Whorfian linguistic relativity

We note that our writing systems suffer from the same problem of linguistic relativity as our spoken languages, i.e., that our first language influences how we think. This is known inaccurately as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or Whorfianism, which seems to make paradoxical any original thinking or paradigm shifts. We compare this problem to Wittgenstein’s concept of aspect-blindness. Our review shows that Boas, Sapir, Whorf, and Wittgenstein all claimed that language guides our habits of thought, but equally, all rejected the strong version of linguistic relativity called linguistic determinism. Using examples from Wittgenstein’s notational praxis, we argue this apparent paradox of originality can be addressed by objectifying our metaphors using non-conventional notations and images, thereby revealing them, and allowing us to break out of our conceptual habits and aspect-blindness. The outcome is a sketch theory of notation that addresses the problem of linguistic relativity for research and original thinking.

"Time" : there's no such word in Hopi, indeed. "Time" is but an English word, isn't it?  And it can reasonably be doubted that there is something like a "universal time system". Let’s have an unbiased look to B.L. Whorf's description of Hopi with it's notorious flaws... and less known achievements !

This article draws on a qualitative study which seeks to explore whether Iranian English as a foreign language learners experience any reversal conceptual transfer and whether they construct two identities as a result of learning a foreign language. The findings from the open-ended questionnaires distributed among 65 undergraduates at the University of Isfahan as well as 45 interviews conducted in a private language school reveal that most of the participants feel they have partly experienced reversal conceptual transfer. However, most of them claimed not to have constructed a new foreign language identity in English, while those who did had a more positive attitude towards their English identity.

In this review of literature, some of the definitions of identity, factors contributing to its development, and its relationship with language learning are examined. The process of trying to determine the term 'identity' is complex. Many people have attempted to define the term identity. There is a lack of consensus among researchers on what 'identity' means, although there are many similarities among researches across different disciplines. Researchers define identity in different ways with common relationship. This review paper outlines the studies conducted by researchers in recent years in order to examine identity from the poststructuralist perspective. Finally, two recent paradigms on identity as well as different types of bilingualism are discussed in detail. Index Terms-identity, the monocultural cognitive paradigm, the constructivism paradigm, bilingualism, subtractive identity change, additive identity change, productive identity change, hybrid identity change I. WHAT IS IDENTITY? Prior to discussing the relationship between language and identity, it is necessary to understand the meaning of the term 'identity' from the viewpoint of different researchers and scholars along with factors contributing to its construction. The meaning of the term identity has evolved from seeing it as a stable core self (Hall, 1996) to dynamic, contradictory, and multiple dimensions of a person (see Block, 2006, 2007a; Pavlenko, 2002). There is a lot of definitional confusion in the literature, with some authors offering multiple definitions for single terms, and other authors conflating two or more terms and using them (Menard-Warwick, 2005). According to Ha (2008) the West and the East conceive the notion of identity differently. While Western scholars' perception of identity is considered "hybrid and multiple" (p. 64), Eastern scholars regard it as a sense of belonging. Eakin (1999) uses the term identity together with subject, self, and person, and defines it as "terms that seem inevitably to spin in elliptical orbits around any attempt to conceptualize human beings" (p.9). Wu (2011) argues that identity is the way we view ourselves and are viewed by others and it is inextricably tied to the social contexts out of which it arises. It is, furthermore, constructed through a mixture of social practices in which individuals are involved in their daily lives. Identity, as Ige (2010) puts it, is unarguably a reflection of the various ways in which people understand themselves in relation to others. Identity is sometimes considered as synonymous with ideology. However, identity is not merely ideology; rather ideology leads to identity (McAdams, 1985). According to Norton (2000) identity refers to "how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future" (p. 5). Danielewics (2001) notes that identity refers to "our understanding of who we are and who we think other people are" (p. 10). Haneda (2005), on the other hand, considers the following as elements of identity: "(a) membership in a community in which people define who they are by the familiar and the unfamiliar, (b) a learning trajectory in which they define themselves by past experiences and envisioned futures, (c) a nexus of multimembership in which people reconcile their various forms of membership into one coherent sense of self, and (d) a relation between local and glob" (p. 273). II. IDENTITY AS BOTH A DIFFERENTIATOR AND ASSIMILATOR Identity includes both the contradictory attempts to-differentiate and integrate a sense of self along different social and personal dimensions such as gender, age, race, occupation, gangs, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, class, nation states, or regional territory‖ (Bamberg, 2010, p. 1). In other words, when we define a certain identity for ourselves, we are in some way assimilating ourselves to a particular group or class, and at the same time, we are differentiating ourselves from others who do not belong to that group or class, although the differentiating role played by identity far outweighs its integrating one. That is why Woodword (2002) claims that identity is essentially about differentiation. There are, yet, other scholars such as Joseph (2004), who argue that the process of identity construction can be like a

This paper distinguishes three phases in the popularization of linguistic relativity: the phase initiated by Benjamin Lee Whorf himself; a second phase during which linguistic relativity was formulated and tested as a research hypothesis; and the current phase during which language-relativistic assumptions have penetrated the mass media. To diagnose the spread of relativistic assumptions, 560 articles in both English and Greek print and electronic media were considered. The articles were published over the period 2010–2019. They fall, roughly, into eighteen categories. Some of the articles report explicitly on linguistic relativity research, while others presuppose language-relativistic ideas in handling issues as disparate as the effectiveness of managerial discourse, the appropriateness of political correctness, or the possibility of communicating with aliens. The large number of article categories as well as the tacit assumption of linguistic relativity in a growing number of art...

This article draws on a qualitative study which seeks to explore whether Iranian English as a foreign language learners experience any reversal conceptual transfer and whether they construct two identities as a result of learning a foreign language. The findings from the open-ended questionnaires distributed among 65 undergraduates at the University of Isfahan as well as 45 interviews conducted in a private language school reveal that most of the participants feel they have partly experienced reversal conceptual transfer. However, most of them claimed not to have constructed a new foreign language identity in English, while those who did had a more positive attitude towards their English identity.

The present exploratory study aimed to provide a more tangible and comprehensive picture of the construct of investment in language learning through investigating the issue from a quantitative perspective. To this end, the present researchers followed three main phases. First, a hypothesized model of investment in language learning with six components was developed for the Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners based on the extensive readings of the literature on investment, consultations with a panel of experts, three university professors in the relevant fields, and interviews with 20 language learners. Second, a questionnaire was developed and validated based on the proposed model to represent its components. Finally, the data collected through this questionnaire were fed into the model to see to what extent the model fitted the data. The participants were male and female English language learners belonging to different age groups and English language proficiency le...

a Moppy, a cui ho detto la prima parola V la tematica dell'universalismo linguistico, dai suoi primi sviluppi negli anni '60 agli ultimi lavori vent'anni dopo. Saranno in esso ricordate le critiche di Ekkehart Malotki e Steven Pinker a Whorf, e sarà analizzato nel dettaglio il color naming debate, dibattito sviluppato a partire dalle teorie di Brent Berlin e Paul Kay sulla denominazione dei colori e da allora intimamente legato agli sviluppi dell'ipotesi della relatività linguistica. All'interno del dibattito saranno altresì ricordate le posizioni critiche di autori relativisti, come Stephen Levinson e John Lucy. Per ultimo, sarà dedicato un capitolo alla rinascita post-universalista degli studi di tipo relativistico, in particolare attraverso la raccolta di Gumperz e Levinson, Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. Sarà dedicata parte del capitolo alle considerazioni relativistiche di uno psicologo contemporaneo, Dan Slobin, e agli sviluppi più recenti della ricerca di Kay. Per tutta la terza parte sarà utilizzato uno dei lavori storico-critici più importanti relativo alla recezione di Whorf del secondo novecento, The Whorf Theory Complex, di Penny Lee. Al termine della trattazione, le conclusioni si soffermeranno sulla contemporaneità dell'ipotesi della relatività linguistica, e specialmente sulla conclusione del dibattito universalismo-relativismo.

1.The Whorfian Hypothesis.                                                                   3
2.Indo-European languages emphasize time.                                 4-6
3. The Biological Relativity of Categories - Jacob von Uexkülls Umwelt-Lehre.                                                                                                           7
4.Experienced time is not Newtonian.                                               8 - 10
5. The Perspectivistic View.                                                             11 - 12

What is the relationship between language and thought? Does one's language determine the way one thinks? For more than fifty years, researchers in the field of linguistics have attempted to answer these
intrinsically human philosophical questions by designing experiments involving the codification of colours, due to the inherent biological and therefore linguistic aspects of colour.

The ensuing debate surrounding the interpretation of the data from these investigations created two opposing views. The findings of these researches were seen as being either supportive of the
Universalist or the Relativist vision. This division, although not as stark at current date, has had the academic language and cognition investigation in a stand-off. Both the bulk of accompanying polemics and the fact that both sides have a considerable amount of data to support their views, young students bound to libraries have been enticed to pick a side.

To prevent myself from falling into the trap of merely rethinking thoughts of others, I decided to join the throng of researchers investigating colour naming in the field. The Max Planck Institute for
Psycho-linguistics provided me with the necessary stimuli to undertake a basic colour terms elicitation task for the language of my choice, ‡Akhoe Haiǁom.

The results of this task showed a sharp generational divide in both the consistency of basic colour term usage as well as in the amount of basic colour terms used. I further state that the most likely reasons
for these changes include both increased exposure to Western culture(s) as well as the legislation of the educational system in Namibia, in the years following the country’s independence.

I conclude that as far as these results and my experience in the field go, I chose to step out of the
dichotomy. Partly because of its basic assumption on the causality of the biological and linguistic aspects of colour. I wholeheartedly agree with Marc Bornstein (2006), when he states that: “the process of linguistic
colour naming. is not a process of whole causality”. But mostly and more importantly, because I find that the basic assumptions about language itself need to be re-evaluated.

This article draws on a qualitative study which seeks to explore whether Iranian English as a foreign language learners experience any reversal conceptual transfer and whether they construct two identities as a result of learning a foreign language. The findings from the open-ended questionnaires distributed among 65 undergraduates at the University of Isfahan as well as 45 interviews conducted in a private language school reveal that most of the participants feel they have partly experienced reversal conceptual transfer. However, most of them claimed not to have constructed a new foreign language identity in English, while those who did had a more positive attitude towards their English identity.