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John McWhorter - The Language Hoax | ||
Tags: Linguistics | Book | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 17 of 69 11 June 2014 at 6:45am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I thought we had moved beyond the boolean debate on Sapir Whorf. The interesting discussion is about the weak version of Sapir Whorf that is gaining new evidence all the time. For example the experiment which determined that in some cases, noun genders inform the qualities that speakers associate with nouns. German speakers were found more likely to describe a bridge with "feminine qualities" than Spanish speakers (die Brücke vs. el puente).
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| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5317 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 18 of 69 11 June 2014 at 6:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I had a closer look at his posts and they eerily reminded me of posts by certain former member who was eventually banned for his continued attacks after he chose to ignore repeated warnings by a moderator. @Stolan: Have you ever had an HTLAL account under a different user name and were banned? While Stolan's posts are definitely colorful, IMHO, they often lack substance. For example, if I see a well-written post by Chung making a certain claim, I can be pretty sure that he's thoroughly researched the topic and could easily back up any claims by citing relevant studies, however, this doesn't seem to be the case with Stolan who rarely backs up his often controversial claims with scientific studies.
Actually, McWhorter himself says in the beginning of the interview that he never claimed that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is completely without merit and gives some examples of linguistic differences causing minute changes in brain reactions etc.
IMHO, languages change for a multitude of reasons. There is no equivalent of a unified field theory of language development and I don't remember seeing McWhorter making claims to that effect. IIRC, some of his claims that you mentioned where made specifically with reference to the development of English in his book "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English." If you've seen them in other books by him as well, please let me know which ones. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4305 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 19 of 69 11 June 2014 at 8:04am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I know that people have good reasons for criticising Whorf, which come from the change in priorities during the biolinguistic turn in
the 1960s. But what author of substantial historical impact can't be criticised in any way in light of the work of later generations? I think that the attitude of saying that the "hard" version of the hypothesis is "nonsense" and suchlike is just another way of caricaturing ideas which are too slippery to fit into the modern scientific paradigm. Whof's style is from an earlier age and as different from e.g. Chomsky or Halle as you can get: it's in fact 100 times more readable, colourful, and broad in its factual content. It's good to read him with some sympathy, ignoring modern developments. Whorf was chiefly criticizing the complacency of linguists of his day of earlier age who rarely considered non-IE languages and therefore vastly underestimated how habitually different language systems could be. Passages in his writings definitely conflate thought and language where perhaps it would have been more prudent to be conservative, but exactly where to draw this line is still extremely difficult! The important thing with Whorf is the questions and the evidence, not the conclusions (which are always philosophically inclined.) I don't think he was putting forward a scientific hypothesis as simple and trivially refutable (in a few PowerPoint slides in an undergraduate lecture hall, usually) as his detractors make out, rather he was probing some areas of darkness that are still very dark and interesting, Here's a link to the postumous 1956 "Language Thought and Reality," which is fairly short and not a difficult read for the most part. edit:
In other words Whorf was talking mumbo jumbo, and the only extant interest of his writings is in the history of error? Edited by Retinend on 11 June 2014 at 3:45pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5763 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 20 of 69 11 June 2014 at 9:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been taken from the shelf again with new tests, especially the implicit-association test? Which I think was hyped a bit, especially by people reporting about psychology research? Which seemed to give very stable, interesting results, but I think I heard of that test and falsified data talked in one breath?
But, I don't know. I pick and choose the bits of pop psychology reporting I want to read. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5317 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 21 of 69 11 June 2014 at 10:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||
By disqualifying a particular language for no particular reason as not applicable you're basically disqualifying yourself as someone worth taking seriously.
I've read Lera Boroditsky's study (.pdf link) and I don't think that it supports a "weak version" of the Sapir Whorf hypothesis. I, for one, certainly do not automatically associate "feminine qualities" with feminine nouns, although had I been asked the same question, I might have picked the same answer because "die Brücke" is a feminine noun in German, and by extension it might have made sense in my twisted logic to pick feminine qualities because they belong to the same arbitrarily selected category. The problem with this study and similar studies is that they're often carried out by psychologists (often with limited linguistic skills) and that they rarely publish the relevant linguistic data, but usually make sure that all popular psychology and science magazines publish a digest version of their "exciting new findings." For example, Lera Boroditsky doesn't explicitly mention whether the test panel participants had a choice between a pre-selected list of masculine, feminine and neutral adjectives, whether they had to pick either masculine or feminine adjectives or whether they could pick any kind of adjective that they wanted. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lykeio Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4241 days ago 120 posts - 357 votes | Message 22 of 69 11 June 2014 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
You've hit upon the basic problem with modern academia as it intersects with the popular press. Disciplines like linguistics (esp philology), archaeology, anthropology etc are usually the most grievous victims. The man in the white coat presenting easily digestible, plausible to the layman, "conclusions" with a tinge of sensationalism is infinitely to be preferred by the public than the serious researcher from whatever field. After all this guy is a scientist! that one is just a linguist, obviously the former knows more about language! The sad thing is in the 21st century this stuff is not just still present but more rampant than ever. Why aren't people using the internet to avail themselves of the basic, digestible, facets of a given field they're apparently interested in? to establish the credentials of a cited journal in a given field? a given researcher? Partly because they're lazy, partly because they've a serious case of arrogance a la Dunning-Kruger in their critical faculties and the way they think of disciplines. As for Sapir-Worf yes it's still taught as part of basic linguistics firstly from a historicist stand point, secondly because the public eat it up, thirdly because it has some relevance to other disciplines. Alas, Psychology and Economics (!!) cite that a lot. More importantly in its weaker form it seems to still have relevancy. Luckily Linguists aren't having to tailor their curricula based on the comments of internet randoms. As with any discipline you can be assured that if a bunch of people with years of research and teaching experience include something...it's for a good reason. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4635 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 23 of 69 11 June 2014 at 1:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Pop economists encroach into the territory of other disciplines, including psycology. Psycologists, wanting
respite from the econometric raids, flee to the lands of the linguists, swamping them with superior numbers. You linguists now need to make a push on a weaker people. Us computer scientists are ripe for the picking... Edited by AlexTG on 11 June 2014 at 4:05pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5763 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 24 of 69 11 June 2014 at 1:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
When I think of toaster, the idea of 'freshly toasted bread' becomes more salient. Edited by Bao on 11 June 2014 at 1:53pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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