Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

You guys are reading my statements incorrectly. (Ironically, this is a fault of language.) I'm not saying that words intrinsically exist for concepts. I'm saying that it is impossible for us to conceptualize them without language, and that the language we use creates the context within which we conceptualize them.

Back to my previous example, I'm saying that, without the conceptual framework "thing-you-sit-on" (the actual words used are irrelevant), a chair is not a chair for a given person. I'm using a simple example for illustration purposes, but it applies just as well to anything else.

Take "happy". You have a symbolic thought-object (call it a "word" if it makes you feel better) that corresponds to a physiological emotional state. Without that symbolic thought-object, the emotional state has no meaning for you. You have no ability to think abstractly about it, measure it, or take reasoned actions about it. Subsequently, once you develop the thought-object, "happy", you have now permanently created a referent in your linguistic framework. You can no longer access "happy" outside of this framework. You may associate other things with "happy", certainly, and its meaning may become more nuanced as you gain experience. You may learn words for it in other languages, but they all refer back to that thought-object you associate with that emotional state.

Another example - modern people have a general concept, "planet", that most associate with "large object in space that orbits a star and shares some characteristics with Earth". Before the concept of "planet" was invented, back in ancient days, the thought-object literally did not exist. There were no planets, as far as any human knew. The actual existence of planets was as irrelevant to us as it is to a monkey or a flower.

Going controversial, take "God". Whatever intrinsic meaning that thought-object may have, for each individual it's rooted in a very specific symbolic framework that does not exist until said individual is exposed to the concept. The oft-described "feeling of holiness" that some people like to tout as examples of "wordless experience" may or may not exist prior to you creating a thought-object for it, but you have no way to tell. In order to meaningfully talk about it, even to yourself, you have to have distinguished it as a thought-object.

edited 4th Nov '10 9:27:58 AM by Fighteer

@Fighteer: "Without that symbolic thought-object, the emotional state has no meaning for you. You have no ability to think abstractly about it, measure it, or take reasoned actions about it. Subsequently, once you develop the thought-object, "happy", you have now permanently created a referent in your linguistic framework. You can no longer access "happy" outside of this framework."

What you are claiming is simply not true, which I know from personal experience, but which I cannot communicate to you because I have no words. The closest analogy would be zen masters, who have specific techniques intended to eliminate all conscious awareness of objective goal-states, yet are able to act (with increased efficiency). the martial arts provides the empirical evidence.

But if you don't accept that claim, then here is another demonstration I have thought of (lets stick with objects in visual space to keep it simple). Take any reasonably complex visual field (this one for example: http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php) Now comprehensively describe what you see in words. Do is so well, that someone who hasn't seen the picture has as much information about it as you do. Cant be done. And even if it could, you wouldn't argue that your brain processes the picture using language would you?

Finally: "...think abstractly about it, measure it, or take reasoned actions about it."

Thinking abstractly, measuring something, and taking reasoned actions x= "meaning".

To add to Fighteer's statements, it's also worth pointing out that we can conceptualize and describe non-existent entities, God arguably being one of those entities. Humans are good at abstracting, and as far as we know, we are the only species on this planet that can do this. It's also the reason why we are capable of lying, but I digress.

De Marquis, I forgot to answer one of your questions earlier. By "describe", I mean that humans identify and express an idea. A description is a linguistically materialized version of an idea.

Abstracting and taking reasoned actions are equal to meaning, even if the meaning is not agreed upon by all observers. Marquis, you can come up with linguistic descriptions for concepts and feelings that you may emotively suggest are beyond your linguistic reach. You can call a Zen Buddhist experience whatever you want, and much of this phenomenon can be seen quite clearly in the daily traffic on this website and other websites. Concept propagation and language propagation are how memes are created, among other things.

Now, if we're talking about prescriptive definitions, then I can agree with you more thoroughly. An accurate description of an experience requires empirical observation through scientific inquiry, but any old description just requires you to think to yourself that the word "bollywiggzy" refers to the feeling you get when you see your wife. You find consent within yourself at that point in the concept-language formation process, which is why I've pondered on the credibility of private language throughout my academic career.

Edit

Marquis: "Now comprehensively describe what you see in words. Do is so well, that someone who hasn't seen the picture has as much information about it as you do. Cant be done."

Agreements and disagreements on linguistic cognition set aside, this is the epitome of linguistic relativity. By the way, Marquis, are you arguing that language is only external and physical? Better yet, are you arguing against the position that language is internal?

edited 4th Nov '10 10:02:34 AM by Aprilla

Well being bilingual, I can state that language is more or less framed around cultural and social needs rather than shaping our thoughts. I have the language capabilities of two very different langauges but how do I think? I think like all the people who can only speak the mother tongue here because the cultural concepts brought about in the specific words of my other side language are just useless to me here. I just don't see how language shapes how one thinks, what happens in real life, due to the environment affects what one needs to think.

And someone raised the point of programming languages, they are the most brilliant example of this. When someone teaches you procedural coding, they then show you it in C, which does procedural coding. If they need to teach you scripting, then they might show you Python. If they want to teach you object oriented, they would show you c++. The need, and the concept, comes before the language chosen.

So what happens if I straight up taught you C++ but no coding concepts? I believe this is where Sapir-Whorf comes in, in that, if I don't teach you any concepts but the language is specifically designed for object oriented coding, you will probably gravitate toward thinking in some kind of rudimentary object oriented terms (but probably get most of it wrong and everyone will come up with different ideas on how to do it). The language is framed around a set of concepts and if I teach you the language, as a side effect I teach you the concepts. But that is not the same as saying that the language causes you to think a certain way, by teaching you that particular language I am, in effect, teaching you those concepts.

So in the question of chicken or egg, I would state that concepts come first to form the language and then after people forget why they framed the language such as they did, continue to teach it to the next generation the same way. All in all, this creates a social impetus to constantly relearn from one generation to the next, the same concepts, via the language you've built.

Just my hypothesis.

Excellent.

Language doesn't totally shape our perception of reality, but it influences our perception of reality. A man who refers to women as "bitches, whores and sluts" probably has a very low opinion of women, and his language reflects that. However, his reality is not totally confined to and codified around misogyny. His environment and those who occupy that environment implanted a concept of women into his mind, and he explicated that concept via language.

Part of the sub-debate primarily between De Marquis and Fighteer might be better solved if we backtrack and talk about what constitutes language (what is the meaning of language?). I could be an academic snob and throw in my dozen or so "official" textbook definitions, but I'll leave that alone for now.

edited 4th Nov '10 3:51:01 PM by Aprilla

I'm arguing against the position that language is the only available form of internal thought. I think we are in broad agreement.

edited 4th Nov '10 3:57:10 PM by DeMarquis

My position, in as few words as possible, using a reference to De Marquis' post:

A man who refers to women as "bitches and whores" is not misogynistic because he refers to women as "bitches and whores", he refers to women as "bitches and whores" because he is misogynistic.

Or also, the Japanese are not concerned with social propriety because Japanese must deference-mark all verbs any more than the English are concerned with time because English must time-mark all verbs. The Japanese mark all verbs because they had already developed the cultural expectations that lead to them marking that in their language.

This does not apply to little things like concepts for blue or green vs. grue; those are really determined by language, but it doesn't matter much.

I suppose what you're saying, in short, is that conceptualization comes before language acquisition. That was more or less where I was headed with my last post, but I might have worded it funny. Particle usage in Japanese is a reflection of their hierarchical social structure, and in many other ways, language itself is part of the socialization process. That still doesn't conclude language as being private or public, humanly universal or relative.

De Marquis's argument is reminiscent of Emile Benveniste's literature on subjectivity in language (the "you, I" argument). Fighteer's posts remind me of works published by Ruth Millikan and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on functional language and emotive language, respectively. None of these theories are entirely exclusive of each other, and we can actually mix and match based on our own personal experiences as well our social and linguistic understanding of each other. There's a certain irony behind that juxtaposition.

edited 4th Nov '10 5:55:04 PM by Aprilla

My point of view derives specifically from a study of ontology that I undertook at a very excellent program for the same many years ago.

I'm afraid I don't see the connection. Isn't Benveniste an early deconstructionist? I wasnt saying that words have no objective meaning, only that there are subjective meanings that cant be expressed in words. That subverts the post-structural movement, doesn't it?

To an extent, it is a subversion, but Benveniste didn't really dabble in deconstructionist linguistics until very late in his life. Even then, he focused on sociological structuralism in linguistics. Most scholars believe that he was a structuralists at his core. Some of his colleagues did actually suggest that a great deal of linguistic cognition comes from decontextualization and recontextualization, which is more in line with what you're arguing. The alleged subjectivity of contextualization in cognition is what typically separates objectivists from subjectivists in discussions about the innateness of language and whether or not all ideas can be expressed through language.

edited 4th Nov '10 7:16:20 PM by Aprilla

Isn't this the same site that tried to use Dunbar's number to explain everything about human behavior?

edited 4th Nov '10 7:23:54 PM by Angrbor

The thread isn't really about the Cracked article.

Simply the inspiration for this thread.

....I like Cracked

The thing is, the guy who can't distinguish between the various shades of white is NOT speaking a language that can't make those distinctions. It does. He's the one who doesn't. If he cared enough about the colour "white" to use finer gradations on a regular basis, and his language didn't contain them, he'd fairly quickly invent terms to use when talking about them to other similarly white-obsessed people. He'd start out by talking about the white of an eggshell, or of ivory and soon he'd just be calling those colours "eggshell" and "ivory".

I'm talking about the guy's personal language. Did you think I was talking about English? Each of us independently constructs language objects. That they resemble each other enough to allow communication is a result of social evolution, not anything intrinsic to the concept.