CogBlog

It is interesting to note that there is no means, as humans, to entirely understand an individual's thought-this is where language comes in. Whether you consider yourself a mind and body being, a mind being or soley a body being, it is impossible for anyone to entirely disect one's thoughts or intentions. However, we have free range of personal thought and are given certain devices in which to express it: action and language. I think that the Whorfian Hypothesis can be expounded on; for my ideas to influence another's thoughts, then it is just the same that my thoughts which instigate my language and my actions are influenced by another's language and actions.

It is then noticeable that how each person's thoughts are organized and activated is distinct: we cannot analyze those thoughts, only the language and actions produced by these thoughts.

My comment is in no way a conclusion or annexation to the Whorfian Hypothesis, I just think that it is interesting how unobtainable thought actually is. But, yes, I agree that language influences thought ~ but I find that this causation affects persons differently because of his or her personal thought processes which we cannot decipher or explain completely.

Politically, people respond differently to particular politicians depending on their previous conceptions and their ability to understand the politician's language. Unfortunately, listeners assume biases and distort political views; this is a result of how language influences thought thus influcencing action and how those people vote in elections! It's pretty interesting, uh?

The problem with the educational approach is that is disregards cross-cultural exploration. That argument invites ethnocentrism and the supposition that others perceive the world differently because they are not as educated. We think about the world differently because of our environments and how we live in them; language is a part of that environment. The Japanese don't think about the world in terms of social standing and levels of politeness because they are any more or less educated than other cultures.

The Whorfian hypothesis draws from the concept of language as a cultural institution: it was here before us, it will be here after us; it shapes who we are, and we in turn shape it.

I don't fully agree with the Whorfian Hypothesis. I believe that the depth of an individual's education, both non-academic and academic, has a more significant influence in determining how one perceives the world. I think that with greater education one's vocabulary also expands. This evolving vocabulary/language allows one to better express/tailor their perceptions.

I fully agree with the Whorfian hypothesis. People's views and opinions are ALWAYS affected by the language used during political campaigns and times of war.

For example, when a candidate is trying to get elected, every word of every speech he gives is analyzed by the public voters. We saw this in the recent election as many voters criticized Bush for his poor speaking skills, and reasoned that he was therefore a poor presidential candidate.

Another example is that during times of war the public opinion is swayed by the language in which they hear about it. People can hear news about the same situation but in different lights. One person may hear information from a supporter of the war who is upbeat and positive, while another person may hear the same information from someone who opposes the war. Clearly, the positive connotation with which the supporter speaks will make for an extremely different interpretation than the opposition who speaks negatively about the war.

I would have to disagree with the Whorfian Hypothesis. I think one's mood influences the language they use.

Some examples:
1) If someone is in a bad mood, they tend to cuss and be snappy.

2) When athletes are on the field (e.g. football), they are excited and pumped up. Their language conforms to their mood, and you hear exclamatory remarks, snappy remarks, even trash talking (all of which can be related to their current mood).

3) If an attractive girl walks up to a middle schooler (around the same age), he will usually be shy and his mood will happy, yet a bit nervous. He will probably stutter and use sloppy, even incoherant diction at times due to the nervous state he has been put under.

All in all, I don't agree with the Whorfian Hypothesis because I found numerous examples contradticting it. I do think that language influences how we think about the world to a certain extent, but the mood (and more specifically the situational mood) of the person has a far more profound impact on their language.

I spoke in class the other day on how the idea of politeness and social structure are hard-wired into the Japanese language. In particular, there are special verbs that are used to honor someone else or to make yourself humble. I made a quick scan out of my Japanese textbook (Nakama 2, Hatasa et al.) which demonstrates how you use different verbs to mean "to give" depending on whether the receiver is socially superior, equal, or below you.

http://webpages.atlanticbb.net/~crangvy/ageru.jpg

This is only one of several such "social flow charts" that our book uses to explain how to use different verbs in different situations.

To make things more complicated, (and to severely annoy Japanese students) this verb hasn't even been conjugated yet. In addition, as I also mentioned in class, Japanese verbs are conjugated according to how polite you want to be to the person you are talking to. This is a separate issue from the verb you choose above.

So it is possible, for example, for two employees to be speaking to each other on an informal level (with informally conjugated verbs), but when they refer to their boss, they still use a special honorific verb. That one verb implies two things: "You are I are on the same social level, but our boss is socially superior to us."

As you might imagine, this is quite difficult to render on the fly to us native English speakers, who are used to having only one verb for "to give" etc.

The point I am trying to make is that Japanese speakers must constantly be aware of their social order -- who is above them, who is below them, who is equal to them. Misappropriating someone's social rank -- mistaking your boss as your equal, for example -- is a huge social taboo. Ki o tsukete! (Be careful!)

We can easily apply the Whorfian Hypothesis here to say that the Japanese language has contributed to a keen awareness of social structure of the Japanese people. Some might deride this as "conformity." But as explained above, Japanese people have been taught through everyday speech to analyse their social relationships. But whether that analysis is on a conscious or subconcious level is perhaps a discussion for a different day.......

As said previously many times, the Wharfian Hypothesis states that language influences thought. We see examples of this in everyday life all the time. Political correctness is a type of language manipulation that is intended to not offend people, but if you say a phrase of the exact meaning but with more offensive language, people listening can perceive the phrase in a totally different manner. Especially in today's world, people are so over sensitive about offending others that if you say something in the wrong way, you can really make others mad. But if someone that is not experienced in our culture and how the language is used in our culture, he or she might not be offended by it at all becuase they can not pick up on the connations of the phrase. Our society has become so over sensitive becuase of the movement towards politcal correctness and other institutions like it, or is it the other way around.

"But, I found on the internet that an important idea that can refute the Whorfian hypothesis is that it is possible for an idea that can be expressed in one language is inexpressable in another, meaning that the structure of the language can not influence thought."

But, while the thought may be expressable in another language, is it expressable in the language an individual knows and uses? Just because it is expressable in another language does not mean that the person can express it. We cannot use a language if we have not learned it. Even people who learn to speak foreign languages after the age of 6 years old (Noam Chomsky's language aquisition device), will never be as fluent as a native speaker. The same person is also most likely to think in their own tongue rather than an affected language.

The Whorfian Hypothesis supposes that language can affect thought. While one student in class made the point that when you speak Japanese you speak in different forms depending on how polite you have to be, the same idea is used in Spanish when using the You informal and the You formal. But, I found on the internet that an important idea that can refute the Whorfian hypothesis is that it is possible for an idea that can be expressed in one language is inexpressable in another, meaning that the structure of the language can not influence thought.

I did a quick google search to do some more reading and found this quote from George Orwell's 1984:
"The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc [English Socialism], but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought--that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc--should be literally unthinkable, at least as far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect method. This was done partly by the invention of new words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever...A person growing up with Newspeak as his sole language would no more know that ‘equal' had once had the secondary meaning of "politically equal," or that ‘free' had once meant "intellectually free," than, for instance, a person who had never heard of chess would be aware of the secondary meanings attaching to ‘queen' or ‘rook.' There would be many crimes and errors which it would be beyond his power to commit, simply because they were nameless and therefore unimaginable."

When seen in this context, it does appear that language influences thought, and if we do not have certain words to describe what we are thinking, than it is almost certainly impossible to convey our thoughts to others, even when speaking the same language.

This is a great website that has a ton of different discussions, as well as arguments for and against the Whorfian Hypothesis.

http://www.angelfire.com/journal/worldtour99/sapirwhorf.html

I think an example of the Whorfian Hypothesis in politics is in the words used by people who are campaigning. When advertising ideas to the public, politicians want to use favorable words, or words that give a postive message to the reader hoping that the listener would remember the postive words because they are evocative of postive memories.

I looked this up on the internet & it gave the example how during times of war, the term "freedom fighter" evokes a postive image while the terms "terrorist" or "insurgents" produces a negative thought and are not as memorbale as the postive words.

The suggestion to post examples found in political campaigns and warfare prompted me to search for correlations between the two words in language. Interestingly, in the Japanese language, the word used for war is also the same word used for political election - kousen.

The Whorfian Hypothesis assumes that language effects thought, and not the other way around. Although not a political example, I too did a Google search for further research and found a study (led by Peter Gordon) involving a Brazilian tribal community. This tribe only had counting words for "one," "two," and "many." Consequently, tested members of the tribe had difficulty determining the difference between a group of four objects and a group of five objects. This would seem to support that since the only word for four or five objects is "many" that the tested tribal members only think of "many" objects, and not a specific number of objects. (www.newscientist.com)

I think it is interesting to see how in both World War I and World War II languages other than English was used as code. The Choctaw language was used as a code in World War One and Navajo language was used as unbreakable code in World War Two against the Japanese. The question that I raise dealing with the Whorfian hypothesis, is how using these languages as code effects the thought process in a war. If the Whorfian hypothesis is true then the use of a Native American Language as code would influence the thought of the soldiers during the war. I'm not sure how either of these languages work but maybe they bring out more war like emotions through the use of them as code.

When analyzing politics using the Whorfian Hypothesis, it is important to keep in mind the distinction between language influencing how we think and how we think influencing the language that we use. Politicians, especially during pinnacle periods such as campaigns and times of war, are very careful with their word choice in order to display themselves and their situation in the best light. This word choice doesn't just influence the public to whom it is addressed (language affecting thought) but also how the politician is viewed by the public (in this case, it would be thought by the politician seemingly affecting his language). The distinction here still remains unclear.

I was curious to see what might come up if I googled Whorfian Hypothesis and a website that I found states that the Whorfian Hypothesis could have been the cause of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. When the Allies ordered Japan to surrender in order to avoid serious consequences they responded with the word "mokusatsu" which requires a "yes" or "no" response and cant really be translated into English. As a result the Allies deciphered their response inaccurately as "We ignore your Postdam Declaration." As a result Pearl Harbor was bombed. Whether this is accurate or not I find it pretty interesting.

The Whorfian Hypothesis is essential to politics because the language used by politicians influences the way in which the people conceptualize and remember political arguments.

Elizabeth Loftus showed that word choice impacts memory when she found that observers more often claim that a driver was speeding when asked about the driver's "crash" rather than their "bump."

When applying Loftus' findings to politics, we can see how politicians can manipulate our attitudes by using loaded terms that carry inferred meaning. For example, the term "tax relief" implies that taxation is bad, while some people believe it is a positive thing that keeps our society from deteriorating.

As an example of a politician slipping up and reverting back to their natural speech, George W. Bush has made a few mistakes. That is, when in times of war like the present, a political leader may lose track of their previously written phenomenal oratory and demonstrate feelings through speech that would be stated much more eloquently had they not slipped up. In the beginning of his first term of Presidency, Bush was ridiculed for his "thoughtless words and small vocabulary". Although a simple mistake in forgetting his previously written speech, it is interesting to consider how his behavior and thoughts came across to foreign countries in the stressful time of war.

Even though most politicians are able to speak English, their mind set is still in the language that they first learned which dictates their behaviors. In high stress times, such as campaigns and times of war, it seems like it would be harder to fight natural tendencies to revert back to how one's original language dictates behavior towards the rest of the world. When a politician slips up and says something that has not already been written out and edited for home, it is much harder to hide his feelings toward the rest of the world in his unscripted language.

I have heard it proposed that the more people use email, the less control over the English language we will have. The idea is based on the fact that most people do not use punctuation or capital letters, etc., in their emails. If people continue to ignore many of the minute details of the language, these skills could be lost forever, at least amongst parts of the population who do not write more formally very often. This certainly seems like an example of language influencing thought, because the conclusion of this argument is that society will eventually be dumbed down.

I would think that one of the most obvious examples of an attempt to use language to influence people's thoughts on a situation such as war would be the phrase "collateral damage". The phrase itself sounds so innocent and inconsequential that it is easy to disregard its profound implications. On a side note, I wonder if euphamisms for run of the mill jobs would count as support for the Whorfian Hypothesis. For example, merchandise packaging specialist as opposed to bag-boy.

The language of politicians would definitely be altered in war time so as to be more diplomatic and so on but what accounts for language barriers? Even when translated, many languages have different subtleties and idioms that would not be picked up by a non-native speaker. Now, almost all major politicians and foreign diplomats speak English but how can they truly say what they mean in a language that is not their own?