What is Linguistic Relativity?

Linguistic relativity is the idea that language shapes how we think and perceive the world. Known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, it suggests that the language we speak influences our cognitive processes. Despite challenges in testing, linguistic studies provide evidence that language can affect perception, cognition, and worldview.

The term “linguistic relativity” is closely associated with the work of American linguists Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf in the early 20th century. They proposed that the structure of a language influences its speakers’ cognition and worldview—a concept often referred to as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

The roots of this idea trace back to earlier thinkers. In the 18th and 19th centuries, German scholars Johann Gottfried von Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt suggested that language structure conditions speakers’ perception of the world. Later, American anthropologist Franz Boas and his student Edward Sapir found Humboldt’s idea compelling and further developed it.

The term “linguistic relativity” itself reflects the notion that languages provide different frameworks for understanding the world, leading to variations in thought and perception among speakers of different languages.

Overview of Linguistic Relativity

Linguistic relativity examines the relationship between language, cognition, and culture, specifically focusing on how language shapes thought. While cognition and language mutually influence each other, linguistic relativity emphasizes the direction in which language shapes cognition. This concept is not new and has been discussed for centuries, though it only received scholarly attention in the past 200 years.

Historical Development

The roots of linguistic relativity can be traced back to Wilhelm von Humboldt, a 19th-century German Romanticist. Humboldt argued that each language embodies a unique worldview, reflecting the culture and experiences of its speakers. However, his ideas were flawed, as he implied that some languages and worldviews were more “civilized” than others.

This ethnocentric perspective was later challenged by Franz Boas, a pioneering anthropologist who demonstrated through his work with the Inuit that no language or culture is inherently superior or primitive. Boas emphasized that language reflects differences in thought but does not rank them hierarchically.

Boas’s student, Edward Sapir, further developed these ideas and is considered the father of American linguistics. Sapir’s student, Benjamin Lee Whorf, popularized the concept of linguistic relativity. Whorf proposed the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which exists in two forms:

• Strong version: Language determines thought.
• Weak version: Language influences thought.

The strong version is largely dismissed as false, while the weak version is widely accepted and forms the basis of modern research into linguistic relativity.

Key Areas of Investigation

There are several areas of linguistic study that demonstrate the influence of language on thought.

Prepositions and Ad positions

Languages differ in how they encode spatial relationships. For example:

• In English (a satellite-framed language), prepositions such as “into,” “through,” or “across” convey direction or trajectory. For example, “The bottle floated into the cave.”
• In Spanish (a verb-framed language), the verb carries the directional meaning. A comparable sentence might translate to “The bottle entered the cave floating,” with no preposition present.

These structural differences illustrate how language can shape attention to spatial relationships.

Understand with More Examples:

Here are some similar examples illustrating how different languages encode spatial relationships:

1. Manner vs. Path in Motion Events

   • English (Satellite-Framed Language): “She ran out of the house.” (The verb “ran” expresses manner, while the particle “out of” expresses direction.)
   • French (Verb-Framed Language): “Elle est sortie en courant.” (“She exited running.”) The verb “sortie” (exited) expresses direction, while “en courant” (running) expresses manner.

2. Locative Descriptions

   • English: “The book is on the table.” (Uses the preposition “on” to describe location.)
   • Korean: “책이 테이블 위에 있다.” (“The book table above exists.”) The postposition “위에” (“above”) explicitly describes the book’s position relative to the table.

3. Figure vs. Ground Distinctions

   • English: “The cup is on the table.” (Focuses on the smaller object—the cup—as the figure.)
   • Tzeltal (Mayan Language): “The table has a cup on it.” (Some languages prioritize the ground over the figure, reversing the emphasis.)

4. Directional Encoding in Motion

   • English: “He climbed up the mountain.” (The verb “climbed” expresses manner, while “up” expresses direction.)
   • Japanese: “彼は山を登った。” (“He ascended the mountain.”) The verb “登った” (ascended) inherently includes the direction, so no separate preposition is needed.

Each of these examples highlights how languages differ in encoding spatial relationships, shaping attention and cognitive processing of movement and location.

Additionally, German distinguishes between surfaces when using the equivalent of “on.” It uses “an” for vertical surfaces (e.g., “on the wall”) and “auf” for horizontal surfaces (e.g., “on the table”). In contrast, English uses the same preposition, “on,” for both. This forces German speakers to pay closer attention to the orientation of objects.

Classifiers

Classifiers are linguistic markers that categorize objects based on shared features. While English lacks classifiers, languages like Navajo and Dyirbal use them extensively:

In Navajo, a pencil belongs to a category of “long, slender objects,” while paper belongs to a category of “flat, thin objects.”

In Dyirbal (an Indigenous Australian language), classifiers group seemingly unrelated items. For example:

• One category includes men, kangaroos, and boomerangs.
• Another includes women, fire, and dangerous objects.

Such systems require speakers to consistently categorize objects based on specific attributes.

Lexicalization

Lexicalization refers to how concepts are encoded into single words. For instance:

• English: To describe snow, multiple words are added (e.g., “wet snow,” “powdery snow”).
• Inuit: The language has distinct terms for “snow in the air” and “snow on the ground.” While Inuit does not have “hundreds of words for snow,” as popular myth suggests, it has a richer lexical system for snow than English.

This difference in lexical richness reflects how languages encode culturally relevant concepts.

Color Terms

The 1968 study by Berlin and Kay revealed a universal pattern in how languages categorize colors. Some languages have only two basic color terms (e.g., dark/cool and light/warm), while others, like English, have up to 11 basic terms (e.g., red, blue, green). The implicational hierarchy observed in their study shows that languages with more color terms include all the distinctions made by languages with fewer terms, plus additional categories.

For example:

• Donni (a Papuan language) has two basic color terms: dark/cool and light/warm.
• Russian distinguishes between light blue (“goluboy”) and dark blue (“siniy”) as separate basic color terms, unlike English.

This research demonstrates that while all humans perceive colors similarly, the language they speak shapes how they categorize and describe them.

Directional Systems

Languages also differ in how they encode spatial orientation:

• Egocentric systems: Use relative terms like “left” and “right” (e.g., English).
• Geocentric systems: Use absolute terms like “north,” “south,” or geographic markers such as “upstream” or “downstream” (e.g., some Australian Indigenous languages).

Speakers of geocentric languages must maintain a constant awareness of cardinal directions, which profoundly affects their cognitive processes. For instance, in a geocentric framework, instructions might be given as “walk northeast, then turn southwest,” rather than using egocentric terms.