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The strong hypothesis of linguistic relativity, now referred to as linguistic determinism, is that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and restrict cognitive categories. This was a claim by some earlier linguists pre-World War II; [ 3 ] since then it has fallen out of acceptance by contemporary linguists.
The concept of linguistic relativity concerns the relationship between language and thought, specifically whether language influences thought, and, if so, how.This question has led to research in multiple disciplines—including anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, and philosophy.
Linguistic determinism is the strong form of linguistic relativity (popularly known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis), which argues that individuals experience the world based on the structure of the language they habitually use. Since the 20th century, linguistic determinism has largely been discredited by studies and abandoned within ...
The strong version, linguistic determinism, argues that without language there is and can be no thought (a largely discredited idea), while the weak version, linguistic relativity, supports the idea that there are some influences from language on thought. [1]
The field of linguistic relativity remains an active area of research in psycholinguistics and linguistic anthropology, generating ongoing debates between relativism and universalism. Whorf's contributions to linguistics, such as the allophone and the cryptotype , have been widely accepted.
The claim that Eskimo words for snow are unusually numerous, particularly in contrast to English, is a cliché commonly used to support the controversial linguistic relativity hypothesis. In linguistic terminology, the relevant languages are the Eskimo–Aleut languages, specifically the Yupik and Inuit varieties.
A central claim in Whorf's work on linguistic relativity was that for the Hopi units of time were not considered objects that can be counted like most of the comparable English words that are described by nouns (a day, an hour etc.). He argued that only the Hopi word for "year" was a noun, the words for days and nights were ambivalent between ...
The question whether the use of language influences spatial cognition is closely related to theories of linguistic relativity—also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis—which states that the structure of a language affects cognitive processes of the speaker. Debates about this topic are mainly focused on the extent to which language ...