September Blog- Lauren Brill

I am going to focus my months blog on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is the connection between a language and a person’s perspectives. Our language choices are due to our values of reality. Our text book describes that the hypothesis argues that “our words are not just words; rather, they can determine what we can (and can’t) understand” (Warren & Fassett 131). Due to our experiences our language is structured. 

            An example that is very common in our society today is sexist language. It influences our views comparing men and women. The words like fireman or policeman are examples of these. Instead of using firefighter we mainly resort to one as a fireman. This causes issues between men and women, by given men a higher acknowledgement. 

            Going off of the book’s hypothesis example with money, just thinking of the word in the U.S. culture we can come up with many things. But if we were to ask another, less privileged, culture they could look at it very differently. Even it being as simple as what kind of money it is. I immediately think of a dollar, but if you were to ask someone in Europe, they would most likely think of a euro. Our cultures influence our language and the meanings that we visualize them as. 

            In the article Relatively Thinking: do our words influence how we speak? By Josephine Livingstone explains the principle of linguistic relativity. It describes Whorf’s experiment in Hopi, and how the Native American tribe who lives there is “time-less”. He found that within their language they have no word for time. This describes how different our linguistic priorities are compared to other cultures. 

            Simple things in our language can mean so much to us, without us even realizing it. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis put a different perspective of how we communicate in my mind. I see that we need to be more careful and couscous of our choice in words. I learned how different cultures are within linguistic relativity. 

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jan/29/how-words-influence-thought