greiffenhagen-sharrock-linguistic-relativism.pdf (223.48 kB)
Linguistic relativism: logic, grammar, and arithmetic in cultural comparison
journal contribution
posted on 2014-02-28, 14:48 authored by Christian Greiffenhagen, Wes SharrockLinguistic relativism is the thesis that the grammatical structures of different languages
imply different conceptions of reality. In this paper we critically discuss one form of
linguistic relativism, which argues that grammatical differences between the English and
Yoruba language exhibit differences in how English and Yoruba speakers ‘see’ reality
(namely in terms of ‘spatiotemporal particulars’ and ‘sortal particulars’ respectively).
We challenge the idea that linguistic relativism is an empirical thesis, i.e., a thesis that is
substantiated through anthropological examples. We show that linguistic relativism is
based on two assumptions: firstly, that the purpose of language is to describe the world;
secondly, that being able to speak presupposes an ontological theory of the ultimate
constituents of the world. We argue that the attempt to extract the outline of that theory
from the language inevitably distorts the portrayal of language-using practice itself.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Citation
GREIFFENHAGEN, C. and SHARROCK, W., 2007. Linguistic relativism: logic, grammar, and arithmetic in cultural comparison. Language and Communication, 27 (1), pp. 81 - 107Publisher
© ElsevierVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publication date
2007Notes
This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Language and Communication. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2006.05.001ISSN
0271-5309Publisher version
Language
- en