Language, Thought, and Reality (Classic Reprint): Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf - Couverture souple

Benjamin Lee Whorf

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1330318021 ISBN 13 : 9781330318027

Editeur : Forgotten Books, 2018

Synopsis

Language and thought shape how we see the world—and the words we use may change what we can think.

This collection presents Benjamin L. Whorf’s bold ideas about linguistic relativity and how language conditions concept and perception. Drawing on the Hopi language and other linguistic cases, the text argues that our habitual thoughts and even scientific concepts are influenced by the structures we use to talk about the world. The book surveys two core ideas: first, that higher levels of thinking depend on language; second, that the language we speak can alter how we understand our environment. It contrasts Western and non‑Western linguistic patterns, showing how different grammars and vocabularies may guide attention to space, time, matter, and causation. Throughout, the emphasis is on how language acts as a tool for meaning and a mirror of human thought, not a static library of facts.

• How language can shape our perception of space, time, and causality
• Examples drawn from Hopi and other language families to compare thought patterns
• Discussion of how grammatical categories (such as plurality, tense, and parts of speech) influence experience
• reflections on how studying exotic languages reveals biases in our own thinking

Ideal for readers of linguistics, cognitive science, anthropology, and philosophy of language who want a clear view of how language and reality may be intertwined.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

Excerpt from Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf

Once in a blue moon a man comes along who grasps the relationship between events which have hitherto seemed quite separate, and gives mankind a new dimension of knowledge. Einstein, demonstrating the relativity of space and time, was such a man. In another field and on a less cosmic level, Benjamin Lee Whorf was one, to rank some day perhaps with such great social scientists as Franz Boas and William James.

He grasped the relationship between human language and human thinking, how language indeed can shape our innermost thoughts.

We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated.

Indo-European languages can be roughly calibrated - English, French; German, Russian, Latin, Greek, and the rest; but when it comes to Chinese, Maya, and Hopi, calibration, says Whorf, is structurally difficult if not impossible. Speakers of Chinese dissect nature and the universe differently from Western speakers. A still different dissection is made by various groups of American Indians, Africans, and the speakers of many other tongues.

Whorf was a profound scholar in the comparatively new science of linguistics. One reason why he casts so long a shadow, I believe, is that he did not train for it. He trained for chemical engineering at M.I.T., and thus acquired a laboratory approach and frame of reference. The work in linguistics was literally wrung out of him. Some driving inner compulsion forced him to the study of words and language - not, if you please, the mastery of foreign languages, but the why and how of language, any language, and its competence as a vehicle for meaning.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Forgotten Books
• Date d'édition: 2018
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1330318021
• ISBN 13: 9781330318027
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 300
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