The general analytic perspective we are considering is part of what became known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis during the middle of the twentieth century. At a time when American linguistics was still mainly carried out by scholars with strong backgrounds in anthropology, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf produced arguments that the languages of Native Americans, such as the Hopi, led them to view the world differently from those who spoke European languages. We have already noted a difference between Hopi and English in the treatment of time. According to Whorf, the Hopi perceive the world differently from other tribes (including the English speaking tribe) because their language leads them to do so. In the grammar of Hopi, there is a distinction between “animate” and “inanimate,” and among the set of entities categorized as “animate” are clouds and stones. Whorf claimed that the Hopi believe that clouds and stones are living entities and that it is their language that leads them to believe this. English does not mark in its grammar that clouds and stones are “animate,” so English speakers do not see the world in the same way as the Hopi. In Whorf’s words, “We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages” (see Carroll, 1956).

There have been a number of arguments presented against this point of view. Following Sampson (1980), let us imagine a tribe with a language in which differences in sex are marked grammatically, so that the terms used for females, such as girl and woman, have special markings in the language. On close inspection, we find that these “feminine” markings are also used with the words for stone and door. Are we forced to conclude that this tribe believes that stones and doors are female entities in the same way as girls and women? This tribe is not an obscure group. They use the expressions la femme (“the woman”), la pierre (“the stone”) and la porte (“the door”). It is the tribe that lives in France. Should we conclude that French speakers believe that stones and doors are “female” in the same way as women?

The problem with the conclusions invited in both the Hopi and French cases is that there is a confusion between linguistic classification (“animate,” “feminine”) and biological classification (“living,” “female”). There is frequently a correspondence in languages between these classifications, but there does not have to be. Moreover, the linguistic forms do not force us to ignore biological distinctions. While the Hopi language has a particular linguistic classification for the word stone, it does not mean that Hopi truck drivers worry about killing living creatures if they run over some stones while driving.

مواضيع ذات صلة

Word by word

Finale—Master Class Introduction

Finale—Master Class

Sign language

Artificial spoken languages

Artificial Languages

Predictions

The success story

Obstacles to keeping 6,000 languages alive

Language revival movements

Language Death—Prognosis

What happens to a language when it is dying?