Whorfian hypothesis (Whorf, 1956), a hypothesis named after a sociolinguist Benjamin Lee Whorf. Noting diversity across how different languages, especially through observation of how drastically native American languages such as Hopi is different from what he called Standard European Languages (SEL), Whorf argued in his writings that our perception of the world is like “kaleidoscopic flux of impressions” and language curves it in any arbitrary way. In this sense, language determines thought.
Sunday 17 June 2012
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