*: The article on Whorf states " Drawing on Nietzsche's ideas of perspectivism Alfred Korzybski developed the theory of general semantics which has been compared to Whorf's notions of linguistic relativity.

This principle has frequently been called the " Sapir – Whorf hypothesis ", after him and his mentor Edward Sapir, but Whorf called it the principle of linguistic relativity, because he saw the idea as having implications similar to Einstein's principle of physical relativity.

Whorf was a spiritual man throughout his lifetime although what religion he followed has been the subject of debate.

has argued that in this report Whorf's linguistic theories exist in a condensed form and that it was mainly through this report that Whorf exerted influence on the discipline of descriptive linguistics.

This claim has been derived from the Sapir – Whorf hypothesis, which states that a language ’ s grammatical categories shape the speaker ’ s ideas and actions ; although Andrews says that moderate conceptions of the relation between language and thought are sufficient to support the " reasonable deduction ... cultural change via linguistic change ".

Empirical research into the question has been associated mainly with the names of Benjamin Lee Whorf, who wrote on the topic in the 1930s, and his mentor Edward Sapir, who did not himself write extensively on the topic.

This usage has been criticized as a misnomer, since Sapir and Whorf did not in fact formulate a hypothesis for empirical research, and because it is unclear to what extent Sapir actually subscribed to the idea of language influencing thought.

This view has sometimes been attributed to Benjamin Lee Whorf, and to Ludwig Wittgenstein, but it is not currently the consensus that either of these thinkers actually espoused determinist views of the relation between language and thought.

Though influential in their own right, these strands of research have not been given much attention in the debate surrounding linguistic relativity, which has tended to center on the American paradigm exemplified by Sapir and Whorf.

More than any other linguist, Benjamin Lee Whorf has become associated with what he himself called " the principle of linguistic relativity ".

Among Whorf's well known examples of linguistic relativity are examples of instances where an indigenous language has several terms for a concept that is only described with one word in English and other European languages ( Whorf used the acronym SAE " Standard Average European " to allude to the rather similar grammatical structures of the well-studied European languages in contrast to the greater diversity of the less-studied languages ).

More recently Humboldt has also been credited as an originator of the linguistic relativity hypothesis ( more commonly known as the Sapir – Whorf hypothesis ), developed by linguists Edward Sapir or Benjamin Whorf a century later.

Designed by early Minds, the Culture believes ( or perhaps has proved, or else actively made true ) the Sapir – Whorf hypothesis that language influences thought, and Marain was designed to exploit this effect, while also " appealing to poets, pedants, engineers and programmers ".

As a result of the rainy climate, the Ferengi language has 178 different words for " rain " ( in a retread of the popular — but incorrect —" Eskimo postulate " of the Sapir – Whorf hypothesis ) and none for " crisp ".

Pinker sets out to disabuse the reader of a number of common ideas about language, e. g. that children must be taught to use it, that most people's grammar is poor, that the quality of language is steadily declining, that language has a heavy influence on a person's possible range of thoughts ( the Sapir – Whorf hypothesis ), and that nonhuman animals have been taught language ( see Great Ape language ).

In science fiction, much work has been done on the assumption popularly known as the Sapir – Whorf hypothesis.

In science fiction, much work has been done on the assumption popularly known as the Sapir – Whorf hypothesis.

Benjamin Lee Whorf ( 1937 ) had performed an analysis and concluded that / t ͡ ɬ / was the reflex of Proto-Uto-Aztecan */ t / before / a / ( a conclusion which has been borne out ).

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 ".

Until his return from Mexico in 1930 Whorf had been entirely an autodidact in linguistic theory and field methodology, yet he had already made a name for himself in Middle American linguistics.

In 1953 psychologist Eric Lenneberg published a detailed criticism of the line of thought that had been fundamental for Sapir and Whorf.

The Native American languages Nahuatl and Blackfoot have in the past been claimed to exhibit oligosynthetic qualities ( most notably by Benjamin Whorf ).

But the reputation he had during his lifetime belies this idea: his academic peers at Yale University considered the " amateur " Whorf to be the best man available to take over Sapir's graduate seminar in Native American linguistics while Sapir was on sabbatical in 1937 – 38.

It also reveals that the principle of linguistic relativity was so named because because Whorf saw that idea of his as having similar implications as Einstein's principle of physical relativity.

Whorf is widely known as an advocate for the idea that because of linguistic differences in grammar and usage, speakers of different languages conceptualize and experience the world differently.

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.

Harry Hoijer, one of Sapir's students, introduced the term " Sapir – Whorf hypothesis ", even though the two scholars never actually advanced any such hypothesis.

It is these two formulations of Roger Brown's which have become widely known and attributed to Whorf and Sapir while in fact the second formulation, verging on linguistic determinism, was never advanced by either of them.

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

It is perhaps of interest that the test and exemplification of this in The Form of Information in Science ( 1989 ) vindicates in some degree the Sapir – Whorf hypothesis.

Throughout his life Whorf was a chemical engineer by profession, but as a young man he took up an interest in linguistics.

Around 1924 Whorf first became interested in linguistics.

Whorf studied Biblical linguistics mainly at the Watkinson Library ( now Hartford Public Library ).

Sapir also encouraged Whorf to continue his work on the historical and descriptive linguistics of Uto-Aztecan.

Whorf argued that paying attention to how other physical phenomena are described in the study of linguistics could make valuable contributions to science by pointing out the ways in which certain assumptions about reality are implicit in the structure of language itself, and how language guides the attention of speakers towards certain phenomena in the world which risk becoming overemphasized while leaving other phenomena at risk of being overlooked.

This debate is analogous to that surrounding the Sapir – Whorf hypothesis in linguistics and cognitive science, which postulates that a particular spoken language's nature influences the habitual thought of its speakers.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, advances in cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics renewed interest in the Sapir – Whorf hypothesis.

In linguistics, the Sapir – Whorf hypothesis asserts that a language's structure and grammar construct the perception and consciousness of its speakers.

The Sapir – Whorf hypothesis in linguistics

* The unresolved issue of linguistic relativity ( associated with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf but actually brought to American linguistics by Franz Boas working within a theoretical framework going back to European thinkers from Vico to Herder to Humboldt ).

* The Sapir – Whorf hypothesis in linguistics states that the grammatical structure of a mother language influences the way adherents to it perceive the world.