Page "Benjamin Lee Whorf" Paragraph 5

Whorf graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1918 with a degree in chemical engineering where his academic performance was of average quality.

Shortly thereafter he began work as a fire prevention engineer ( i. e., an inspector ) for the Hartford Fire Insurance Company.

He seemed to have a particular knack for job and was highly commended by his employers.

His job required him to travel to production facilities throughout New England to be inspected.

In one anecdote his arrival at a chemical plant is described in which he was denied access by the director because he would not allow anyone to see the production procedure which was a trade secret.

Having been told what the plant produced, Whorf wrote a chemical formula on a piece of paper, saying to the director: " I think this is what you're doing ".

The surprised director asked Whorf how he knew about the secret procedure, and he simply answered: " You couldn't do it in any other way.

" Whorf was also excellent at attracting new customers to the Fire Insurance Company ; they were impressed by his thorough inspections and recommendations.

In 1920 he married Celia Inez Peckham, who became the mother of his three children, Raymond Ben, Robert Peckham and Celia Lee.

Another famous anecdote from his job was used by Whorf to argue that language use affects habitual behavior.

Whorf described a workplace in which full gasoline drums were stored in one room and empty ones in another ; he said that because of flammable vapor the " empty " drums were more dangerous than those that were full, although workers handled them less carefully to the point that they smoked in the room with " empty " drums, but not in the room with full ones.

Whorf explained that by habitually speaking of the vapor-filled drums as empty and by extension as inert, the workers were oblivious to the risk posed by smoking near the " empty drums ".