4 ms·

I find it a bit funny that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, though invented for and now largely discredited for natural languages, turns out to strongly apply to pro

• guelo 10y ago
  Wikipedia says "Currently, a balanced view of linguistic relativity is espoused by most linguists", so I wouldn't call it discredited, just more nuanced.
  • jcranmer 10y ago
    People have used the term linguistic relativity to mean anything on a vast range of specific hypotheses, which makes it hard to figure out what exactly people mean when they say it's been proven or disproven. Nevertheless, it's pretty clear to most people that the stronger forms of the hypothesis--the idea that language is essentially a straightjacket on the kinds of thoughts you can express (or linguistic determination in general)--is thoroughly debunked. I personally rather suspect that the weaker forms (that language generally shapes but not fully limits how you view the world) are also equally fallacious, even if language and world-views might be weakly correlative--instead, I see language and world-view as essentially both being strongly derived from that of those who teach you.
    • grey-area 10y ago
      I think this depends on the language. For example Mathematics is generally accepted to be incomplete it what it can express (Gödel), and programming languages, while expressive and in theory turing complete, still limit the thoughts you can easily express, which I suspect will guide users to do things a certain way. Natural language is a bit different because of borrowed words and the flexibility of the humans parsing it.