The critical reception
“The Whorf hypothesis seems to bring out the worst in those who discuss it” (Ellis, 1993, p.53 qtd. in Lee, 1996, p.20). The record of Whorf’s critical reception is as remarkable as the SWH itself. Supporters and opponents of the linguistic relativity principle have been fighting for decades and still do. Nevertheless, the critical reception of the SWH in this paper should serve to reveal the limitations and chances of the hypothesis in order to effectively work with it rather illustrating the set of problems impeding the reception.13 However, it is necessary to confound a conventional assumption about the SWH, which has become nearly an elemental part of its linguistic discussion: The divide of the hypothesis in a weak and strong form. Some linguistic termed the weak form “linguistic relativity” and the strong form “linguistic determinism”. (Penn, 1972) has introduced those terms for the interpretation of the SWH and predetermined the analysis for many years. It has become a conventionality in the academic reception as a result of hasty readings.