10/3: The Trouble with Linguistic Relativity

How does the language we grow up speaking change our perception of reality? How do the particular features of any given language, from gendered nouns, to a tense vs. aspect structure, to directional words, influence the way we think? And can learning a second language later in life (like in college!) influence that perception at all? These are questions that linguists and scholars have debated for decades.

In the early 20th century, two linguists separately researched and theorized about the connections between language, culture, thought, and perception of reality. Eventually, a combination of their ideas became known as the "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis", or the principle of linguistic relativity. This hypothesis suggests that the language a person speaks may have a deterministic or influential effect on how that person perceives the world. A deterministic view would mean that the language a person speaks completely shapes that person's view of reality, while a 'weakened' version of the theory suggests that the language may have some influence.

This hypothesis has been widely criticized and discredited, especially because of its anecdotal and inconclusive evidence given as "proof." Whorf often used examples cherry-picked from indigenous languages, for example, but without a rigorous understanding of that language and the culture in which it was spoken. If you've ever heard the saying that the language Inuktitut, spoken by the indigenous Inuit people in Canada, Alaska, and Greenland, has 50 words for snow, then you've heard one of the anecdotes that Whorf famously used to build his theory about linguistic relativity.

So should we ignore this hypothesis completely, and conclude that language has no effect on perception? Research has suggested that speakers of languages with masculine and feminine articles for nouns are more likely to describe "masculine" objects with more societally "masculine" nouns, and vise versa. Does that mean that a society speaking such a language is less likely to accept nonbinary genders or gender neutral language? Maybe not. Meanwhile, the English language often uses male pronouns or nouns as generic, despite not having a gendered system for nouns, which seems to reflect a historically male-centric culture's influence on a language, rather than the language's influence on culture. So the general consensus among linguists seems to be that language can influence thought and experience, but not absolutely, and not without nuance that is still to be explored.

What does all of this mean for a college student studying a language for the first time? Research shows that learning a new language can increase cultural awareness and empathy, and maybe understanding how other cultures perceive reality is a part of that. This idea of linguistic relativity and its pitfalls are also a lesson about avoiding anecdotal or circumstantial discussion of a language you are learning. True language learning is not only about memorizing aspects of a grammar and certain vocabulary words as talking points; it means understanding how those words are used, what they mean in a cultural context, and, of course, who the people are that speak them.

For more, check out this podcast about the sci-fi movie Arrival, which uses linguistic relativity as a major plot point, or this article about how perception may - or may not - differ between speakers of English and German.