I. Introduction
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. A hypothesis, first advanced by Sapir in 1929 and subsequently developed by Whorf, that the structure of a language partly determines a native speaker's categorization of experience. (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, Oxford English Dictionary)
Many students and even scholars might have longed for a definition of the Sapir- Whorf Hypothesis (SWH) as distinct and unambiguous as the Oxford English Dictionary offers.1 However, Whorf’s academic history of reception resembles an intellectual battleground, in which a sound discussion of the hypothesis ever so often is lost in polemics between advocates and opponents of the theory: Pinker (2007) suggests that “no one is really sure how Whorf came up with his outlandish claims, but his limited, badly analyzed sample of Hopi speech and his long-term leanings towards mysticism must have helped” (p.53). On the other hand, the supporters of the SWH cherish Whorf as revolutionary and ground-breaking thinker ahead of his time (Lee, 1996; Lehmann, 1998). This split between researchers is aggravated by the lack of an explicit definition in Edward Sapir’s and Benjamin Whorf’s original texts. Linguists rather constructed the SWH after the death of the authors based on their publications, which means neither of them had the chance to defend their writings.
Nevertheless, the debate about the importance and position of this theory in linguistics continues to the present. Neither cognitivists nor nativists can embed the SWH satisfactorily in their concept. In this paper, I attempt to provide a distinct definition of the hypothesis based on the original texts and supported by secondary literature, but also class it with present-day linguistics. Therefore, it is absolutely essential to examine the historical reception of this theory in order to comprehend potential misconceptions and the ambiguous position of Whorf in the linguistic domain. The SWH caused a major uproar in other scientific domains than linguistics such as psychology, anthropology and philosophy. However, the wide-ranging implications of this hypothesis on other academic fields can merely be indicated. The focus will be the repercussions of the SWH on linguistics. Even though Joseph suggests that Whorf cannot be rightly understood without the contemporary intellectual and biographical context, these details will only be consulted if they are absolutely essential to understand the hypothesis or its implications on the linguistic field (2002, p. 105).
Many luminaries from different academic fields wrote about the relationship between language and thought centuries before Sapir and Whorf. However, the intellectual pioneers will be only shortly mentioned with an emphasis on Sapir and his foundations for Whorf’s elaboration, before I attempt to provide a clear definition of the SWH. A critical review of Whorf’s reception will be the second focus of the paper in addition with empirical studies of the SWH. Particularly, the vague distinction of the weak/strong form of the hypothesis will be illuminated as well as the terms “linguistic determinism” and “linguistic relativity” explained. Finally, I will integrate the SWH in present-day linguistics to illustrate the chances and limitations of these ideas, especially the network model of lexical access by Bock and Levelt will serve to shine a new light on the linguistic relativity.
II. The Idea
Whorf based his own writings about the linguistic relativity principle greatly on
Sapir’s thoughts. Having established a solid overview of Sapir’s perspective, it is comparatively easy to understand Whorf’s further elaboration. Lee (1996) explains it as follows: “Whorf’s ideas themselves form a complex interweaving whole, so Sapir’s influence penetrates every strand of his thinking [...]” (p.23). Their writings have caused a great uproar in the academic world, thus it is essential to be very accurate with the sources, but first of all the historical background of the SWH is displayed. Already Sapir noticed that his ideas are not revolutionary and thus “he would [then] be spared the humiliating discovery that many new ideas, many apparently brilliant philosophic conceptions, are little more than rearrangements of familiar words in formally satisfying patterns” (Sapir, 1924, p. 174).
a) History
Whorf formulated the “linguistic relativity theory” in the 1930s, but he was not the first to write about the relationship of thoughts and language. Schlesinger dates the first mentions of such relations back to Francis Bacon in the 16th century (Schlesinger, 1991, p. 12), while philosophers even trace those ideas back to the antiquity (Preston, 1997, p. 1).2 It was not the novelty of such ideas that the SWH was named after Whorf, but his hyperbolic writing style, radicalism and “the prevailing intellectual climate of the time” made him the most popular representative (Schlesinger, 1991, p. 24). Nevertheless, there is a scientific consensus – one of the few - that