Relationship between Language，Culture and Thought

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-校园英语 / Relationship between Language，Culture and Thought

四川省南充市营山县第二中学/尹红梅【Abstract】It has long been realized that language is of great importance to culture and that the impact of culture upon a given language is indispensible.One claim about the relationship between language and culture is that the structure of a particular language influences the habitual thought of its speakers.Today,the claim is referred to as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,which is composed of two versions.The strong version,also known as linguistic determinism,states that language patterns determine speaker’s thinking.The weak version,also known as linguistic relativity,implies that language do really influence thought but doesn’t determine it completely.This paper tries to give a brief introduction to the hypothesis,illustrate some experiments used to test the theory and state some arguments against the strong version of the hypothesis.Although the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis doesn’t offer the most reasonable explanation of the nature of the relationship between language,culture and thought,it is still influential in the development of linguistic science.【Key words】language; culture and thought; Sapir-Whorf hypothesis; linguistic determinism; linguistic relativityIntroductionThe relationship between language,culture and thought has never failed to draw attention of philosophers and anthropologists.Two of them we should mention here are J.G.Herder and Wilhelm Von Humboldt.In his book Origin of Language,Herder expressed that language was the tool of reasoning .He discovered that man with different culture backgrounds had language discrepancy .Humboldt,a follower of Herder,compared different languages among nations and exposed the common development of languages to establish the general linguistics.To what extent and in what ways does language determine thought? This question is closely related with an influential but also extremely controversial theory,namely the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,or simply the Whorf hypothesis,was put forward by linguists Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Whorf.What the hypothesis suggests is like this:linguistic patterns determine the world-view of linguistic users; different language moulds different pattern of thought; languages in the world are different,so each nation has its own way of understanding the world around. I.A General Introduction to the Sapir-Whorf HypothesisIn 1929,Sapir expressed his ideas in the book Language in these words:Human beings do not live in the objective world alone,nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood,but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society.It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality…… We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.(Sapir 1958,p.69) Later,his student Whorf went on to extend his views.According to Whorf,the relationship between language and culture was a deterministic one .In his view,people don’t have the freedom to observe the objective world,all viewpoints of people are under the control of linguistic patterns.Different speakers experience the world differently as their linguistic structures differ greatly.Whorf got his ideas from two kinds of experience.One was obtained when he was a fire prevention engineer in an insurance company.In analyzing the reports of how fire had started,Whorf found that language plays an important role in the fire accident.For instance,people tend to be careful when getting close to full petrol drums,but seem to be careless near the empty ones.Actually,the empty drums which were full of gas vapor were more dangerous than the full ones.The other was acquired when he went to study the American Indian Languages,which led Whorf to make his strongest claims.Whorf made a contrast between the linguistic structure of Hopi and that of Standard Average European.(In order to express his linguistic view,Whorf named the English,German,French and other familiar European languages as SAE).He discovered that Hopi and SAE differ dramatically in their structural features.These differences led speakers of Hopi and SAE to perceive the world differently.The speakers of Hopi view the world as an ongoing process; events can’t be separated and counted,and time is not apportioned to fixed segments.For example,instead of saying “I have stayed for three days.” the Hopi speakers would say “I left on the third day.”In this view,then,language provides a screen or filter to reality; it determines how speakers perceive and organize the world around them,both the natural world and the social world.Consequently,the language we speak helps to from our world-view.It defines our experience for us; we do not use it simply to report that experience.It is not neutral but gets in the way,imposing habits of both looking and thinking.(Ronald Wardhaugh,p.219)II.Examples Listed to Support the HypothesisWhorf had cited a series of examples to prove the correctness of linguistic determinism and linguistic relativism.Generally speaking,these examples can be classified into two categories:the lexical category and the grammatical category.1.Lexical Categories.A large number of examples can be given to strengthen Whorf’s claim.In a general sense,the more important a thing is in a particular culture community,the