Chase admired Whorf's work and frequently sought out a reluctant Whorf, who considered Chase to be " utterly incompetent by training and background to handle such a subject.

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.

Because of the promise shown by his work on Uto-Aztecan, Tozzer and Spinden advised Whorf to apply for a grant with the Social Science Research Council ( SSRC ) to support his research.

Whorf considered using the money to travel to Mexico to procure Aztec manuscripts for the Watkinson library, but Tozzer suggested he spend the time in Mexico documenting modern Nahuatl dialects.

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.

Loglan is a constructed language originally designed for linguistic research, particularly for investigating the Sapir – Whorf Hypothesis.

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.

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 ).

Another example in which Whorf attempted to show that language use affects behavior came from his experience in his day job as a chemical engineer working for an insurance company as a fire inspector.

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

In a 2003 presentation at an open source convention, Yukihiro Matsumoto, creator of the programming language Ruby, said that one of his inspirations for developing the language was the science fiction novel Babel-17, based on the Sapir – Whorf Hypothesis.

This leads to another debate ( see the Sapir – Whorf hypothesis or Eskimo words for snow ).

The succeeding director, Richard Whorf, took over the reins for one season and was in turn followed by former actor-turned-director Gene Reynolds from 1962 to 1964.

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 ".

** Christopher Whorf & Ed Thrasher ( art directors ) for Come and Gone performed by Mason Proffit

The linguistic relativity hypothesis of Benjamin Lee Whorf describes how the syntactic-semantic structure of a language becomes an underlying structure for the Weltanschauung of a people through the organization of the causal perception of the world and the linguistic categorization of entities.

Láadan is a constructed language created by Suzette Haden Elgin in 1982 to test the Sapir – Whorf Hypothesis, specifically to determine if development of a language aimed at expressing the views of women would shape a culture ; a subsidiary hypothesis was that Western natural languages may be better suited for expressing the views of men than women.

sacred — sacred and the profane — sampling — sampling frame — sanction — Sapir – Whorf hypothesis — scapegoating — schizophrenia — science — Second World — secondary data — secondary deviance — secondary group — secondary group structure — secondary labor market — sect — secularization — self — self-consciousness — semi-periphery countries — semiotics — serial monogamy — serial reciprocity — sex — sex role — sex stratification — sexism — sexual harassment — sexual script — sick role — significant other — simulation — situational identity — snowball sampling — for entries beginning with social, see sections below — socialism — socialization — society — sociobiology — sociocultural context — sociocultural evolution — for entries beginning with sociological, see sections below — sociocultural materialism — sociology — for entries beginning with sociology of, see sections below — solid waste — solidarity — sovereignty — split labor market theory — standing army — state ( polity ) — state society — stateless nation — status — status group — status inconsistency — status offense — stem cell — stepfamily — stereotype — stigma — stigmatise — Strategic Defense Initiative — stratification — strike — structural unemployment — structuration — structure — subculture — suburbanization — surplus value — surveillance — survey — symbol — Symbolic Convergence Theory — symbolic interactionism — symbolic system — symbolic world — systems theory

In a popular 1940 article on the subject, Whorf referred to Eskimo languages having several words for snow.

Champagne for Caesar is a 1950 American comedy film about a radio quiz show, directed by Richard Whorf and written by Fred Brady and Hans Jacoby.

In a series of published and unpublished studies in the 1930s, Whorf argued that Mayan writing was to some extent phonetic.

* 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 ).

Other universalist researchers dedicated themselves to dispelling other notions of linguistic relativity, often attacking specific points and examples given by Whorf.

The term " Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis " is a misnomer, as Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf never co-authored anything, and never stated their ideas in terms of a hypothesis.

Also the distinction between a weak and a strong version of the hypothesis is a later invention, as Sapir and Whorf never set up such a dichotomy although in their writings at times their view of this relativity principle are phrased in stronger or weaker terms.

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

While Sapir never made a point of studying directly how languages affected the thought processes of their speakers, some notion of ( probably " weak ") linguistic relativity lay inherent in his basic understanding of language, and would be taken up by his student Benjamin Lee Whorf.

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.

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.

The term " allophone " was coined by Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1940s.

Benjamin Lee Whorf ( April 24, 1897 – July 26, 1941 ) was an American linguist and fire prevention engineer.

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

The son of Harry and Sarah ( Lee ) Whorf, Benjamin Lee Whorf was born on April 24, 1897 in Winthrop, Massachusetts.

Harry Church Whorf was an artist, intellectual and designer – first working as a commercial artist and later as a dramatist.

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

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

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

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

It was at the Watkinson library that Whorf became friends with the young boy, John B. Carroll, who later went on to study psychology under B. F. Skinner, and who in 1956 edited and published a selection of Whorf's essays as Language, Thought and Reality.

Whorf took on a central role among Sapir's students and was well respected.

In 1936, Whorf was appointed Honorary Research Fellow in Anthropology at Yale, and he was invited by Franz Boas to serve on the committee of the Society of American Linguistics ( later Linguistic Society of America ).

He was a Lecturer in Anthropology from 1937 through 1938, replacing Sapir, who was gravely ill. Whorf gave graduate level lectures on " Problems of American Indian Linguistics ".

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.

Whorf argued that it was exactly the reluctance to apply linguistic analysis of Maya languages that had held the decipherment back.

Bardini points out that Engelbart was strongly influenced by the principle of linguistic relativity developed by Benjamin Lee Whorf.

This part of his thinking was developed by his student Benjamin Lee Whorf into the principle of linguistic relativity or the " Sapir-Whorf " hypothesis.

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.

Malotki used evidence from archaeological data, calenders, historical documents, modern speech and concluded that there was no evidence that Hopi conceptualize time the way Whorf suggests.