Re: OT: Helen Keller & Whorf-Sapir

Caleb said:
> The other day, on the way to work, I was listening to NPR, and caught
> the tail end of an article about Helen Keller. This got me thinking
> about the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis. Now I don't claim to be a linguist,
> so I could be wrong, but my understanding is that this basically says
> that one's language defines the way we see the world. If this is the
> case, then I wonder what Helen Keller's perception of the world would
> have been before learning to communicate.
>
> 1) One possibility, I suppose, could be that she came up with her own
> sort of internal 'language', completely different and independent of
> English and unrelated to spoken words. It would have to be
> a 'language' based on touch, texture, and motion, rather than
> abstract words. But it would also suggest that language is an
> inherent part of the human mind, and that the human mind is capable
> of creating language without needing to be taught it.
>
> 2) OTOH, if the mind weren't capable of creating its own language,
> then Helen Keller would have been language-less, and would not have
> had any way of interpreting the world or interacting with it
> (according to Whorf Sapir).
>
> 3) Since 2 is apparently false (Helen Keller was capable of
> interacting, albeit rudely, with the world), assumming the truth of
> Whorf-Sapir seems to imply the truth of 1)

Another option is to entertain the possibility that the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis does not actually hold in its strong form.


-- Mark

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