>Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 20:20:01 -0500
>From: "Mark P. Line" <mark@...>
>Subject: 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
Or my own hypothesis, which I held throughout my
Cultural Linguistics class, much to my professor's
dismay, which is that Sapir and Whorf are dumbasses
and language has little to no influence on thought.
I'm a physics and math and linguistics major, and I
will testify that every engineer thinks First with his
senses (images), Second with numbers and logic, and
Finally with what little logic we can convey
linguistically.
Oh wait, I'm sorry, he thinks First with his penis,
and then the rest comes a few minutes later.
The corollary to my hypothesis is that language is
very limited in its ability to express thought, much
less be the machine through which thought is driven.
Thought is first and foremost empirical - we imagine
the abstract--what was and what might be--through our
senses first. The language part comes along to
organize it later.
-Sam Rivier
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