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Tom Scott recently did a video about how linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf) is almost certainly not true: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmZdGo6b5yA https://w

by wilg 3y ago

Tom Scott recently did a video about how linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf) is almost certainly not true: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmZdGo6b5yA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmZdGo6b5yA It's an alluring idea, but it's been debunked.

keiferski 3y ago
I’ve never quite understood how this could be “debunked” as it’s a basic fact that different people, living in different places, speaking different languages, will have a different experience of the world. From my understanding S-W is focused more on the languages as conceptual symbol systems and not on the real world lived experience. In other words, sure, languages may be somewhat equally capable of expression, but if you live in the desert your culture and language is going to be lacking when talking about rainforests. This seems to be in line with the Wikipedia article: Nevertheless, research has produced positive empirical evidence supporting a weaker version of linguistic relativity: that a language's structures influence and shape a speaker's perceptions, without strictly limiting or obstructing them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
- zarzavat 3y ago
  The meme that linguistic relativity has been debunked is a uniquely anglophone phenomenon :)
- tomsmeding 3y ago
  > different people, living in different places, speaking different languages, will have a different experience of the world. This is not the same thing as the hypothesis. You're saying that language is going to be correlated with world knowledge, but that both are a result of the environment that those people are living in. Environment -> Language, and Environment -> Perception. This shared causal relationship induces correlation between Language and Perception, but does not conclude any specific causal relation between those two. Sapir-Whorf hypothesises Language -> Perception. This is a meaningful additional causal relationship, which is very hard (but perhaps not strictly impossible if you don't care about ethics) to find evidence for. The cited weaker version still suggests the same causal Language -> Perception relationship, but allows the influence to be weaker in some way.
  - mcswell 3y ago
    It seems like the real problem with the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is that nobody is quite sure what it means. More specifically, if you think it's wrong, you probably have one idea of what SW is, and if you think it's right, you have quite a different idea of what it means.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

by wilg 3y ago

keiferski 3y ago

I’ve never quite understood how this could be “debunked” as it’s a basic fact that different people, living in different places, speaking different languages, will have a different experience of the world. From my understanding S-W is focused more on the languages as conceptual symbol systems and not on the real world lived experience. In other words, sure, languages may be somewhat equally capable of expression, but if you live in the desert your culture and language is going to be lacking when talking about rainforests. This seems to be in line with the Wikipedia article: Nevertheless, research has produced positive empirical evidence supporting a weaker version of linguistic relativity: that a language's structures influence and shape a speaker's perceptions, without strictly limiting or obstructing them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

zarzavat 3y ago
The meme that linguistic relativity has been debunked is a uniquely anglophone phenomenon :)
tomsmeding 3y ago
> different people, living in different places, speaking different languages, will have a different experience of the world. This is not the same thing as the hypothesis. You're saying that language is going to be correlated with world knowledge, but that both are a result of the environment that those people are living in. Environment -> Language, and Environment -> Perception. This shared causal relationship induces correlation between Language and Perception, but does not conclude any specific causal relation between those two. Sapir-Whorf hypothesises Language -> Perception. This is a meaningful additional causal relationship, which is very hard (but perhaps not strictly impossible if you don't care about ethics) to find evidence for. The cited weaker version still suggests the same causal Language -> Perception relationship, but allows the influence to be weaker in some way.
- mcswell 3y ago
  It seems like the real problem with the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is that nobody is quite sure what it means. More specifically, if you think it's wrong, you probably have one idea of what SW is, and if you think it's right, you have quite a different idea of what it means.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]