Linguistic Relativity

Linguistic Relativity

Linguistic relativity is the claim that the language you speak shapes what you notice and how you think. Benjamin Lee Whorf named the principle in 1940, building on Edward Sapir. The strong version, that language determines thought, is rejected and nobody serious defends it. The weak version, that language nudges perception and attention, has real support and also several headline demonstrations that have failed to replicate or been reinterpreted. The two versions must be kept apart, because one is routinely cited as though it proved the other.

What it is

Whorf set out the linguistic relativity principle in an article called "Science and Linguistics", published in Technology Review in 1940. The idea has an older lineage through Sapir, his teacher, and through nineteenth-century European philology before that.

The strong reading holds that the categories available in a language constrain what its speakers can think at all. That claim has not survived. People routinely think things their language has no single word for, and translation, though imperfect, works.

The weak reading is narrower and defensible. It holds that habitual use of a vocabulary or a grammatical structure makes certain distinctions more salient, faster to make, or more likely to be attended to, without making the alternatives unavailable. Everything below concerns that version.

In effect

Two demonstrations carry most of the weight in popular accounts, and both need care.

The first is Russian blues. Russian has two basic colour terms where English has one, goluboy for light blue and siniy for dark blue. Jonathan Winawer and colleagues reported in 2007 that Russian speakers discriminated shades across that boundary faster than English speakers, and that the advantage disappeared under verbal interference, which is what made the result look like a language effect rather than a perceptual one. The result is not settled. Jasna Martinovic, Galina Paramei and W. Joseph MacInnes published a study in Cognition in 2020 that found no such speed advantage at the boundary, and noted that the boundary is shaped by frequency and order biases in the task.

The second is spatial frames of reference. Speakers of some languages do not use left and right for describing space and instead use absolute directions, so that a cup sits to the north of a plate rather than to its left. Guugu Yimithirr is the classic case, described by John Haviland and by Stephen Levinson. Kuuk Thaayorre, spoken at the community of Pormpuraaw, is the language in Lera Boroditsky and Alice Gaby's 2010 study, and it is worth saying that Pormpuraaw is a place rather than a language, a slip that recurs in popular retellings. Speakers of such languages track their own orientation constantly, because the grammar requires it. Peng Li and Lila Gleitman argued in 2002 that effects of this kind reflect the context of the task rather than the language, and that dispute has not closed.

The applied reading for anyone working across languages is modest and real. Names, colour terms and category words do not translate neutrally, and what a respondent can notice, or report noticing, depends on the words on offer. That is a reason to be careful with cross-cultural survey work, not a licence for claims about different worlds.

What it does not say

It does not say language determines thought. The strong version is rejected, and any argument that needs it is not supported by this literature.

It does not say the colour findings are settled. The Russian blues effect has a non-replication against it and should be presented as contested rather than as a demonstration.

It does not say speakers of absolute-direction languages cannot understand left and right. It says the habitual frame differs, and even that is disputed as a language effect rather than a task effect.

And it does not belong to the popular authors who retell it. The principle is Whorf's, from 1940, building on Sapir.

Sources

  1. Whorf, B. L. (1940). "Science and Linguistics." Technology Review, 42(6). Named the principle, building on Edward Sapir.
  2. Winawer, J., et al. (2007). Russian blues. PNAS, 104(19), 7780-7785. Read here in abstract only.
  3. Martinovic, J., Paramei, G. V., & MacInnes, W. J. (2020). Cognition, 201. Found no discrimination-speed advantage at the Russian light and dark blue boundary. Abstract only.
  4. Boroditsky, L., & Gaby, A. (2010). Kuuk Thaayorre spatial frames. Psychological Science, 21(11), 1635-1639. See also Levinson, S. C. (2003) and Haviland's work on Guugu Yimithirr.
  5. Li, P., & Gleitman, L. (2002). Cognition, 83(3), 265-294. Argued such effects reflect task context rather than language.
  6. Evidence grade: mixed. Weak linguistic relativity has real support; several headline demonstrations have failed to replicate or been reinterpreted.