabulary of single words in a particular field, for example, that translate to multiple words in a language from a culture in which that field is not as important. For example, Italian has many single words describing music that must be translated into multiple words to explain them in English.

In English, we distinguish between fruits and nuts but there is no word category for "nuts" in Italian. To describe the subset of "fruits" that consists of the English concept of "nuts" would require multiple Italian words.

By studying multiple languages, one gains a window into the cognition of other cultures, and, thereby enriches our ontology.

In my paper on language culture and cognition, I wrote an appendix to a paper about this. Not sure if it's in my pub list with ResearchGate. I have a pdf in case anyone wants to see it. It's rather long.

Please share the pdf, Marion.

Sylvia Xiaohua Chen has been working on this topic for decades. Here is one example.

http://psp.sagepub.com/content/36/11/1514.short

Perhaps you could contact her.

Since language determines vocabulary and its relationships, we know that language determines what is easy or hard to express, and therefore, language determines what is ``simple'' and what is ``complex''

that does not determine what can and cannot be considered, but it does affect what is efficient or cumbersome to express and consider

in that sense, and only in that sense (complex vs. Simple yes instead of impossible vs. Possible no), i agree with the sapir-whorf hypothesis that language affects what can be considered

humans are remarkably creative in their use and creation of language - that fact, all by itself, dooms the strong version of the hypothesis (e.g., ``iron horse'')

Hello Kevin,

Thank you for sharing the URL. I read the abstract and I partially concur with the content. I say only partially because I have not had a chance to study the article in depth. It suggests a reasonable conclusion. It seems to be consistent with some of my observations. More on that later.

Maybe my paper is already in my ResearchGate profile. I'll check. Otherwise I could send it to you on email or post a URL where you may be able to get it.

Hello Kevin,

I finally found the citation:

Marion G. Ceruti,Scott C. McGirr, and Joan L. Kaina, “Interaction of Language, Culture and Cognition in Group Dynamics for Understanding the Adversary,” Proceedings of the National Symposium on Sensor and Data Fusion (NSSDF), 26-30 July, 2010 Nellis AFB, Las Vegas, NV.

http:/ / www.dtic.mil/ cgi-bin/ GetTRDoc AD=ADA526247&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

If you have trouble with access, let me know and I will send it to you. It helps to have the entire URL in the browser window all at once. I could not fit it in here on one line.

Hello Christopher,

What you have posted seems to be consistent with the idea of feedback loops between cognition (the function that does the considering) and language (the function that does the expressing.) Each influences the other, but it is not easy to separate out cause and effect in most cases. Languages with a rich vocabulary in one area of human experience can provide precise and concise ways to express concepts in this area. For example some (fi not most) Australian aboriginal languages have many terms to describe kinship. I would say that the area of Kinship is a "strong domain" in these languages. English requires many words to describe "first male cousin once removed on my mother's side" for example. This may be just as accurate a description as a single word in an aboriginal language, but it is not nearly as concise.

English has very few words to indicate the gender of a speaker and the grammar does not reflect many rules that apply to gender. In contrast, at the other extreme are some languages that consist of almost two separate languages, one for males and another for females. The only time anyone uses the language of the opposite sex is in a direct quotation. Most languages are somewhere in between these two extremes.

If I had to select a culture that was conducive to gender equality, even not knowing anything else about the history, I would select the English-speaking countries and not a culture with a language that requires verbs to be conjugated according to gender. Languages evolve within cultures to reflect the values of the culture. Languages also affect the way people think by making some concepts difficult or easy to grasp, so this ties in with your explanation of "simple" vs. "complex."

Combining my concept of "strong domain" with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, I would add that language affects what can be considered efficiently.

Research on Chinese-English bilinguals in both Hong Kong and at elite Chinese universities finds that much more dialectical thinking goes on in Chinese than in English.

Thank you, Kevin, that's interesting. Is it because Chinese is L1 for Chinese residents, or because Chinese is more expressive for dialectical thinking? Did the research provide any insight to explain the observation? Has this study been replicated for bilinguals of Chinese origin for whom English is L1 and Chinese is L2?

Would the result have been the same in India, comparing Hindi vs. English, or in Greece comparing Greek to English?

Marion, I am not sure I can answer you well, so I will indicate where to go and start.

I like the methodology of the paper I am currently reviewing.* However, it is tedious work to back check the methods. I also do not know fully what I personally believe about using reported scales related to the BIG FIVE Personality traits. What is nice though, about the papers are that they would be relatively easily replicated in a variety of cultural settings.

*"Language effects on personality perception" is a paper sent to me by Sylvia Xiaohua Chen. She is a member of Research Gate and/or you can ask her for the paper. It is dated march 2013. She has done similar research for decades. Here is a list of her publications: http://www.polyu.edu.hk/apss/upload/Publication%20List_Sylvia%20Chen_7-22-10.pdf

Here is another article by other authors.: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/8458233_Is_it_culture_or_is_it_language_Examination_of_language_effects_in_cross-cultural_research_on_categorization/file/d912f5121927e20456.pdf

Article Is It Culture or Is It Language? Examination of Language Eff...

Thank you, Kevin.

I appreciate the information regarding Prof. Chen. I have seen her work previously. She has extensive experience. I find this interesting because the methodology in this study may help provide a way to identify "strong domains." For example, consider the following hypothetical result:

Group 1, where L1 = Chinese and L2 = English, found that this group prefers Chinese for dialectical thinking.

Group 2, where L2 = Chinese and L1 = English, found that this group also prefers Chinese for dialectical thinking.

The above result would suggest, but not prove conclusively, that dialectical thinking represents a strong domain for Chinese.

If, however, the following different result were obtained:

Group 1, where L1 = Chinese and L2 = English, found that this group prefers Chinese for dialectical thinking.

Group 2, where L2 = Chinese and L1 = English, found that this group also prefers English for dialectical thinking.

This result would suggest that Chinese/English bilinguals prefer their native language (e.g. L1) for dialectical thinking. It also would fail to provide evidence of a strong domain in Chinese for dialectical thinking.

First, I would suggest that Whorf based his hypothesis on an erroneous analysis of Hopi, the target language of much of his research. The fact that he was an engineer who did linguistic research on the side may explain the problem. Second, he did not specifically propose that language influences culture but that language influences cognition--that is, how we process information about the world. He based this hypothesis, in part, on the fact that Hopi lacks tense, leading him to suggest that the Hopi have a sense of time that is different from, say, that of English speakers.

The strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is dismissed by all the linguists I'm familiar with, especially those, like me, who approach language from a cognitive perspective. For us, there is a reciprocal relation between cognition and language, but cognition clearly dominates. Our understanding of spatial relations, such as "up" and "down," for example, is based on cognition, not the words we use to express those relations. As for the question of whether language influences culture, it is too imprecise for intelligent analysis. What is meant by "culture"? If we mean simply social organization and interactions, the answer is that language plays an important role insofar as most of the language we use on a daily basis is phatic. But this holds regardless of the language we use. In addition, we must consider that biology is a significant factor in social organization.

Hello James,

Thank you for your insight. I agree that that the lacks tense in a language does not prove that the speakers of that language perceive time differently from English speakers. Other languages also lack tense but they provide other ways to describe when events happen.

Hello James,

Sorry about the error. The second sentence should have read: The lack of tense in a language does not prove that the speakers of that language perceive time differently from English speakers.

Concerning the original question about Sapirs /Whorf's ideas on "culture determining language" and visa, I find:

On the one hand, I look at the example of "Naïve dialecticism" which "refers to a set of East Asian lay beliefs characterized by tolerance for contradiction, the expectation of change, and cognitive holism."

According to research cited here

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2811254/

"Naïve dialecticism provides a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding these cultural differences and the contradictory, changeable, and holistic nature of the East Asian self-concept."

As played out in the field of language as used by bilinguals and multilinguals, there might be a preference for one language or the other. However, I am not convinced that personalities or personality types promoted in one culture over another prior or existing culture's promotion of particular personalities doesn't play as strong a role. In short, behavior and personality are likely more influential in setting limits culturally than are any linguistic limits within a culture.

For example, in Germany, the "Querdenker" (lateral and tangential thinker, like Einstein) has been lifted up at times. Likewise, at times, in the UK's history, the so-called "eccentric" has been exalted. Tolerance for ambiguity are required of such characters, i.e. to be described as such "types" in their own language.

I think that in order to dig deeper into monolingual's language and influence, one has to look at what behaviors are promoted at what time in history and for how long.

http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/klocke/publications/2012%20Church%20etal%20JRP.pdf

This, in turn, promotes or demotes tendencies towards finding "Naïve dialecticism" in any culture or among any language group. However, the "average multilingual"may not see such limits, they have expanded there territory of sovereignty and may have more tolerance for ambiguity than even mono-lingual Chinese do--regardless of culture.

On the other hand, in recent years, "fuzzy thinking" has been promoted, too, in the West. Who is to say?--but that in a globalized planet that both multilinguals and monolinguals won't find a niche for "Naïve dialecticism" and related lifestyles and demonstrate such patterns, i.e. even if they are not of East Asian culture or language groups.

In short, the culture (and trans-formative culture) appears to have more power in the long-run to promote dialectical thinking than do any individual languages and their semantic or cultural linguistic limits.

For a more complete look at how emotional tenses are done in different cultures and how they could be replicated in a variety of lands. This thesis is helpful.

http://repositories.tdl.org/ttu-ir/bitstream/handle/2346/ETD-TTU-2011-08-1858/Stastny_Bradley_Dissertation.pdf?sequence=4

Current views on language and culture are pouring in! I'm reading this all with great interest, and downloading all the files I can access. It's going to take me a while to assimilate all of this and run it through my critical filters. I am grateful to all who have contributed to this thread.

James: I'm really sorry to be replying to your comment 25 days after you posted it. I was just going over this thread and I noticed that you said "he [Whorf] did not specifically propose that language influences culture but that language influences cognition--that is, how we process information about the world."

I like your answer and agree with most of what you say, but I should clear up the matter of culture, since this is a central point in my question and the entire thread. Whorf did indeed have (collective) culture in mind, besides (individual) cognition. Here are the relevant quotes:

"There will probably be general assent to the proposition that an accepted pattern of using words is often prior to certain lines of thinking and forms of behavior, but he who assents often sees in such a statement nothing more than a platitudinous recognition of the hypnotic power of philosophical and learned terminology on the one hand or of catchwords, slogans, and rallying cries on the other. To see only thus far is to miss the point of one of the important interconnections which Sapir saw between language, culture, and psychology, and succinctly expressed in the introductory quotation. It is not so much in these special uses of language as in its constant ways of arranging data and its most ordinary everyday analysis of phenomena that we need to recognize the influence it has on other activities, cultural and personal" (Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, thought, and reality; selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, John B. Carroll, editor, Cambridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1956, pp. 134, 135).

Whorf's first question: "Are our own concepts of ‘time,’ ‘space,’ and ‘matter’ given in substantially the same form by experience to all men, or are they in part conditioned by the structure of particular languages?" (ibid., p. 138).

Whorf answers himself: "Concepts of ‘time’ and ‘matter’ are not given in substantially the same form by experience to all men but depend upon the nature of the language or languages through the use of which they have been developed. […]" (ibid., p. 158).

Whorf's second question: "Are there traceable affinities between (a) cultural and behavioral norms and (b) large-scale linguistic patterns?" (ibid., p. 138).

Whorf continues his dialogue with himself: "There are connections but not correlations or diagnostic correspondences between cultural norms and linguistic patterns. […] There are cases where the ‘fashions of speaking’ are closely integrated with the whole general culture, whether or not this be universally true, and there are connections within this integration, between the kind of linguistic analyses employed and various behavioral reactions and also the shapes taken by various cultural developments" (ibid., p. 158).

Thanks, David, for refreshing my memory regarding Whorf's use of the word "culture." He seemed to equivocate, didn't he? The statement on p. 158 is not entirely congruent with the statement on pp. 134-35. I doubt that anyone would disagree with the view that there are connections between cultural norms and linguistic patterns: the use of honorifics in Japanese being a ready example. It was his reference to "arranging data and its most ordinary analysis of phenomena" that I recalled most vividly from LANGUAGE, THOUGHT, AND REALITY, and I have always interpreted that statement as referring to cognition. And not just at the individual level, for what is society and culture if not the aggregate collection of individuals?

By the way, I haven't visited Guanajuato in many years, but I remember it as a delightful place.

Yeah, Whorf is a bit fuzzy on a lot of points. I don't agree with much of what he wrote, but his name keeps popping up, so I threw out the question just to see how his ideas are faring today. I wasn't disappointed by the RG community. This is a great web site!

I'm enjoying living in Guanajuato since having moved here ten years ago. (I didn't move very far down the road, since I lived in San Miguel de Allende from 1976 to 2003.) Soka University looks like a nice, peaceful place to work also.

Interesting question. If we extrapolate the theory to science, does English, the international language of science determines the characteristics of the culture of science? And since the reason that English is the international language of science is due to the global success and importance of the USA, can we then say that it is English as used by the USA (usage) that determines the culture of science? And if yes, for how long given the rapid rise economic rise of China? Will English as used by the Chinese alter current culture of science. Or will an entirely different Chinese based language succeed English, and change etc...?

I think that because the culture of science can change rapidly (in a few generations as opposed to centuries for given social/economic/philosophical/etc, cultures), the impact of language on the evolution of science culture may be readily measured; yielding predictive characteristics, etc. Just a thought from obviously, a truly non-expert.

Leonard, this is not really an answer to your question, but just some thoughts. Every language has its idiosyncrasies, which you can see when you compare two different languages. There have been efforts to develop a truly objective, scientific language, but these have fallen by the wayside. Every language is affected by the cultures of which it is a part, and every human being has presuppositions that affect the direction of his or her research. Someone somewhere must be doing research on the topic of linguistic bias in science, but I don't know who or where. As knowledge advances, old prejudices affecting the conduct of science fall, often against resistance. This is clearest in the biological sciences. There have been clear gender biases in biology. Evelyn Fox-Keller, a professor of genetics at M.I.T. has written at length about such biases. That is not purely a language issue, but then, nothing is. The previously impenetrable wall between mind and body has fallen. The wall between nature (what you're born with) and nurture (what you get from your environment) has fallen. These walls did not exist in Indian (South Asian) science of two thousand years ago. In English and French, Emile Benveniste discussed the use of the verb "have" (avoir). What are the differences between "I have a family," "I have a car," "I have a cold," "I have seen Texas," "I have been robbed". The same word in all five sentences, but very different meanings in each. It can be deceptive.

In answer to Leonard's query.

Without a doubt, the language used can effect the culture of science in practice and across cultures.

Likewise, culture can effect the language of science.

To Margaret's query on "Someone somewhere must be doing research on the topic of linguistic bias in science" -- here is what GOOGLE SCHOLAR notes on initial search. (Come to think of it, the usage of any particular language and grammar may effect your GOOGLE search,)

[BOOK] Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching: Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Applied Linguistic Research

HH Stern - 1983 - books.google.com

... Somewhere in the history of the Press a writer kept them waiting for seventy years. ... We must

therefore distinguish between LI as 'language acquired first in early childhood' and LI as 'language

of dominant or preferred use'. ... But if someone asked him 9 What is your first language ...

Cited by 2850 Related articles All 3 versions Cite

Science research students' composing processes

P Shaw - English for Specific Purposes, 1991 - Elsevier

... writing for an expert in a parallel area or merely 194 P. Shaw for someone with background. ... There

are features of style and content which must be there if the thing is to be ... these results is that novice

dissertation writ- ers are in the Classical position, somewhere midway between ...

Cited by 89 Related articles All 2 versions Cite

[CITATION] Interviews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing

S Kvale, S Brinkmann - 2009 - Sage Publications, Incorporated

Cited by 13236 Related articles All 16 versions Cite

The'interpreter effect': rendering interpreters visible in cross-cultural research and methodology

B Jentsch - Journal of European Social Policy, 1998 - esp.sagepub.com

... Interviewers must not distort this 'print' by al- lowing their own opinion to find entry into the interview ...

Here, it should also be considered that the research topic can lead to intensified percep- tions

of the participants' background character- istics and behaviour ... The linguistic outsider ...

Cited by 49 Related articles All 2 versions Cite

[BOOK] Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy

M Van Manen - 1990 - books.google.com

... the kind of "problematic" intuition which becomes ques- tionable when someone claims "intuitively ...

For us this phenomenological interest of doing research materializes itself in our everyday practical ...

As educators we must act responsibly and responsively in all our relations with ...

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[BOOK] Revisioning phenomenology: Nursing and health science research

Patricia L. Munhall - 1994 - books.google.com

... Also, we must not be so rigidly bound by methods that require us to ask questions of ... of this book,

is a philosophy, an ap- proach, or perspective to living, learning, and doing research. ... disciplines

that believe themselves to be wholly, if not partly, a hu- man science have made an ...

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hawaii.edu [PDF]

Making “collaboration” collaborative: An examination of perspectives that frame linguistic field research

WY Leonard, E Haynes - 2010 - scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu

... support and official documents (eg, a letter of support from the community in order to get

permission to work somewhere); and finally ... of the model outlined in the ap- plication forms can

be negotiated, but it is the applicant who must provide a justification for doing so and make a ...

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Moving Beyond the Gold Standard: Epistemological and Ontological Considerations of Research in Science Literacy

DE Alvermann, CA Mallozzi - Quality Research in Literacy and Science …, 2009 - Springer

... 73 which specifies four components—data, claim, warrants, backing—that are basic to an

argument pattern and must be in place before an extended model of compet ... [i]t borders on the

banal to suggest that everything can be valid for someone, sometime, somewhere. ...

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uottawa.ca [PDF]

[PDF] How to Write Research Articles in Computer Science and Related Engineering Disciplines

I Stojmenovic - 2010 - csi.uottawa.ca

... advice, some of them cited for the source, some of them probably existing somewhere else. ... a

style and will prefer mentioning such work rather than the work of someone else who ... only those

directly relevant to the contribution of the thesis); a motivation for doing research on the ...

Cited by 1 Related articles All 7 versions Cite

More

Let's cite directly from the source and see who can agree with Whorf:

'We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees'. Whorf, B. L. (1940): Science and Linguistics, Technology Review 42(6): 229-31, 247-8

I doubt that many scholars would disagree with this excerpt on a general level. The difficulty is that Whorf went on to base organization on language, arguing for strong relativism. The problems with this strong version have been thoroughly explored in the context of color recognition (e.g., Berlin & Kay). Relativists, following Whorf, have argued that color perception is predicated on language, whereas universalists have argued that color perception is based on biology. The most current research that I'm familiar with suggests that it is both. We know, for example, that women tend to have more color terms than men, which in theory allows them to make finer differentiations among hues of, say, "green." This does not mean, however, that men fail to perceive green.

The idea that how we process the world is based on some sort of social "agreement" strikes me as fundamentally false. It denies the fact that human brains process information in essentially identical ways. Thus, all humans differentiate "up" from "down" on the basis of their abiilty to process spatial relations. The equivalent words we use for the English "up" and "down" are irrelevant. We just do not find any evidence of a society or language group that perceives "up," for example, to be "sideways."

Some observations about language and its cultural contexts are more readily evident to those who speak more than one language than those who only speak one language. This said, it is also clear that even within the same language group, there are frequently wide disagreements about 'what is commonly understood to be the definition of something'. It becomes evident that all ideas are shaped by their contexts. Therefore, not all ideas, concepts and concepts have their equivalents across/through out all languages. Not everyone who speaks the same language formulates their ideas in the same way. There are experiences, perceptions of life that are never completely translated from one language to another or even. I think that language is about using words - specific symbols - to express meanings. To communicate to other people, to create communication with members of the same language group. And to try to communicate to people from other language groups. Furthermore, there are groups within groups in each language group - eg. dialects, accents, social groupings of different kinds. All of these contexts/groups of people/ ascribe meanings in different ways. Symbols are carriers of meaning. Layers and clusters of meaning adhere to agreed upon symbols, but the apprehension of this meaning will never be totally the same experience for everyone, even those within the same language group. Nor is this complex of meaning continuously and openly available at the same streaming rate of meaning over time. Time, context, and 'point of view' all redefine meaning.

That the human brain processes this information in the same way, simply takes into account the various filters of experience that language, time, and social grouping provides.

I'm not convinced, as Jean Colson proposed, that "all ideas are shaped by their contexts." There are such things, after all, as a priori truths/concepts. Isn't it the case that the realm of natural numbers, for example, 3 + 2 = 5 regardless of context? Also, in the realm of logical presupposition, isn't it the case that the statement "My mother is a bad cook" presupposes that I have a mother regardless of language or context?

It is the case, of course, that there are numerous instances in which translation from one language to another is difficult. Quinn went so far as to argue that it was impossible. Spanish, for example, lacks a word that is equivalent to the English "wonder," as in "I wonder what tomorrow will bring." But an equivalent statement can be expressed in Spanish. I don't see how these differences reflect different mental states, which is what those who support linguistic relativism seem to be arguing.

When we look at languages and cultures closely, it appears--at least as far as I have been able to determine after many years of study--that culture influences language far more than the other way around. Sailing cultures, for example, have numerous terms related to sailing because such terms are necessary. Desert cultures, on the other hand, do not. Even within cultures/societies, we see such differences. Skiers have more words for snow than non-skiers.

Also, I would suggest that we should be careful to avoid using "language" and "communication" as synonyms. They are not.

Language encodes the concepts that shape human experience. These concepts have different 'outward' expressions or shapes depending on their social and cultural contexts. Languages are symbol systems for expressing ideas that exist in and that allow human thought, that come from human interaction and a human interpretation and perception of the world. Each language group expresses their perceptions of the 'truths' of this experience and perception slightly differently even though at the kernel of SOME things ..not all. Mathematical principles are encoded differently, expressed differently but at 'base' are the same. There are strong common understandings that all people can share. It is possible to experience snow in the desert. But people living there may not have all the same tools for linguistically expressing the qualities of that experience or the wonder of that experience to the same degree of preciseness or in the same way as someone who lives with snow 9 months a year. So an Inuit can talk about the varieties of snow to someone in the desert who can appreciate the notion of snow but maybe not quite understand exactly the same subtleties of his friend's delight.

I have used a similar term namely the framing. We learn about concepts by placing them in a suitable context: a social framework. We expect to see a bistoury on a surgery board, but not in a kitchen. We learn language also in a context. In fact there is a clear classification of meanings in primary and secondary. As a child we start to approach the primary meanings by daily life experience. So the word 'kiss' is framed. However the meaning of 'kiss of death' is not even close to the primary meaning of kiss. This meaning would not normally belong to a child vocabulary. It takes more life experience in order to learn about and use the secondary meanings of a word. However language is a construction and at its foundation we place this intuitively acquired knowledge. A child knows what a kiss is physically before he starts to use the word. Just the opposite, the kiss of death is an expression that he can read first in a book and look it up in the dictionary or ask the parent about it. Some expressions are counter-intuitive. There is a transition from the simple to the abstract, from the intuitive towards complex and sometime counter-intuitive.

An observation must be made the mode phatic and the mode pejorative/ironic are not used by kids, but in the beginning kids imitate the habits of the parents without understanding why they act like that. The ability to codify and modulate the message is not intuitive but acquired. It comes later in life and it requires more sophisticated thinking. The degree of sophistication is a matter of social context. Telling lies is also part of the learning process, even if the parent does not like it, a kid tells lies sometimes just for testing its undeveloped social abilities. This type of lie, if told by adults is called a gratuitous lie.

why dnt we change the quotation "language shapes thought" and make it "language reflects thought"? As such, everybody would agree that language is just a mirror of the society, culture, civilisation that uses it.

In the desert, there are hundreds of terms (nouns or names) for the dates (the fruit), but just a few for fish, and one for snow!

You might check out the work of Stephen Levinson (http://www.mpi.nl/people/levinson-stephen). He is one of the most respected linguists interested in the impact of language on cognition rather than the other way around. I'm also a fan of Anna Wierzbicka's work. (https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/wierzbicka-a). The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis went into a long period of eclipse in linguistics and these two have helped make it respectable again.

Thank you, Peter. I'll have a look.

Interest in weaker forms of linguistic relativism has been increasing again the last decade or so. Interesting work in this respect is being done by for instance Christiane von Stutterheim or Marianne Starren, and their teams. For instance, Monique Flecken & Marianne Starren did some eye-tracking research (see e.g. Event conceptualization in language production of early bilinguals), from which it appeared that speakers of English and speakers of German attend to scenes with moving agents (people walking or a car driving) differently. Specifically, speakers of German tend to add goals when describing the scene (the car is driving to the village, sometimes even when no village is really visible in the scene). The differences are then related to differences in English and German grammar. While no evidence that speakers of different languages act differently, it is suggestive that they at least perceive reality differently, and this may of course have an impact on how they act as well.

In relation to the study cited by Peter, perhaps one of the few positive ironic comments on the German language by Mark Twain would suffice. Twain said that German language/words had obviously a greater sense of perspective than did English.

While Twain wrote with humor, I suspect that the word sequence system is longer in German sentences and therefore does provide encouragement for the user of the language to take a longer perspective, i.e. in predicting what the final word of a long sentence of a concept or concepts should be.

For example, a user and listener of German is often left guessing what the concluding verb or verbs of longer sentences---leading to a longer period of anticipation before the word is enunciated or stated. This means that more possible endings for a sentence are thought through, projected, and anticipated in German than in English.

In short, I posit (and I believe in my own experience as an acquirer of German) that at a much earlier stage than in English does this wider view (longer perspective) begin in German than in English

I send my best wishes for a happy and fruitful new year to all who have contributed to this thread.

David

hi. there is a two way relationship between language and culture. language affects culture because the linguistic resources native speakers of a language have can influence their way of communication, life style and meaning negotiation. on the other hand, cultural norms and standards definitely affect the way we use linguistic forms like speech acts. so, in most cases, they are cultural-related. best