Whorf's Linguistic Relativism I -- John W Cook

WHORF'S LINGUISTIC RELATIVISM

JOHN W. COOK

(EDITOR'S NOTE: part clarifies wharf's thesis about linguis.tic relativism, points out possible misinterpretations of his thesis, and evaluates a variety of criticisms of the thesis. issue, the author assesses Whorf's views.)

The f o l l d n g is the first part of a two-part essay. This

In the second part, which will appear in the next

In t h i s essay I w i l l be p r inc ipa l ly concerned with the question of how Benjamin Whorf's l i n g u i s t i c re la t ivism is t o be assessed. we can inves t iga t e empirically, by means of experiment and research, or must it be assessed i n some qu i t e d i f f e ren t way? Before taking up t h i s question, however, it w i l l be necessary t o e s t ab l i sh beyond doubt what Whorf himself understood by h i s "new p r inc ip l e of re la t ivi ty ," ' f o r h i s c r i t i c s and commentators have offered a va r i e ty of i n t e rp re t a t ions . what Whorf meant i s not, I think, surpr is ing, f o r when h i s t h e s i s i s s t a t e d i n summary form i t s meaning is undoubtedly obscure. own summary statements is t h a t h i s p r inc ip l e of r e l a t i v i t y ":holds t h a t a l l observers are not led by t h e same physical evidence t o the same p i c tu re of t he universe, unless t h e i r l i n g u i s t i c backgrounds are s imilar , or can i n some way be calibrated" (214). This p r inc ip l e follows from h i s more funda- mental claim t h a t "the grammar of each language i s not merely a reproducing instrument f o r voicing ideas but r a t h e r i s i tself t h e shaper o f ideas , t he program and guide f o r t he individual ' s mental stock i n trade" (212). Thus, Whorf holds a ce r t a in view about grammar--as being a *Ishaper of ideas," a provider o f "though materials'' (83) --and i n consequence hold:j t h a t t tusers of markedly d i f f e ren t grammars . . . must a r r i v e a t somewhat d i f f e ren t views o f t h e worldvt (221). H e te l ls us, f o r instance, t h a t one can see from the way i n which t h e Hopi language gets along without our system of tenses t h a t nat ive speakers of Hopi have a "different metaphysics" (58) from ours with regard t o time. Because it is Whorf's view t h a t a language can reveal t h i s sort of thing about i t s speakers, he draws the general conclusion t h a t a survey of various languages shows t h a t each l i n g u i s t i c comnunity l i v e s within i t s own l l l inguis t ical ly determined thought worldtt (154). I t i s t h i s view of t h e r e l a t i o n of ' thought' and language t h a t I s h a l l henceforth call Wharf's thesis ." more r ead i ly comprehensible.

I s it something

This disagreement over

What he t e l l s us i n h i s

My first t a s k w i l l be t o make t he nature of t h i s t h e s i s

I

AS t h e foregoing summary indicates , Wharf's t h e s i s i s concerned with grammar, not vocabulary. This turns out t o be a l l important., f o r even i f we can speak of a r e l a t ion of thinking t o vocabulary, t h e kind of thinking and the kind of re la t ionship w e would then be concerned with i s very d i f f e ren t from t h e k i d of thinking and the kind of r e l a t ionsh ip t h a t Whorf's t h e s i s speaks of . foregoing summary indicates , t h e kind of thinking t h a t Whorf's t h e s i s speaks

This difference can be hinted a t here by remarking t h a t , as the

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JOHN W. COOK

of is what he also calls 'la world view" or 'la metaphysics." This, I shall argue, is an essential feature of Whorf's thesis, and the reason is that a connection can plausibly be alleged to hold between grammar and metaphysics which could not plausibly be alleged to hold between grammar and any other sort of 'thinking.' More particularly, Whorf shares with many philosophers the view that grammar just is a kind of metaphysics, with the corollary that one can read off a metaphysics from suitable samples of grammar. allows us to explain a feature of Whorf's thesis that would otherwise he utterly perplexing, namely, his practice of presenting examples of Hopi or Shawnee or Apache grammar and straightaway diagnosing the 'thought' of those who speak these languages. Whorf's many commentators and critics who were insufficiently aware of the metaphysical nature of his thesis. To understand why there should be this perplexity, it will be useful at this point to contrast Whorf's relativism with two rather different sorts of claims about connections between thought and language.

This

This practice, has, understandably, perplexed

Consider first the following remarks by Karl Vossler, which an un- wary reader might mistake for a statement of Whorf's thesis:

It is already possible to read our predominant interests out of our vocabulary. to 60 names for various kinds of palm trees but no generic name for palm tree. have very precise vegetarian interests but lack botanical ones. The gauchos of the Argentine had about 200 expressions for the colors

In the tropicsthere are Negro languages which have 50

These Negroes live from the fruit of palm trees and

of horses but only four plant names. . . . 2

Now how do these remarks of Vossler's differ from Whorf's thesis that a people's language reveals something (because it determines something) about their thinking? lary, and in fact the plausibility of what he says largely depends on this. If people have certain vital interests, needs, or concerns, then they will have something to say, something to talk about, in connection with these, and they will coin new words, even whole new terminologies, as these interests develop. In this way vocabulary can reflect a people's predominant interests, so that Vossler can plausibly speak of reading off those interests from the vocabulary. In this case, then, there is no mystery about how language can serve as a kind of clue, for we readily understand how a certain way of life would leave a recognizable imprint on the language. But suppose that we now tried to extend Vossler's claim to cover grammar as well as vocabulary. Objections to this come immediately to mind. How could a declension reveal, for example, a people's interest in fur-bearing animals or the word order of sentences bespeak a concern with farming? The very idea seems absurd. But we must not be too hasty here. It i s not inconceivable that people might have tinkered with some grammatical feature of their language in order to make it reflect some belief of theirs, and in certain of these cases an ethnographer might detect the belief once he had noticed the relevant grammatical oddity. Suppose, for example, that the gender system for nouns in a certain language were perfectly 'rational' in the sense that most of the nouns are neuter and that special endings are used only in those cases in which the nouns have a masculine or feminine

One difference is that Vossler's concern is with vocabu-

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meaning (llmanlf and llwoman,ll l lbu l l l l and "cow," e t c . ) , and suppose fu r the r t h a t t he one exception t o t h i s i s found i n t h e case o f a p a i r of words used f o r speaking of mountain peaks. That i s , cont ra ry t o expectations, we f ind t h a t one o f these l a t t e r words has a masculine ending and t h e o the r a feminine ending. In such a case it would be p l aus ib l e t o i n f e r t h a t t h e speakers o f t h i s language (or t h e i r ances tors ) believed t h a t c e r t a i n mountains a r e (or had once been) men and o the r s women. We would then expect t o f ind them t e l l i n g a s to ry about mountains t h a t resembled t h e s t o r y o f Lot ' s wife being turned in- t o a p i l l a r o f salt . a c lue i n somewhat t h e way t h a t Vossler 's examples i l l u s t r a t e . o f t h i s s o r t what we have is , as i n Voss le r ' s vocabulary examples, an influence of ' thought ' upon language, so t h a t t h e d i r e c t i o n o f in f luence i n these cases i s the opposite o f t h a t a l leged by Whorf's t h e s i s . emphatically as poss ib le , t h e reason why, i n t h e case I have here invented, grammar can serve as a kind of c lue t o what people th ink i s j u s t t h a t t h e speakers of t h e language have, a s it were, planted i n t h e i r grammar t h e c lue t o what they th ink . But it is j u s t t h i s f ea tu re t h a t drops out when we come t o Whorf's r e l a t iv i sm, f o r he i s not a t a l l claiming t o see i n t h e grammar o f a language t e l l - t a l e s igns t h a t i t s speakers have l e f t t h e r e f o r us.

So it is not inconceivable t h a t grammar might se rve as But i n cases

To put t h e matter a s

This brings us t o t h e c r u c i a l question: Could t h e r e be cases t h a t f i t Whorf's account, cases i n which speaking a c e r t a i n language could, because o f i t s grammatical s t r u c t u r e , make someone th ink something he would not o ther - wise th ink?

I t i s not , I be l ieve , i n t u i t i v e l y c l e a r t h a t grammar could do t h i s . Gne Our i n t u i t i o n s a r e l i k e l y t o t e l l us t h a t grammar i s not d i f f i c u l t y i s t h i s .

t h e k i n d of th ing t h a t could put ideas i n t o our heads. This, a t l e a s t , i s how i t must seem s o long as we think o f cases i n which, i f t h e r e were a con- nec t ion of thought with language, t h e connection would be merely contingent. For instance, it seems implausible, i f not downright absurd, t o suppose t h a t speaking a language whose nouns a r e declined would cause m e t o be l ieve t h a t t h e r e i s l i f e on Mars o r t o be l ieve i n re incarna t ion o r t o regard red-haired people a s i n f e r i o r beings. Other th ings might lead people t o th ink such th ings , but su re ly grammar does not seem t o be i n t h e running as even a poss ib l e can- d ida t e f o r explaining why people th ink such th ings . does not have t h e s o r t of e f f i cacy t h a t Whorf's r e l a t iv i sm presupposes. even i f it d id , t he re is a second d i f f i c u l t y , f o r we would s t i l l have t h e problem o f how Whorf could p laus ib ly th ink t h a t one could s c r u t i n i z e t h e grammar of some language-and straightaway diagnose t h e ' thought ' (allegedly) induced i n i t s speakers. A s we have a l ready observed, t h i s p r a c t i c e of h i s cannot be explained on analogy with o the r cases we have considered, fo r he i s not claiming t o de t ec t i n a language t e l l - t a l e s igns which t h e speakers of t h e language have, as it were, planted the re , giving us a c l u e t o t h e i r thinking. And i f t he cases we take Whorf t o be concerned with a r e cases i n which t h e connection of thought with language is a contingent connection, then su re ly n e i t h e r he nor anyone e l s e could have any idea a priori what e f f e c t any given s o r t of grammar would have on those who spoke the language. And ye t Whorf cons tan t ly proceeds as though the re were no problem here , a s though one could r ead i ly diagnose d i f fe rences of thought from di f fe rences o f grammar.

So grammar, it seems, j u s t And

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These two difficulties might lead us to despair of making any sense of Whorf's thesis. Whorf's thesis is utterly incomprehensible, that it cannot be understood in such a way as to make it even so much as plausible. Surely we ought to cast about for some interpretation which avoids the two difficulties mentioned in the last paragraph. And in fact such an interpretation is not hard to find. Notice, first, that both difficulties arose when we tried to understand Whorf's thesis as applied to examples in which the 'thought' was not of a metaphysical character and in which the connection of thought with language, if such there could be, would be a contingent connection. Perhaps, then, Whorf's thesis was not meant to apply to such cases. posed to differ, as the result of our speaking a language whose grammar differs greatly from Hopi and Shawnee,is only our metaphysical "picture of the universe," as Whorf puts it.

Yet it seems unfair to give up so easily and declare that

Perhaps what is sup-

Would such an interpretation avoid the two difficulties mentioned above? Well, if, as many philosophers have claimed,3 a metaphysics is buiZt into language (grammar), then in order to take people's language as a clue to their 'thinking' we need only know how to read off metaphysical categories from their grammar. This, I suggest, is how we must understand Whorf's thesis. He did not, in other words, regard grammar and metaphysics as two distinct phenomena, causally related. Our grammar and our unreflective metaphysical ideas are one and the same, and therefore there is no problem of inferring the one from the other, nor is there a problem (since these are not causally related) of how grammar could make us think what we would otherwise not think. Thus, both difficulties are avoided on this interpretation.

If it seems odd to attribute such a view to Whorf, it is because we are unfamiliar with the historical context of Whorf's relativism. In order to understand Whorf, it is essential to know what his relativism was meant to oppose. In his essays he only occasionally, and not very explicitly, alludes to the tradition in logic and linguistics that he aims to correct, but from these few allusions we can piece together the story. When he speaks of the views of the "old-school logicians" (233), he is referring to the sort of idea we find in these remarks by John Stuart Mill, in which he recommends the study of Latin and Greek as a "valuablediscipline to the intellect":

Consider for a moment what grammar is. It is the most elementary part of logic. It is the beginning of the analysis of the thinking process. The principles and rules of grammar are the means by which the forms of language are made to correspond with the universal forms of thought. The distinctions between the various parts of speech, between the cases of nouns, the moods and tenses of verbs, the functions of particles, are distinctions in thought, not merely in words. Single nouns and verbs express objects and events, . the modes of putting nouns and verbs together, express the relations of objects and events, a . and each different mode corresponds to a different relation. structure of every sentence is a lesson in logic. The various rules of syntax oblige us to distinguish between the subject and predicate of a proposition, between the agent, the action, and the thing acted upon. I Such things form the subject-matter of universal grammar;

The

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and t h e languages which teach it bes t are those which have t h e most d e f i n i t e r u l e s , and which provide d i s t i n c t forms f o r t h e g rea t e s t number of d i s t i n c t i o n s i n thought. . In these q u a l i t i e s t h e c l a s s i c a l languages have an incomparable supe r io r i ty over . a - a l l languages, dead or l i v ing . . . .4

I t was t h i s s o r t o f t h ing t h a t Whorf was disparaging when h e scoffed a t those who regard a few languages of "the Indo-European family, and t h e r a t iona l i z ing techniques elaborated from t h e i r pa t t e rns , as t h e apex o f t h e evolution of t h e human mind" (218). t h a t , f o r example, where Mill sees objec ts and events, expressed by nouns and verbs, speakers of languages t h a t d i f f e r g rea t ly i n grammatical s t r u c t u r e from those of t h e Indo-European family may see something q u i t e d i f f e ren t and be none t h e worse f o r it o r even, i n some cases, be t h e b e t t e r f o r it. Our metaphysical ca tegor ies of objec t and event, ac to r and ac t ion , and so on, are not , he in s i s t ed , i nev i t ab le log ica l categories. They are, r a the r , merely the r e f l e c t i o n of our own grammar, and i n many cases, he in s i s t ed , they are less adequate than what we f ind i n a language such as Hopi. he was tak ing e s s e n t i a l l y the same view as Georg Lichtenberg, who wrote:

H i s way of opposing t h i s was t o argue

In consequence,

Our f a l s e philosophy is embodied i n t h e language as a whole: say t h a t we can ' t reason without reasoning wrongly. People don't bear i n mind t h a t speaking, no matter about what, is a philosophy. Every- one who speaks i s a fo lk philosopher, and our academic philosophy consists of qua l i f i ca t ions of t h e popular brand. s

one might

This view of language is a t t h e hear t o f Whorf's re la t iv i sm, and accordingly, i f we are t o assess h i s t h e s i s t h a t language determines thought, our cen t r a l question must be whether it is t r u e t h a t "speaking, no matter about what, is a philosophy." This i s a p l a in ly philosophical question, not one t h a t lends i tself t o empirical inves t iga t ion .

Before turn ing t o t h i s question I w i l l consider i n d e t a i l severa l o ther i n t e rp re t a t ions of Wharf's t h e s i s i n order t o show t h a t they lead t o a va r i e ty of i r r e l e v a n t criticisms. aga ins t t hese criticisms w i l l be t o sharpen my own account of what he r e a l l y meant

A p a r t of my purpose i n defending Whorf

I 1

The f i r s t c r i t i c i s m t o be considered is d i r ec t ed aga ins t Whoif's claim t h a t "thinking i tself i s i n a language--in English, i n Sansk r i t , i n Chinese," and therefor-e "the forms of a person's thoughts are controll.ed by . t h e unperceived i n t r i c a t e systematizations of h i s own language" (252). This i s a claim tha t Whorf r e i t e r a t e s i n various ways. For ins tance , he t e l l s us t h a t "no individual i s free t o describe na ture with absolute impar t i a l i t y but i s constrained Ey h i s languagq to c e r t a i n modes of i n t e rp re t a t ion even while he th inks himself most free" (214). Elsewhere he speaks of "our l i n q u i s t i c a l l y determined thought world" (154) and of our Itc.oncepts" being "conditioned by the s t r u c t u r e of d i f f e ren t languages" (138), and he t e l l s us t h a t "every language ~ incorporates c e r t a i n poin ts of vi,ew and c e r t a i n patterned r e s i s t ances t o widely divergent po in ts of view" (2147). In these

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passages, Whorf's use o f t h e expressions "cont ro l led by," "constrained t o , " "conditioned by," " r e s i s t a n t t o , " and Itno ind iv idua l i s f r e e to" makes it c l e a r t h a t according t o Whorf we are i n some respec t p r i sone r s of our language. But i n what respec t , exac t ly , a r e we supposed t o be con- f ined? our language imposes on us the kind of thought con t ro l t h a t t o t a l i t a r i a n p o l i t i c a l regimes may impose upon people? I t i s not uncommon, I th ink , f o r lrlhorf t o be i n t e r p r e t e d i n t h i s way, d e s p i t e t h e f a c t t h a t i n passages such as t h e above he speaks, not of thoughts being con t ro l l ed , but r a t h e r of t h e "forms of thoughts" being con t ro l l ed - i n t h i s way, he would be vulnerable t o t h e s o r t o f c r i t i c i s m developed, i n another connection, by Arthur Cody i n h i s essay "Thinking i n Language":

Is Whorf saying t h a t we are not f r e e t o think well and c l e a r l y , t h a t

If Whorf could be r i g h t l y in t e rp re t ed

I t would seem one cannot th ink without a language, t h a t i s , ou t s ide a language. Should one not a l s o have t o say, you cannot th ink what t he language does not conta in , If some s o r t of expression E+.J found, say, i n Bengali but no t i n English, o r some verb form, e. g . , t e n s e absent i n Mescalero, then an English speaker cannot th ink whatever t h e Bengali expression means o r an Apache cannot t h ink temporal i deas , Doesn't such a remark lead us t o th ink of t h e language as an enclosure of some kind, o r a t i g h t system which has f ixed and l imi t ing r u l e s ( l i k e chess)? Only c e r t a i n th ings a r e sayable and th inkable because of t h e words and grammar o f t h i s tongue (not iceable because they a r e d i f f e r e n t i n d i f f e r e n t tongues). I t i s a s i f we could n s t employ t h e language t o our own purposes, o r a t l e a s t could not have any o the r purposes than those permitted by the language. This i s a f o o l i s h idea of language. course, We cannot make a sentence mean what it does not because w e want it t o . We can say what we want t o , though, i n t h e language, and t h e r e a r e no l i n g u i s t i c r e s t r i c t i o n s r e s t r i c t i n g what we can want. A l l we have t o do i s t o think it (be l ieve it, hope i t , e t c , ) > The questi.on w i l l &!ways be whether we can have thought (believed, hoped, e t c - ) what we s a i d , o r whether we have s a i d anything t h a t c o n s t i t u t e s the expression o f a thought ( e t c . ) . How can I show t h a t what I ' v e s a i d makes sense- - tha t i s what proving I thought it ( e t c , ) comes t o ? The answer is: t h e same way I c r e a t e i t , kind t o a purpose of some kind which I must make c l e a r i n a grea t v a r i e t y of ways--gestures, ac t ions , reac t ions , f a c i a l expressions I must connect my thoughts; I must connect my sentences, I must explain when I am asked f o r explanation. and i l l u s t r a t i o n s , I I . The elements o f language a r e not l i k e t h e s takes and poles and performed canvas t h a t I opera te upon when I p i t c h a t e n t ; t h e elements of language a r e not l i k e th ings t h a t w i l l only go toge ther one way (or a set , i f very l a rge , number o f ways), They a r e more l i k e t h e world which conta ins everything I need t o make anything t o my purpose. Or they conta in enough t o forge anything I need. have the purpose; it is not t h e r e i n t h e f u r n i t u r e of t h e world. only show, when I'm through, t h a t I ' v e b u i l t a t h ing t o a purpose and nc t madly put t h ings i n t o a publ ic jumbled6

We cannot make words mean whatever we want them t o , of

I speak i n a context of some

I must use ana logies and metaphors

I must I must

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Here Cody describes and soundly c r i t i c i z e s a view which he ' ca l l s "a foo l i sh idea of language." t o Whorf, I suspect it is one t h a t many people do a t t r i b u t e t o him. Cody's c r i t i c i s m may seem t o f i n a l l y dispose of l i n g u i s t i c relativism. But t h i s , I think,would be a mistake. claims of l i n g u i s t i c r e l a t iv i sm by cont ras t ing them with the claims made by George O r w e l l f o r h i s imaginary language, Newspeak.

Although Cody does not e x p l i c i t l y a t t r i b u t e t h i s idea Thus

To show t h i s , I w i l l t r y t o make c l e a r t h e

O r w e l l t e l l s us t h a t "in Newspeak t h e expression of unlorthodox opinions, above a very low l eve l , was well-nigh impossible." lows :

He explains t h i s as fo l -

The purpose o f Newspeak was not only t o provide a medium of expressjon f o r t h e world-view and mental hab i t s proper t o t h e devotees of Ingsoc, but t o make a l l o ther modes of thought impossible. t h a t when Newspeak had been adopted once and f o r a l l and Oldspeak Eng l i sh as we know id forgotten, a h e r e t i c a l thought--that is , a thought diverging from t h e p r inc ip l e s of Ingsoc--should be l i t e r a l l y unthinkable, a t least so far as thought i s dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as t o give exact and o f t en very sub t l e expressions t o every meaning t h a t a Party member could properly wish t o express, while excluding a l l o ther meanings and also t h e p o s s i b i l i t y of a r r iv ing a t them by ind i r ec t methods. invention o f new words, but ch ie f ly by e l imina t ing undesirable words and by s t r ipp ing such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so f a r as poss ib le of a l l secondary meanings whatever. . Relative t o our own, t h e Newspeak vocabulary was t iny , and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised. Newspeak, indeed, d i f f e red from almost a l l o ther languages i n t h a t i t s vocabulary grew smaller ins tead of l a rge r every year. t h e area of choice, t he smaller the temptation t o take thoughtO7

I t was intended

This was done p a r t l y by t h e

Each reduction was a gain, s ince t h e smaller

Now using what O r w e l l says here, we can formulate more exac t ly t h e view t h a t Cody is c r i t i c i z i n g . i n h i b i t s thinking i n t h e sense i n which Newspeak is s a i d t o . such a view Cody's c r i t i c i s m is undoubtedly dec is ive . ment thereby refute.' l i n g u i s t i c re la t iv i sm? every language has tlle kind of i nh ib i t i ng e f f e c t on thinking t h a t Newspeak is supposed t o have? I t seems t o m e c l e a r t h a t he does not maintain t h i s , f o r t h e r e are th ree important d i f fe rences between what Whorf i s saying and what O r w e l l says about Newspeak. F i r s t of a l l , i n O r w e l l ' s case t h e inh ib i t i ng f ac to r i s t h e r e s t r i c t e d vocabulary of Newspeak, whereas Whorf says nothing about vocabulary and claims, r a the r , t h a t t h e grammar of a language shapes our th inkingS8 t h a t on Whorf's view i t i s th ink ing t h a t i s determined o r cont ro l led by a language. A s passages quoted e a r l i e r make c l e a r , Whorf i s saying t h a t it is t h e "forms of our thoughtsT1 o r our llmodes of in te rpre ta t ion" t h a t a r e l i n g u i s t i c a l l y determined. i n consequence h i s p o l i t i c a l behavior, t h a t i s cont ro l led . t o be noticed i s t h a t i f w e speak of "thought control" i n both cases , we must do so i n d i f f e r e n t senses, en t i n the two cases, In Whorf's case it is language t h a t i s sa id t o cont ro l ( t he form of ] thought, whereas i n O r w e l l ' s novel t h e agent of thought cont ro l is t h e person or persons who enforce adherence t o Newspeak. Now it 1s c l e a r

I t is t h e view t h a t every language cont ro ls o r Now agains t

But has Cody's argu- Does Whorf r e a l l y maintain t h a t

Secondly, it i s not r e a l l y accurate t o say

In O r w e l l ' s novel it is a personls thinking, and A t h i r d d i f fe rence

For t h e agent of thought cont ro l i s very d i f f e r -

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JOHN W- COOK

enough what it is t o avoid thought cont ro l i n t h e la t ter case: a person might defy t h e a u t h o r i t i e s by s e c r e t l y keeping t h e resources of Oldspeak ava i l ab le t o him, perhaps using it s e c r e t l y f o r keeping a d ia ry . O r i f someone were a victim of Newspeak from earliest childhood, he might ye t overcome i t s l imi t a t ions t o some degree i n t h e ways t h a t Cody mentions: by means of analogies, metaphors, i l l u s t r a t i o n s , and parables. But i n t h e former case, Whorf's case, it is not so c l e a r what it could mean t o escape "thought cont ro l , " i * e . , t o escape cont ro l o f t h e forms o f one's thoughts. A t least it i s not s o clear what it could mean t o do t h i s so long as one continued t o speak t h e same language.9 how t o avoid t h e a l leged inf luence of grammar upon t h e forms of our thoughts, upon our modes of i n t e r p r e t i n g t h e world. t h i s a t a l l . The l i n g u i s t i c r e a l i t i v i s t can well admit t h a t i f w e a r e f r e e from t h e strictures o f Newspeak, then we are free t o think i n Orwell's sense, i o e e , i n t h e sense i n which th inking i s r e l evan t t o a c t i v i t i e s , po l - i t i ca l and otherwise. But t h e r e l a t i v i s t w i l l a l s o want t o poin t out t h a t being free from t h e s t r i c t u r e s of Newspeak does not leave us free from t h e inf luence of our grammar upon t h e forms o f our thoughts. So Cody's c r i t i - cism, i f meant f o r Whorf, goes wide of t h e mark. I t is d i r ec t ed a t someone who holds t h a t English o r Chinese i n h i b i t s o r circumscribes th inking i n the sense t h a t Newspeak would, and t h i s i s not t h e claim of Whorf's l i n g u i s t i c re la t iv i sm.

Cody, i n any case, does not t e l l us

Indeed, Cody says nothing about

This po in t can be made considerably clearer i f w e t u r n t o t h e writ ings of Edward Sapi r , Whorf's t eacher and one of t h e authors of l i n g u i s t i c relativism. Sapi r he lps us t o see what t h e r e l a t i v i s t i s maintaining and what he is not. For ins tance , i n t h e following passage he makes much t h e same poin t t h a t Cody was i n s i s t i n g on.

The outstanding fact about any language is i t s formal completeness. This is a s t r u e of a pr imi t ive language, l i k e Eskimo o r Hottentot, a s of t h e c a r e f u l l y recorded and standardized languages of our grea t c u l t - ures. By "formal completeness'' I mean a profoundly s i g n i f i c a n t pecu- l i a r i t y which is e a s i l y overlooked. a . A language i s s o constructed t h a t no matter what any speaker of it may d e s i r e t o communicate, no matter how o r ig ina l o r b i za r r e h i s idea o r h i s fancy, t h e language i s prepared t o do h i s work. fo rce upon h i s language a new formal o r i en ta t ion . . L/

Formal completeness has nothing t o do with t h e r ichness o r t h e poverty of t h e vocabulary. . epeake r s of a languaga may extend t h e meanings of words which they a l ready possess, c r e a t e new words out of na t ive resources on t h e analogy o f e x i s t i n g terms, o r t ake over from another people terms t o apply t o t h e new conceptions which they a r e introducing.

H e w i l l never need t o c r e a t e new forms or t o

None of t hese processes a f f e c t s t h e form of t h e language. 10

Sapi r goes on t o make t h e poin t t h a t although not everything wr i t t en i n t h e languages of o the r cu l tu re s can be t r a n s l a t e d i n t o Eskimo o r Hottentot with t h e i r present vocabulary, "it is not t h e languages t h a t a r e t o be blamed but t h e Eskimo and the Hottentots themselves.ql According t o S a p i r , then, no one

9


can r i g h t l y accuse h i s language of r e s t r i c t i n g h i s thinking. made t h i s po in t , Sapi r goes on t o present h i s argument f o r l i n g u i s t i c re la t iv i sm:

But having

This brings us t o t h e na ture of language as a symbolic system, a method of r e f e r r i n g t o a l l poss ib le types of experience. u r a l o r , a t any rate, t h e naive th ing is t o assume t h a t when we wish t o communicate a c e r t a i n idea o r impression, t o make something l i k e a rough inventory of t h e objec t ive elements and r e l a t i o n s involved i n it, t h a t such an inventory or analys is i s q u i t e inevi tab le , and t h a t our l i n g u i s t i c task cons i s t s merely of t h e f ind ing of t h e p a r t i c u l a r words and groupings of words t h a t correspond t o t h e terms o f t h e objec t ive ana lys i s . Thus, when we observe an objec t of t h e type t h a t we call a Itstonell moving through space towartis t h e ear th , we invo lun ta r i ly analyze t h e phenomenon i n t o two concrlete notions, t h a t o f a s tone and t h a t of an a c t of f a l l i n g , and, r e l a t i n g these two notions t o each o the r by c e r t a i n formal methods proper t o English, w e dec la re t h a t !Ithe s tone falls." We assume, naively enough, t h a t t h i s i s about t h e only ana lys i s t h a t can properly be made.

The na t -

A t t h i s po in t t he re follows a comparison with t h e French, Chippewa, Russian, Latin, Kwakiutl, Chinese, and f i n a l l y Nootka. I quote only t h e last:

made i n German,

But t h i s necess i ty bf analyzing t h e s i t u a t i o n i n t o tls:tonelf and what t h e s tone does] , which we feel so s t rongly , is an i l l i i s ion . In t h e Nootka language the combined impression o f a s tone f a l l i n g i s q u i t e d i f f e r e n t l y analysed. but a s i n g l e word, a verb form, may be used which is i n p rac t i ce not e s s e n t i a l l y more ambiguous than our English sentence. cons i s t s of two main elements, t he first ind ica t ing general movement o r pos i t i on o f a s tone o r s tone l ike objec t , while t he !second refers t o downward d i rec t ion . of t h e Nootka word i f w e assume t h e existence o f an intransit : ive verb " to stone," r e f e r r i n g t o t h e pos i t i on o r movement of a s tone l ike objec t . Then our sentence, "The s tone falls,1f may be reassembled i n t o some- th ing l i k e "It stones down." In t h i s type of expression t h e thing- q u a l i t y of t h e s tone i s implied i n t h e generalized verba l element " to stone," while t h e s p e c i f i c kind of motion which is given us i n experience when a s tone fa l l s i s conceived as separable i n t o a generalized notion of t h e movement of a class of ob jec t s and a more s p e c i f i c one of d i r ec t ion . f i c u l t y whatever i n describing t h e f a l l of a stone, it has no verb t h a t t r u l y corresponds t o our t l fa l l o l l

I t would be poss ib le t o go on i n d e f i n i t e l y with such examples of incommensurable analyses o f experience i n d i f f e r e n t languages. The upshot o f it a l l would be t o make very real t o us a kind of r e l a t i v i t y t h a t i s genera l ly hidden from us by our naive acceptance of f ixed hab i t s of' speech a s guides t o an objec t ive understandirg of the na ture

The s tone need not be spec i f ica . l ly r e fe r r ed t o ,

This verb form

We can get some h i n t of t h e f ee l ing

In o the r words, while Nootba has no d i f -

10

JOHN W. COOK

of experience. This is the relativity of concepts or, as it might be called, the relativity of the form of thought. a . . For its understanding the comparative data of linguistics are a sine qua non. It is the appreciation of the relativity of the form of thought which results from linguisitic study that is perhaps the most liberalizing thing about it. ever the dogged acceptance of absolutes ~ l1

What fetters the mind and benumbs the spirit is

In these several passages that I have quoted from Sapir we find him saying, first, that one's language, as a grammatical structure, does not interfere with one's saying whatever one may want to say and does not impose restric- tions on one's thinking. But we also find Sapir saying that the grammatical structure of one's language imposes on one an llanalysistt of whatever phenomenon (experience, impression, situation) one wants to describe, so that there is a relativity of the form of thought." to a language is not what people can think but only the "formtt of their thoughts. Perhaps the best statement of Sapir's relativism, then, is his re- jection of what he calls the "naive assumption" that "when we wish to communicate a certain idea or impression, we make something like rough inventory of the objective elements and relations involved in it - ~ and that our linguistic task consists merely of the findings of the particular wrds and groupings of words that correspond to the terms of the objective analysis" (my italics). The analysis, Sapir is claiming, is not "objective" but is, instead, determined by one's language. This is the claim which we must try to understand and assess if we are to come to terms with linguis- tie relativism. Before turning to this, however, there remain several other misunderstandings to be dealt with.

So it seems that what is relative

I11

Linguists, psychologists, and anthropologists have regularly taken Whorf to be advancing a hypothesis concerning the influence of language upon thinking. For instance, we find John Carroll, the editor of Whorf's essays, saying that Whorf's "principle of linguistic relativity . states, at least as a hypothesis, that the structure of a human being's language influences the manner in which he understands reality and behaves with respect to When Whorf's thesis is given this interpretation, his procedure becomes vulnerable to the following criticism:

Throughout his work Whorf illustrates this idea &f the influence of language upon thinkina with examples from American Indian languages, showing how they differ from English. However, a demonstration that certain languages differ from each other suggests but does not prove that the speakers of these languages differ from each other as a group in their psychological potentialities. To prove this, it would be necessary to show first that certain aspects of language have a direct influence on or connection with a given psychological mechanism, o r at least that speakers of different languages differ along certain psychological parameters. 13

11


The c r i t i c i sm, then, i s t h a t Whorf, i n i l l u s t r a t i n g t h e influence of language upon thinking, cites s t r i k i n g grammatical d i f fe rences between languages but f a i l s t o show t h a t t he re r e a l l y exis t t he cogni t ive d i f fe rences which he says correspond t o those l i n g u i s t i c d i f fe rences . This i s sometimes formulated as a c r i t i c i s m o f Whorf's method. It is sa id t h a t Whorf i s arguing i n a circle when he treats t h e l i n g u i s t i c d i f fe rences themselves a s t h e proof t h a t t he re are d i f fe rences i n thinking or world views, f o r such a procedure merely revea ls t h a t "thinking d i f f e ren t ly" means no more than "speaking languages of d i f f e r e n t s t ruc tures , "so t h a t a tautology is a l l t h a t remains o f t h e apparent hypothesis regarding the inf luence o f language on thought. t h e s i s i s not t o co l lapse i n t h i s way, h i s cri t ics maintain, then what i s needed is some evidence of cogni t ive d i f fe rences which can be observed inde- pendently of t h e d i f fe rences i n language. l4 Accordingly experiments have been devised with t h e aim of e l i c i t i n g d i f fe rences i n behavior t h a t correspond t o l i n g u i s t i c d i f fe rences . ch i ldren whose only o r dominant language i s Navaho tend t o s o r t ob jec t s ( i n experimental s i t ua t ions ) by shape r a t h e r than co lor a t d i s t i n c t l y younger ages than do English-speaking Navaho children. The s igni f icance of t h i s i s supposed to r e s ide i n t h e fact t h a t i n the Navaho language c e r t a i n verbs of handling, such a s pick up, drop, hoZd, requi re spec ia l forms depending on the shape of t h e objec t being handled.15 dominanttt ch i ld learns requi res him t o d iscr imina te objec ts by shape i n a way t h a t determined i n advance of t h e so r t ing experiment t h a t t h e "Navaho dominant" children i n t h e study d id use the re levant verb forms cor rec t ly . ) The upshot of t he experiment, then, i s t h e discovery t h a t a capac i ty required i n learn ing t h e use of these Navaho verbs manifests i t s e l f a l s o i n t h e way cer- t a i n so r t ing tasks are performed. I t i s t h e discovery of t h i s manifestation t h a t i s regarded a s an experimental confirmation of Whorf's t h e s i s t h a t language influences thought and perception.

If Whorf's

One such experiment revealed t h a t Navaho

Thus t h e language t h a t a "Navaho

t h e language of an English speaking ch i ld does not . ( I t w a s

Experiments of t h i s kind a r e admitted t o be only a p a r t i a l confirmation of Whorf's 'hypothesis' s ince they do not revea l d i f fe rences i n thought t h a t amount t o anything so grand a s a d i f fe rence i n world views, but it appears t o be widely assumed t h a t t h e f i n a l confirmation may eventually be achieved by more ingenious experiments and more searching c u l t u r a l comparisons 16 The assumption here i s t h a t we a l l know w e l l enough what is meant by "differences i n thinking" or "d i f f e i en t world views"--or a t least what Whorf meant by such phrases--so t h a t we can proceed without fu r the r ado t o inves t i - ga te whether such d i f fe rences e x i s t , divided along l i n g u i s t i c l i n e s .

This whole way of approaching Whorf's t h e s i s is, I th ink , misconceived and arises from a f a i l u r e t o understand t h e e s s e n t i a l l y metaphysical charac t e r of WhQPf'S t hes i s . The above-mentioned assumption t h a t we know w e l l enough what i s meant by t h e phrases t ldifferences i n thinking" and "d i f f e r - en t world views" and t h a t we could iden t i fy such d i f fe rences without appeal- ing to t h e l i n g u i s i t i c material i n t h e way t h a t a l legedly t u r n s Whorf's t h e s i s i n to a vacuous tautology i s an assumption which depends on in t e rp re t - ing those c ruc ia l phrases i n a nonmetaphysical sense. t h e thought Or world view of a cu l tu re , a s r e fe r r ed t o i n Whorf's t h e s i s , i s not a metaphysics but some more ordinary s o r t s of thoughts o r b e l i e f s ,

The assumption i s t h a t

12

JOHN W. COOK

perhaps including the religious or supernatural beliefs of a culture, something we can identify from the life of a community, including what people say (as contrasted with the grammar of the language in which they say it). Commentators on Whorf sometimes acknowledge that he seems to have been es- pecially concerned with what he took to be the metaphysical views contained in various languages and that these, if such there be, would not be readily identifiable from cultural practices, but it is thought that we can disregard Whorf's special concern with metaphysics without thereby bargain- ing away the significance of his thesis.17 Now it is this interpretation of Whorf that I mean to dispute. that when he speaks of the thought or world view of a people, he means by these words what he also calls !!the basic postulates of an unformulated philosophy" (61) and "the metaphysics underlying our own language" (59). Only if we understand Whorf in this way can we see why he would think that when two languages have been shown to differ in certain ways, no further evidence is needed to demonstrate that those who speak these languages think differently, have different forms of thought.

It is in the very nature of his thesis

The relevant point is this. Whorf thinks of a metaphysics as something that is contained in a language as an inevitable feature of its grammatical structure. Thus, the Hopi's metaphysics of space and time is not something to be inferred from their language; rather it can be seen in their language.18 On Whorf's view, then, it is possible to read off a people's form of thought from the grammar of their language, provided we make suitable use of metaphysical categories in describing the gramar of their language. Thus, Whorf is not advancing a hypothesis to the effect that people who speak a language of a certain sort will also think in a certain characteristic way. Rather, he believes that grammatical categories lend themselves to a semantic interpretation employing metaphysical terms, such as thing, event, process, relation, past, present, future, and so on, so that to speak in a certain language just i s to operate with, to think with, certain eetaphysical categories. Thus, when Whorf writes that "Hopi with its preference for verbs, as contrasted to our liking for nouns, perpetually turns our propositions about things into propositions about events" (63), he means to be giving us two essentially related pieces of information. First, certain English nouns translate into Hopi verbs and have no noun equivalent in Hopi. Secondly, whenever we say something using one of these English nouns, we represent something as being a thing which the Hopi represent as being an event. Thus, in using such words, a speaker of English and a speaker of Hopi, although they may be giving the same piece of information (for example, how to find a certain cave), are aZeo saying or implying something of a metaphysical character, and it is these additional metaphysical implications that Whorf calls *tdifferences of thinking" or "different world views." people's ftthoughttt or "world view" is not something that he imagines to be identifiable from their activities. He makes this last point explicit when he says that despite its difference from our language, Itthe Hopi language is capable of accounting for and describing correctly, in a pragmatic OF operatiom2 Benee, all observable phenomena of the universe" (58, my italics). thereby debarred from any of those activities which are carried on by

Thus, what Whorf means by a

I take this to mean that people who speak only Hopi are not

13

WSR F ' S 1, I YGU I ST JC RELATIVISM

English speaking people using words which have no grammatical equivalent in Hopi. Thus, although Hopi verbs "have no 'tenses' like oursr1 (144), the Hopi can say what we say, in the sense that they can remind one another about what happened during last winter's blizzard (where English requires the past tense), can inform one another of the whereabouts of a water hole (where English uses the present tense), and can issue warnings about an impending storm (where English system . are distributed among various verb categories, all different from our tenses" (145). passage quoted above in which he says that all languages are ttformally complete.") tion or issuing warnings that their language differs from ours. ence is to be found, not at the "pragmatic level," but in the metaphysical implications of grammatical form.

uses the future tense), for in Hopi "the duties of our three-tense

(This is the same point that Sapir was making in the

So it is not at the level of giving reminders or providing informa- The differ-

We can now see three reasons for rejecting the interpretation of Whorf's relativism as a hypothesis. First, Whorf held that he could read off the metaphysics of a language from its grammatical form, so that he is claiming that his relativistic thesis can be known to be true in a way that elimin- ates any need for the sort of extra-linguistic verification t.hat would be appropriate for a hypothesis. ferences as necessarily having ttpragmatic" manifestations, which shows that he would have regarded it as a misunderstanding of his thesis if someone had demanded to be shown the extra-linguistic phenomena that would verify it.19 a hypothesis about a contingent relation between thought and language, and if, as his critics say, he constantly fails to cite any (extra-linguistic) evidence to support the hypothesis, it would then be utterly mysterious that Whorf, lacking any evidence for it, should have hit upon the idea in the first place and have become convinced of its truth. thesis is made out to be a hypothesis, the whole matter is rendered incomprehensible. For these three reasons, then, I conclude that it is a mistake t o think that Whorf's relativism is a hypothesis. It follows, of course, that if any genuine psycholinguistic hypotheses have been devised and tested by others, this should not be thought of as providing even partial confirmation of Whorf s thesis.

Secondly, he did not think of linguistic dif-

Thirdly, if Whorf really had been, as his critics mairkain, advancing

In short, if Whorf's

How, then, has 'Nhorf's thesis come to be so misunderstood? A part of the answer has already been mentioned in Section I above, namely, the wide- spread failure to appreciate the extent to which Wharf's relaxivism was meant to be a corrective to the metaphysical pretensions of traditional logic and linguistics. This failure is, of course, understandable from the fact that most of Wharf's critics and commentators have been linguists and anthropologists and have therefore not been in a position to recognize that Whorf was doing philosophy under the guise of linguistic theory. The type of training they receive would naturally incline them to suppose that Whorf was advancing an empirical claim about the difference it makes that one speaks, say, Hopi o r English. It is, of course, an empirical fact that spoken languages do differ greatly in grammatical structure, but it is an a prior4 philosophical claim that one can read off a metaphysics from grammatical structure. It is this latter idea that lies at the heart of Whorf's

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JOHN W. COOK

relativism, and most linguists and anthropologists, lacking Whorf's metaphysical inclinations, are not likely to find this a tempting and exciting idea. It is not surprising, then, that the idea simply escapes them and that they set about trying to make some empirical sense out of Whorf's thesis

There is another possible source of misunderstanding which deserves some discussion here, namely, the fact that Whorf himself was sometimes less than careful about presenting his examples and less than precise about identifying which sort of example properly illustrates linguistic relativism. There are, in fact, two sortsof examples to be found in Whorf's essays which, if thought to be the sortsto which his thesis applies, might lead one to think that his thesis was meant to cover cases in which the relation of thought and language is contingent- The first of these are examples which Whorf apparently presents as proof that a word (or word choice) can cause someone to believe something he would not otherwise believe. sort of example is one that seems to show that anthropologists may rightly infer something about a people's beliefs from the grammar of their language. It is difficult to say whether Whorf himself thought that examples of either sort could be used to illustrate linguistic relativism--difficult, that is, to determine whether Whorf recognized the relevant differences between these two kinds of examples and the metaphysical examples which predominate in the pages of his essays. ences. In any case, his failure to alert his readers to the relevant ferences among these examples may have led some of his readers to think that linguistic relativism is a hypothesis about a causal relationship of thought and language, a relationship which, in particular cases, would have to be inferred and which inference would then have to be verified by finding direct evidence that the inferred thought really does occur, My own view, as should by now be obvious, is that neither sort of example is relevant to Whorf's thesis and that weoughtto disregard them in looking for the correct interpretation. sorts of example.

The second

Perhaps Whorf did not clearly recognize these differ- dif-

In defense of this I will say something about each of these two

Those which appear to be of a causal character, or which Whorf seems to

Here he presents

These are

present as cases of language causing something, are found in his essay "The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language." seven examples drawn, not from anthropological linguistics, but from his experience as an investigator for a fire insurance company. cases in which, in his capacity as investigator, he came upon the scene of a fire o r an explosion, looking for its cause. In one such case, for example, the vapour in some empty gasoline drums had been ignited by the matches or cigarettes of factory workers smoking nearby. 1 s that the word "empty" was to blame, that its use in the factoryin speaking of the gasoline drums had made people think that the drums presented no fire hazard.20 ways: dangerous use of smoking materials, the faulty installation of a fan, etc.) w a s already known to have occuzred, and all are cases in whlch the 'linguis- t i c ' feature of the situation which Whorf alleges to be the cause in not an element of grammar but of vocabulary or word choice,

What Whorf tells us about this

The other six examples all resemble this one in the following all are cases in which the behavior Whorf sought to explain (the

Now in both respects

15


these examples differ significantly from those to which Wharf's relativism would seem to apply, thesis as the result of trying to explain any thought or behavior that was already known to have occurred, Secondly, the claim that Whoj?fmakes about these seven examples, whether true o r not, is a claim about the effect of something in peopless vocabulary o r word choice, whereas Whorf's relativism is a thesis about grammar. Accordingly, these examples really contribute nothing to our understanding of linguistic relativism, and we ought to disregard them when trying to arrive at a sound interpretation. Even if Whorf himself, while writing the essay in which these examples appear, mistakenly thought that they could serve alongside examples drawn from linguistics as illustrations of linguistic relativism, we should write this off to a tempo- rary muddle in Whorfss thinking and not appeal to these examples as a toiich- stone for our interpretation of him. peculiarity, the likes of which are to be found nowhere else in Wharf's several essays on the subject.--Nevertheless, whether through mere careless- ness or muddled thinking, Whorffails to alert his readers to the difference between the conclusion one might want to draw from these seven examples and the conclusion he arrives at from his study of exotic languages. And for that reason Whorf himself may be partly to blame for the fact that he has critics who represent his relativistic thesis as a causa! hypothesis and who then complain about the problem of verification,

First of all, Whorf did not hit upon his relativistic

After all, these seven examples are a

I now turn to the other example which may be responsible for a mis- interpretation of Whorf's thesis, been considering, involves a grammatical, rather than a lexical, feature of language, and for that reason it may more plausibly be regarded as an illustration of Whorf's thesis. Linguistic Consideration of Thinking in Primitive Communities1' (65-86), where Whorf was concerned to show that linguistics, properly understood, can serve anthropologists as a valuable tool. The message is this:

This example, unlike those we have just

It is found in an essay entitled "A

The ethnologist engaged in studying a living primitive culture must often have wondered: "What do these people think? Are their intellectural and rational processes akin to ours or radical- ly different?" psychological enigma and has sharply turned his attention back to more readily observable matters. thinking in the native community is not purely and simply a psychological problem. It is approachable through linguistics. - (65)

How do they think?

But thereupon he has probably dismissed the idea as a

And yet the problem of thought and

Whorf goes on to explain this claim by telling us that "sense or meaning does not result from words or morphemes but from patterned relations between words o r morphemes,1t so that it is not words but rather Ilthis rapport that constitutes the real essence of thought" (67). By investigating such grammatical relations or llrapport,ll then, the linguist can study thinking.

It is obvious from Wharf's examples in the essay that'he intends this claim to cover examples of the sort I have called "metaphysical," but he also introduces one plainly non-metaphysical example, and this is the one that concerns me here. Whorfintroduces it as follows:

16

JOHN W. COOK

Let us suppose t h a t an e thnologis t discovers t h a t t h e Hopi speak about clouds i n t h e i r ra in prayers, etc., as though clouds were a l ive . He would l i k e t o know whether t h i s i s some metaphor or spec ia l r e l ig ious OF ceremonial f i gu re of speech, or whether it i s t h e ordinary and usual way of th inking about clouds. Here i s t h e s o r t o f problem t o which language might be ab le t o give a very meaningful answer. (79)

A t t h i s po in t Whorf launches i n t o a p a r t i c u l a r theme about l i n g u i s t i c s which he was concerned t o advocate. He says t h a t i f w e were t r a d i t i o n a l l i n g u i s t s , we would t r y t o answer t h e above question by turn ing t t t o see i f k h e Hopi language] has a gender system t h a t d i s t inguishes l i v i n g from non-living th ings , and, if so, how it c l a s ses a c loudopt This, he seems t o th ink , i s sound method, but as it tu rns out , Hopi has no gender a t a l l , and so " t r ad i - t i o n a l grammar of t h e pre-Boas period would s t o p a t t h i s point and th ink it had given an answer." But t h i s , says Whorf, i s not t h e p lace t o s top , f o r "the co r rec t answer can only be given by a grammar t h a t analyzes covert a s well as over t s t r u c t u r e and meaningst1 t h a t cannot be defined by re ference t o any morphological f ea tu re s of t he language. ings, according t o Whorf.) If we inves t iga t e t h e covert ca tegor ies of Hopi, we discover, first of a l l , t h a t Hopi d i s t ingu i shes an "animate class of nouns1* by t h e unique way it forms t h e p l u r a l s of t hese nouns, and secondly, t h a t t h e word f o r "cloud" i n Hopi "is always p lu ra l i zed i n t h e animate way; it has no o the r p l u r a l ; it d e f i n i t e l y belongs t o t h e cryptotype [covert category] of animateness.tl This suggests t o Whorf t h a t t h e Hopi word f o r

(A covert grammatical category i s one

The r u l e def in ing such a category must t he re fo re mention mean-

has an "animate meaning" i n t h e i r everyday speech.

And so [Whorf concludes] t h e question whether t h e animation of clouds i s a f igu re o r formal i ty o f speech o r whether it stems from some more deep and sub t ly pervasive undercurrent o f thought i s answered, o r a t l e a s t given a flood of new meaning. (79)

The r a t h e r vague q u a l i f i c a t i o n tacked on a t t h e end here suggests t h a t Whorf was l e s s than c e r t a i n j u s t what lesson w e a r e t o l ea rn from t h i s case : whether we have here a case i n which grammar concZus<veZy shows what t h e Hopi think, o r only a case i n which grammar provides some (non-conclusive) evidence. But i f one overlooks t h i s ambivalence, it would be na tu ra l t o suppose t h a t t h e intended lesson is t h i s : t h a t clouds are a l i v e ) can be shaped by, and the re fo re in fe r r ed from, grammar. In sho r t , one might suppose t h a t Whorf here meant t o be present ing us with a paradigm of t h a t t h e s i s he was later t o c a l l " l i n g u i s t i c re la t iv i sm." ( h d of course i f t h i s were Whorf's c l e a r i n t en t ion here, t h a t fact would c rea t e some d i f f icu l ty- - though not , I th ink , grea t d i f f i c u l t y - - f o r my contention t h a t Wharf's t h e s i s should be in t e rp re t ed as applying only t o cases i n which the ' thought ' i s metaphysical and not t o cases l i k e t h e one a t hand,) In f a c t , however, Whorf does not say here t h a t i f t h e Hopi be l ieve t h a t clouds a r e a l i v e t h i s is because t h e grammar of t h e i r language has made them be l ieve t h i s . have made"

non-metaphysical thought ( in t h i s case t h e be l i e f

And indeed t h a t would have been a r a t h e r implausible claim f o r him t o

17


Let us consider the example in some detail. There are three rather striking features of it. First of all, in this case there would be, as Whorf's critics demand, an independent, extra-linguistic check on what the Hopi think about clouds, for one could simply ask them, "Are clouds alive?" "Are the clouds watching us?tt "DO clouds live longer than men?" "DO clouds sometimes starve to death?" and so on. ence from the fact that the Hopi word for "cloud" takes an animate plural, this need only be a preliminary stage of his investigation, to be followed up by direct questioning that would reveal what the Hopi believe about clouds. This brings us to the second striking feature of the example, namely that it goes against the idea that covert grammatical categories are necessarily functional (meaning) categories. That is to say, if an ethnologist were to find that this noun belongs to the animate class, this grammatical classifi- cation would not give him a conclusive reason for thinking that the Hopi believe clouds to be alive, for surely there is no difficulty in supposing that, despite this being a feature of their grammar, the Hopi, when asked about clouds, would say that clouds are not alive and would regard it as merely amusing to be asked how long clouds live, whether clouds watch us, starve to death, etc. (In that case, further investigation might reveal that the Hopi had at one time been conquered by another people who did believe that clouds are alive and who demanded that the Hopi speak of them as living things, so that the Hopi began using the animate plural for this noun, perhaps treating it, among themselves, as a kind of joke.) I do not mean to suggest, of course, that an inference in this case must be wrong. Indeed, if the noun takes the animate plural (and, as Whorf remarks, the Hopi speak in their rain prayers and elsewhere as though clouds were alive), then the probability is that the Hopi believe that clouds are alive and that direct questioning would reveal this. Let us suppose that this is found to be the case, for on that supposition we can see the third striking feature of this case, namely, that it could not serve as a very plausible illustration of linguistic relativism. If we knew, from direct questioning, that the Hopi believe that clouds are alive, and if we also knew that their word for lkloudff belongs to the animate class, it would be reasonable to assume that this grammatical fact is attributable to their belief about clouds. In other words, we might reasonably assume that at some point in their history they had tinkered with their grammar to make it reflect their belief. In this case we could speak of a connection between their belief and their language. But notice that this is +he reverse of what Whorf's relativity thesis claims, namely, that we live in a "linguistically determined thought world." His thesis is that language determines thought, whereas I am suggesting that in the case a t hand tbe connection between thought and language would be most plausibly explained as a case of 'thought' determining language.

Thus, if an ethnologist were to make an infer-

Consider a somewhat similar case. In most Melanesian languages nouns are of two types, those that do and those that do not take the personal pronoun as a suffix. Those that do are nouns used in speaking of something that is related to a person in one way OT another. Here we find words for parts of the body, tools, and so on, and also words for family members;. Now an inter- esting exception among this latter group of words are the nouns used for "husband" and "wife"; these do not take the personal pronoun as a sufflx, Accordingly, an ethnographer who somehow discovered this linguistic fact

18

J O H N W . COOK

b e f o r e knowing much about t h e s o c i a l s t r u c t u r e o f t h e group could reasonably i n f e r that these people r e g a r d a husband and wife as be ing , i n some s e n s e , not r e l a t e d , And i n fact f u r t h e r i n v e s t i g a t i o n would r e v e a l p r e c i s e l y t h i s . For exogamy is s t r i c t l y observed by t h e s e people , s o t h a t a husband and wife belong t o d i f f e r e n t c l a n s and are t h e r e f o r e n o t r e l a t e d - - o r are n o t r e l a t e d rn t h e way t h a t f a t h e r and son or sister and b r o t h e r are. Here, t h e n , i s a c a s e i n which t h e grammar o f a p e o p l e ' s language reflects something about t h e i r l i v e s , b u t s u r e l y no one i s going t o f i n d it p l a u s i b l e t o main ta in t h a t t h i s f e a t u r e o f t h e i r grammar came f i r s t and shaped t h e i r l i v e s and a t t i t u d e s .

My p o i n t , t h e n , i s t h a t cases such as t h i s one and Whorf's example o f t h e animate c l a s s i n Hopi are n o t c a n d i d a t e s f o r p l a u s i b l e i l l u s t . r a t i o n s o f l i n g u i s t i c re la t . iv i sm.21 merely t h a t t h e r e i s some o t h e r more p l a u s i b l e way t o t h i n k o f such cases b u t t h a t it would b e wholly i m p l a u s i b l e t o t h i n k t h a t i n cases o f t h i s s o r t t h e language h a s shaped t h e ' t h o u g h t . ' To see tha t . t h i s i s so, l e t us r e t u r n t o Whorf's example from Hopi grammar, Let us once a g a i n suppose t h a t t h e Hopi are a conquered people and t h a t t o p l a c a t e t h e i r conquerors they have given t h e i r word f o r "cloud" t h e animate p l u r a l . Now on t h e view, a t t r i b u t e d t o Whorf by t h e s e c r i t i c s , t h a t grammar h a s t h e power t o cause non-metaphysical b e l i e f s , w e should have t o t h i n k t h a t t h e Hopi could n o t t r e a t t h i s as a j o k e among themselves and b e amused a t a n t h r o p o l o g i s t s ask ing them how long c louds l i v e , whether c louds are watching u s , and so on.. No, i f we were t o t a k e t h a t view of t h e e f f i c a c y o f grammar, we should have t o con- t i n u e t h e s t o r y by s a y i n g t h a t once t h e Hopi have adopted t h e new p l u r a l f o r "cloud" t h e y w i l l be under t h e sway o f t h i s grammar and w i l l be caused t o b e l i e v e t h a t c louds are a l i v e . ( S i m i l a r l y , we should have t o b e l i e v e , i f we t a k e t h i s view o f grammar, t h a t a d i c t a t o r w i t h Hit ler ' s mad des igns could b r i n g about t h e i d e a o f a master r a c e i n a people h e r e t o f o r e free o f r a c e p r e j u d i c e by t h e s imple expedient of r e q u i r i n g them t o adopt c e r t a i n grammati- c a l forms (perhaps d e r i v e d from t h e s u p e r l a t i v e form) f o r speaking o f (and t o ) members o f t h e Aryan race and a d i f f e r e n t form f o r speaking o f ( o r t o ) members of any o t h e r r a c e . Not a word o f propaganda would be r e q u i r e d , f o r a s u i t a b l y designed grammar w i l l , by i t se l f , produce t h e d e s i r e d r e s u l t . ) Now it seems t o me t h a t such an i d e a o f t h e power o f grammar o v e r t h e human mind i s s imply implaus ib le on t h e f a c e o f i t , T h i s may n o t be apparent i f one merely e n t e r - t a i n s t h e i d e a i n a n a b s t r a c t formula t ion , b u t it becomes a p p a r e n t , I t h i n k , I f one t r i e s t o make s e n s e o f t h e i d e a i n terms o f c o n c r e t e i l l u s t r a t i o n s such a s t h o s e I have just given.22

But a s t i l l s t r o n g e r c la im might be made: n o t

There a r e , t h e n , two d i f f e r e n t reasons f o r t h i n k i n g t h a t t h i s example i s not one in which grammar may have shaped thought (or b e l i e f ) , On t h e one hand, t h e very i d e a seems implaus ib le , and on t h e o t h e r hand, t h e p l a u s i b l e explana t ion o f t h e example has t h e i n f l u e n c e going t h e o t h e r d i r e c t i o n .

A t t h i s p o i n t an o b j e c t i o n might be r a i s e d by t h o s e o f Whorf's c r i t i c s who r e e a r d h i s t h e s i s as a c a u s a l hypothes is which needs (but l a c k s ) e x t r a - iinquistkc evidence , The o b j e c t i o n might run as fo l lows: "You have persua- : - l v e l y a ~ g u e d t h a t i t i s not p l a u s i b l e t o t h i n k o f t h e example a t hand as an

19


i l l u s t r a t i o n o f l i n g u i s t i c re la t iv i sm. But such an argument i s not re levant t o the i s sue between us. For we a r e divided over t h e cor rec t i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f Whorf's t h e s i s , and the re fo re the question we must answer i s t h i s : Whorf, however implausibly, th ink of t h i s example as an i l l u s t r a t i o n o f language determining thought? d id not . example occurs i s t h a t thought i s , i n Whorf's phrase, 'inesca.pably bound up with systems of l i n g u i s t i c expression' (84) . metaphysical examples i n order t o i l l u s t r a t e h i s po in t and th.en throws i n the example o f t he Hopi animate c l a s s of nouns without t h e s l i g h t e s t warning t h a t t h i s case i s t o be understood q u i t e d i f f e r e n t l y . And t h a t , su re ly , i s overwhelming t ex tua l evidence t h a t Whorf intended t h i s exa.mple t o i l l u s - t r a t e t he same poin t as t h e o the r s . Accordingly, we s t i c k by our c r i t i c i sm. Whorf cons tan t ly presents examples which a r e meant t o i l l u s t r a t e h i s t h e s i s , but a l l t h a t he ever gives us i s an account of t h e grammar. us any reason t o be l ieve t h a t t he thought a l l eged ly induced by t h e grammar ever r e a l l y occurs. s a y t h a t he has conf ident ly advanced a hypothesis while giving no evidence t o support it."

Did

Now, you have given us no reason t o th ink t h a t he The f a c t remains t h a t t he main poin t of t he essay i n which t h i s

He presents a v a r i e t y o f

H e never gives

So t h e only way t o assess Whorf's performance i s t o

Faced with t h i s objection, I should want t o make two re jo inde r s . F i r s t of a l l , while i t i s t r u e t h a t t h e poin t o f Whorf's essay i s t h a t language shapes thought, and while it is a l s o t r u e t h a t when Whorf p resen t s this one p l a i n l y non-metaphysical example he makes no spec ia l d i sc la imers f o r it, still when he comes t o s t a t e t he lesson t h a t we are t o learn from t h i s example, he does so i n a cur ious ly ambivalent way. Rather than t e l l i n g us t h a t t he discovery of t he animate p l u r a l o f "cloud" answers our question about what t he Hopi th ink of clouds, he says t h a t t he question ' I . ~ i s answered, o r a t l e a s t given a flood o f new meaning." Now what i s t h i s ambivalence? Perhaps w e cannot know f o r c e r t a i n , but my own view i s t h a t Whorf had in t imat ions , which he f a i l e d t o pursue, t h a t t h i s example could not be used i n exac t ly t h e same way as h i s metaphysical examples. f o r tak ing t h i s view i s simple t h a t I do not think t h a t WhorJ:' could have been e n t i r e l y oblivious t o t h e cons idera t ions which I have j u s t adduced aga ins t t ak ing t h i s example as one i n which grammar has shaped thought (or b e l i e f ) , What confused him, no doubt, was the f a c t t h a t i n t h i s example, as i n my example from t h e Melanesian languages, an anthropologist could make a reasonable inference from the grammatical f ea tu re i n question. t h i s inference f o r t he kind of ' reading o f f ' t h a t seems poss ib le i n the metaphysical cases, Whorf was unwitt ingly led t o extend h i s t h e s i s from these examples which i t does seem t o f i t t o an example which i t doesn ' t f i t a t a l l . And it was h i s discomfort over t h i s , I submit, which shows i t s e l f i n t h a t cur ious ly ambivalent phrase with which he concludes h i s d i scuss ion of t h i s example.

My reason

Mistaking

I suggest, then, t h a t we have some reason t o th ink t h a t Whorf himself was l e s s than confident t h a t cases of t h i s s o r t could be presented a s paradigms of l i n g u i s t i c r e l a t iv i sm. should not t r e a t them as paradigms, But even i f I were now t o be persuaded

And i f t h a t is s o , then of course w e too

20

JOHN W . COOK

t h a t I was mistaken i n thus construing Whorf's ambivalence about t h e example, I should still th ink t h a t t h e r e is a dec i s ive reason aga ins t t ak ing an example such as t h i s one as Ourbuchs tones f o r understanding Whorf's r e l a t i - vism. The reason is t h i s : i f t hese c r i t i c s were r i g h t t h a t Whorf's t h e s i s i s a hypothesis f o r which Whorf had no evidence, we would then be faced with a mystery as t o how Whorf had h i t upon t h e idea and become persuaded of i t s t r u t h . Rather than embrace t h i s mystery, I p r e f e r t o r e j e c t t h e idea t h a t h i s t h e s i s i s a hypothesis and t o dismiss t h i s non-metaphysical example a s being nothing more than an unfor tuna te mistake o f Whorf's.

The second r e jo inde r I should want t o make t o t h e objec t ion I en te r t a in - ed above is as follows. Those o f Whorf's c r i t i c s who complain t h a t i n h i s examples he presents only t h e l i n g u i s t i c mater ia l and never any evidence t h a t t h e a l leged ' thought ' occurs have se r ious ly misunderstood how Whorf uses examples. They assume t h a t t h e r o l e o f t h e examples i n Whorf's essays i s t o demonstrate t h a t language shapes th inking . But t h i s i s no t , o r no t t yp i - c a l l y , t h e r o l e o f Whorf's examples.23 r e l a t iv i sm, h i s examples are not meant t o demonstrate t h e claim t h a t grammar shapes th inking , f o r Whorf believed ( f o r reasons I w i l l d i scuss i n Section V) t h a t he had a priori grounds f o r t h a t claim and needed no evidence t o support i t . 2 4 from the grammar o f a language. two languages t o show how differently t h e speakers o f t hese languages think.) Now it i s t r u e t h a t i f Whorf had intended h i s examples t o convince h i s read- e r s t h a t language shapes th inking , h i s procedure would be open t o se r ious objec t ion , f o r by themselves h i s examples prove nothing o f t h e kind, But an objec t ion t o t h a t e f f e c t i s hard ly appropr ia te i f Whorf's aim is t h e q u i t e d i f f e r e n t one t h a t I have suggested.

When used t o i l l u s t r a t e l i n g u i s t i c

Ins tead , h i s examples are meant t o demonstrate w h a t can be ' read o f f ' (Typically he i s comparing t h e grammar of

I be l i eve t h a t I have now s u f f i c i e n t l y answered t h e objec t ion en ter - t a ined above, I conclude, then, t h a t those of Whorf's c r i t i c s who have in t e rp re t ed h i s r e l a t i v i s t i c t h e s i s as a hypothesis a r e embarked on a m i s - understanding. As I have a l ready s a i d , Whorf himself i s i n seve ra l ways p a r t l y t o blame f o r t h i s . Among o the r th ings , he allowed himself t o use severa l examples t h a t a r e h ighly misleading, S t i l l h i s essays abound i n examples o f a s o r t which do not leave him vulnerable t o t h e c r i t i c i s m s we have here been cons ider ing , examples of t h e sopt I have c a l l e d llmetaphysical.' ' And i t is only f a i r t o Whorf t h a t we should give those examples t h e i r due weight i n our i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of h i s l i n g u i s t i c re la t iv i sm.

IV

There a r e severa l o the r c r i t i c i s m s of Whorf which r equ i r e a b r i e f comment before I t u r n t o an examination o f Whorf's own views. The focus of t hese criticisms can bes t be i d e n t i f i e d by r e i t e r a t i n g a po in t t h a t I made i n the preceding sec t ion . I s a id t h e r e t h a t t h e kind o f ' thought ' o r 'world view' t h a t Whorf i s concerned with need no t show up i n t h e a c t i v i t i e s of peo- p le . And I went on t o poin t out t h a t although Whorf says t h a t English and Hopi d i f f e r i n t h e i r metaphysics with regard t o t i m e , he a l s o i n s i s t s t h a t " the Hopi language is capable of accounting f o r and descr ib ing co r rec t ly , in a pragmatic or operational sense, a l l observable phenomena o f t h e universe" (58, my i t a l i c s ) . We can genera l ize t h i s , I t h ink , and say t h a t according

21


to Whorf all languages are "pragmatically equivalent," which comes to the same thing as Sapir's point (mentioned above) that all languages are formally complete. Now the criticisms of Whorf that I am about to consider all result from interpreting Whorf to be denying the pragmatic equivalence of different languages. In each case, then, we should be able to construct a Whorfian reply which distinguishes between the pragmatic and the metaphysical dimensions of language.

The first criticism to be considered has been stated su'ccinctly as follows: "The fact of linguistic communication, the fact of translation, belies the doctrine of relativity."25 The criticism, then, is that Whorf's thesis falsely implies that we cannot translate, for example, from English into Hopi because Hopi does not have a system of tenses parallel to our own. Now what might Whorf reply to this? On the one hand, he would no doubt ssy that we can always give the pragmatic equivalent of an English sentence in Hopi or in any other language (assuming an equivalence of volcabulary, which is not at issue here). This is what interpreters do when assisting a speaker of English to communicate with someone who speaks only Hopi. Thus, despite the matter of tenses, a warning about the weather--about an impending snowstorm, for instance--can be translated from English into Hopi, because the differences between these languages do not lie at this level. On the other hand, Whorf would insist that something is inevita'bly lost in the translation, for the metaphysical implications of English gr,ammar are not carried over into that sentence which is the pragmatic equiwlent in Hopi. But does this mean that we cannot, in the ordinary sense, translate from the English into Hopi? Surely not, for in translations we aim for pragmatic equivalence, not metaphysical equivalence. Therefore, the above criticism of Whorf misses the mark.

The remaining criticisms can all be treated as special (cases of the one we have just considered. The first of these can be stat'ed as follows. tlIsnft Whorf implying that we could not translate the writings of, say, Chinese metaphysicians into English and the writings of English metaphysicians into Chinese? And similarly, isn't he implying that all French speaking philosophers will arrive at the same metaphysics, since French is hospitable to only one sort of metaphysical thinking? And aren't such implications of Whorf's thesis simply false?1t26 criticisms can be fo,md, I think, in his own writings, First of all, his own practice confutes the notion that he would deny that we 'could render Chinese metaphysics into English, for this is the very thing that he is constantly doing in giving English paraphrases (N.B. not traiislations) of sentences from exotic languages, paraphrases which; although they sound strange to our ears, are meant to give us the meaning, the form of thought, of the exotic sentence. (We saw an example of this in Section I1 above, in Sapirss rendering of a Nootka sentence as "It stones down.") Whorf makes this practice explicit when he writes:

Now Whorf's answers to these

In order to describe the structure of the universe acco-rding to Hopi, it is necessary to attempt--insofar as it is possible--to make explicit this metaphysics, properly describable only in the Hopi language, by means o f an approximation expressed in our own

22

JOHN W. COOK

language, somewhat inadequately it is true, yet by availing ourselves of such concepts as we have worked up in relative consonance with the system underlying the Hopi view of the universe. (58)

In other words, the linguist conveys to us the metaphysical significance of an exotic grammar, not by giving translations, which would be the pragmatic equivalents of the exotic sentences, but by giving metaphysical equivalents, andthis can be done by distortions of English grammar. Now if a linguist can thus convey in English the metaphysics implicit in another language, surely the same is possible, Whorf might say, for the metaphysics that a Chinese philosopher, for example, makes explicit in his writings. Perhaps the translator will need to bend and stretch English grammatical categories, but this is not impossible, This, I think, would be Whorf's answer to the first part of the above cri.ticism. As regards the second part, namely, thdt Whorf"s thesis falsely implies that different kinds of metaphysics could not be produced by native speakers of the same language, I will let one of Whorf's defenders speak for him: "People often forget, in criticising Whorf, that he talks about language in relation to HABITUAL thought and behavior, There's a very important difference between that and what people can potentially do, given their capacities as human beings undressed by language and culture, so to ~peak,"~7 In other words, Whorf's relativism is a mitigated relativism; he allows for the possibility of escaping from the metaphysical implications of one's native tongue. that "the person most nearly free in such respects would be a linguist familiar with very many widely different linguistic systems'' (2141, but he would perhaps also allow that philosophers, to the extent that they recognize and repudiate the implications of their native tongue, are free to philosophize in new and different ways. Indeed, he seems to have thought that Bergson's view about time and duration is an example of this (216), So the answer to the second part of the above criticism is that Whorf does not embrace the unmitigated relativism that these critics are here attacking.

In one place he remarks

I come now to two final criticisms of Whorf, both of which are directed at those passages in which he formulates his relativism as a thesis about language and experience (or perception or observation),. For instance, he tells us that "users of markedly different grammars are pointed by their grammar toward differsnt types of observations , and hence are not equivalent as observels but must arrive at somewhat different views of the world" (221) . Ncw the criticisms to be considered here can best be stated in terms of one of Wharf's own examples, Consider, then, Whorf's comparl- son of an English and a Shawnee sentence by which he illustrates hls claim t.hat "different languages differently 'segment' the same situation or experience" (162). He writes: "Where we speak of 'cleaning la gun) with a ramrod,' Shawnee does not isolate any rod or actlon of cleaning, but directs a hollow mo*Jing dry spot by movement of tocl" (1621, In other words, the sentence which a Shawnee would use to describe what we describe in the words "I cleaned the gun wlth a ramrod" does not contain a synonym for either "clean" or "ramrod" but instead contains elements rendered as "hollow moving dry spot" and "motlon of tco?." TCI explain his p2int about these sent,ences, Whosf even provldes us with a pictorial illustration of the difference between

23


them, with a caption which reads: "Languages d i s s e c t na ture d i f f e ren t ly . The d i f f e r e n t isolates o f meaning (thoughts) used by English and Shawnee i n repor t ing t h e same experience, t h a t of cleaning a gun by -running a ramrod through ittt (208).

Now what Whorf says about t h i s and similar examples seeins t o i n v i t e t he following two criticisms. ( i ) Wharf's t h e s i s implies t h a t i f a speaker of English were t o say, "That Shawnee saw t h a t I was cleaning my gun with a ramrod,tt t h i s speaker would have spoken f a l s e l y , and we could properly rep ly t o him, ItNo, he couZdn't have seen t h a t you were doing that because he speaks Shawnee, not English . It But ( the c r i t i c continues) t h i s implication of Whorf's t h e s i s is sure ly false, f o r no one would f ind it <appropriate t o rep ly i n t h a t way t o a man who sa id i n English what a Shawnels had seen. And i f t h a t implication is f a l s e , then t h e t h e s i s which implies it must a l s o be false. More generally, Whorf's t h e s i s has t h e absurd consequence t h a t what speakers of English say they see can only be seen by people who speak e i t h e r English o r some very s imi l a r language. So WhorP is committed t o t h e absurd i ty t h a t a baby cannot s e e i t s r a t t l e u n t i l it learns English and t h a t a dog never w i l l see a bone s ince it w i l l never learn t h e English noun "bone." ( i i ) Whorf's claim has t h e consequence t h a t t h e Shawnee cannot see th ings l i k e ramrods and cannot see t h a t something is being cleaned. But obviously i f t h e Shawnee could not see such th ings , they could not deal with t h e i r environment w e l l enough t o survive. same observations are required of a l l men j u s t i n order t o survive i n t h e i r environment, Whorf's claim t h a t d i f fe rences i n observation r e s u l t from d i f - ferences i n grammar must be false.28

More generally, s ince t h e

I think we can construct Whorf's rep ly t o these c r i t i c i sms from h i s own wr i t ings . H e would treat both c r i t i c i sms a s f a l l ac ious pieces of reasoning which equivocate on severa l meanings of t h e word ttsee,tl "experience," and ttobserve.lt The two relevant meanings can be iden t i f i ed as f o l - lows. F i r s t of a l l , we should no t i ce t h a t Whorf, i n t h e passages quoted above, says t h a t Shawnee and English use d i f f e ren t i s o l a t e s of meaning Itin repor t ing the same experience" (my i t a l i c s ) . i s a sense of ttexperiencett i n which speakers of Shawnee and English have t h e same experience of a gun being cleaned with a ramrod. very essay from which t h i s example i s taken he e x p l i c i t l y allows t h a t "visual perception is bas i ca i ly the same f o r a l l normal persons pas t infancy" (163) and tha t an experience can be described i n a way t h a t " w i l l be t h e same f o r a l l observers" (162). In t h i s sense, then, we are a l l tfequivalent a s observers" unless we a r e color-blind o r something of t h e s o r t , and i n t h i s sense, too, small ch i ldren and dogs can see what w e see. But t h i s is not t he meaning of these words when Whorf uses them i n formulations of h i s l i n g u i s t i c re la t iv i sm. For instance, when he says t h a t because of d i f f e r - ences an grammar a l l men "are not equivalent as observers," he does not mean t h a t some men, because of t h e i r language, a r e color-blind or have sharper eyes than o thers o r a r e l i a b l e t o t r i p over a l l sorts of things i n the ir path In t h i s second o r technica l sense of these words, it i s t r u e t h a t what we see can only be s t a t e d i n our own language, and a dog cannot, i n t h i s sense, see a t a l l , But t h i s does not mean t h a t dogs are b l ind o r t h a t where we see

H e thus allows t h a t t he re

Indeed, i n t h e

24

JOHN W. COOK

h i s bone he sees only empty space. What, then, does Whorf mean when,using "see" i n t h i s sense, he says t h a t "we a l l , unknowingly, p ro j ec t t h e l inguis - t i c r e l a t ionsh ips of a p a r t i c u l a r language upon t h e universe, and SEE them there" (262, c a p i t a l s i n t h e o r i g i n a l ) ? Consider once again S a p i r ' s comparison o f English and Nootka. t en t ion t h a t it seems t o us t h a t what we c a l l "the stone" has i t s charac te r a s a thing ( requi r ing a noun) the re i n na ture , o r i n o the r words, t h a t we see a thing. Someone who speaks only Nootka, on t h e o the r hand, would not see a th ing but would in s t ead see an event ( requi r ing a verb, " to stone"). Here, Whorf would say, is an example of people p ro jec t ing t h e l i n g u i s t i c re - l a t ionsh ips of p a r t i c u l a r languages upon t h e universe and seeing them there . Now t h i s s o r t o f see ing could not be a t t r i b u t e d t o a dog o r t o a ch i ld before he learns language, but t h i s does not mean t h a t ch i ldren o r dogs a r e b l ind .

We say "the s tone f a l l s , " and it is Whorf's con-

Whorf's rep ly , then, t o t h e above p a i r o f c r i t i c i s m s might be as f o l - lows. one cleaning a gun with a ramrod, they do not mean by "see" t h a t t h e dog o r t h e Shawnee p ro jec t s t h e ca tegor ies of English grammar upon t h e universe; r a t h e r , i n saying such th ings they a r e r e f e r r i n g t o a "basal f a c t of perception" (163) which i s t h e same for a l l observers. So, as a r e f u t a t i o n of re la t iv i sm, it is no use c i t i n g t h e fact t h a t we can q u i t e properly say what a dog sees o r c i t i n g t h e fact t h a t we can use English t o say what a Shawnee sees. Relativism does not deny these facts, and it would not seem t o anyone t h a t r e l a t iv i sm denies these facts unless he were g u i l t y of mistaking the technica l use of t l seef t f o r t h e ordinary (pragmatic) use of t h a t word. which takes l i n g u i s t i c r e l a t iv i sm t o be implying t h a t men are not equal i n c e r t a i n (sensory) capac i t i e s required f o r surv iva l . For t h e statement t h a t a l l men f la re not equivalent as observers" does not mean t h a t some men, because o f t h e i r language, cannot see well enough t o avoid t r i pp ing o r t h a t they cannot see what they need t o see i n order t o dea l adequately with t h e i r environment. see a t h ing and t h a t t h e Shawnee do not segment an experience i n t h e same way t h a t we do does not mean t h a t e i t h e r our v i s ion o r t h e i r s i s i n some way impaired. ca t ions regarding men's capac i t i e s f o r surv iva l .

When people say t h a t a dog sees h i s bone o r t h a t a Shawnee sees some-

And t h e same i s t r u e of t h e second of t h e above c r i t i c i sms ,

The fact t h a t na t ive speakers of Nootka see an event where we

In sho r t , l i n g u i s t i c r e l a t iv i sm does not have any such impli-

While t h i s r e jo inde r may not s a t i s f y everyone, it would, I th ink , have s a t i s f i e d Whorf. With t h i s much sa id i n h i s defense, then, we w i l l t u rn next t o an examination of t he source of Whorf's views.

COMPLETED IN THE NEXT ISSUE

25


NOTES

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Language, Thought, and Reality, ed. John B. Carroll (M. I. T. Press, 19641. IJ. 214. All references to Whorf will be to the pages o f thjs - - vol&e ind will be inserted in the text.

Karl Vossler, Volksprachen u. Weltsprachen,"Welt und Wort. (1946), p. 98, as quoted and translated by HaroldBasilius in ttNeo-Humboltian Ethnolinguistics,"= (August, 1952), p. 101.

Bertrand Russell, for instance, maintained that ttsubstance . . . dominates syntax, through which it has dominated philosophy down to our present day. . . . The conception of substantial identity with vary- ing properties is embedded in language, in common sense, and in metaphysics." %Analysis of Matter (Dover, New York: 1954), pp. 151-152. Similarly, proponents of the representative theory of perception, having remarked that we speak a language in which such nouns as t'chairtt and "applett can serve as the direct object of verbs of perception, conclude straightaway that we believe that we directly perceive material objects.

John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address (London, 1867), pp.29-31.

- The Lichtenberg Reader (Boston, 1959), ed. and trans. by Franz H. Mautner and Henry Hatfield, p. 19.

Arthur Cody, "Thinking in LanguageYft Filosofia,XVII (1966), pp.611-612.

George Orwell, 1984, Appendix. It should be noticed that although Orwell calls Newspeak 'a languageYtt it is not in Whorf's sense a language, for Newspeak is identified by its vocabulary, whereas in Whorf's usage (Whorf being a linguist) a language is identified by its grammatical structure and sound patterns, not its vocabulary. Thus, Whorf would have denied that the name 'INewspeak" is the name of a language; the speakers of Newspeak are still speaking English.-- The point is an important one, for a language, as referred to in Whorf's thesis, is in no way restricted as to vocabulary.

Whorf mitigates his relativism by saying that Itthe person most nearly free in such respects would be a linguist familiar with very many widely different linguistic systemstt (214).

10.Selected Writings of Edward Sapir (Berkeley, 1951), pp. 153-154.

ll.Ibid,, pp. 158-159.

12.Introduction to Language, Thought, and Reality, &. C&., p. 23.

- My

italics.

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JOHN W e COOK

13.Eric H. Lenneberg, "Cognition i n Ethnol inguis t ics ," Language, XXIX (1953),.p. 463.

14."I think we are now touching on something which has been mentioned time and time again i n t h e l i t e r a t u r e , namely, t h a t language supposedly in f lu - ences experience. In the case of Whorf and of many other writers, hypotheses have been formulated on the grounds of l i n g u i s t i c data . Now, i f t he hypothesis concerns experience o r cognitive processes, whatever they may be, it seems t o me t h a t verification would require material t h a t i s not l i n g u i s t i c . . . . We have t o get out of t he vicious c i r c l e of r e fe r r ing back t o the language material." Eric Lenneberg i n Language i n Culture, ed. Harry Hoijer (Chicago, 1954), p. 136. Joseph Greenberg s t a t e s t he point succinct ly: "Without such corroborative evidence, t he conceptual equation becomes a mere tautologic restatement of t h e l i n g u i s t i c f ac t . " (Language i n Culture, Ib id , , p. 1 2 . )

15.This i s the work of Joseph Casagrande referred t o by John B. Carrol l i n Language and Thought (Englewood C l i f f s : Prentice-Hall , 1964), pp.108- 109.

16.See, fo r example, t he methodology fo r "ethnol inguis t ic research" pro- posed by Harry Hoijer i n h i s paper "The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis," Language i n Culture, a. G., pp. 98-100 and a l s o the f i n a l example discussed by Charles Hockett i n the same volume, pp. 121-122.

17.See, fo r example, t h e remarks of JosephGreenberg i n Language i n Culture, $o C&., p. 18.

18.As an example of what Whorf claims t o be able t o ftsee 'T i n a language, consider t he following passage, i n which he claims t o see t h a t t he Hopi, unlike us, "has no general notion a of TIME as a smooth flowing continuum i n which everything i n t h e universe proceeds a t an equal r a t e , out of a future , through a present , i n t o a past ." Whorf wri tes : "After long and careful study and analysis , t he Hopi language i s seen t o contain no words, grammatical forms, constructions o r expressions t h a t r e f e r d i r e c t l y t o what w e cal l ' t ime, ' o r t o pas t , present , o r future , o r t o enduring o r l a s t ing , a or t h a t even refer t o space i n such a way as t o exclude t'lat element of extension o r exis tence t h a t we c a l l ' t i m e , ' and so by implication leave a residue t h a t could be referred t o as ' t i m e . ' Hence, t h e Hopi language contains no reference t o ' t ime, ' e i t h e r e x p l i c i t o r implici t" (pp. 57-58). This conclusion would not be regarded by Whorf as an inference but as the summary of what he has "seen" i n the language.--It i s of t h e highest s ignif icance, of course, t h a t Whorf begins h i s account of Hopi by taking f o r granted a ce r t a in metaphysical i n t e rp re t a t ion of our own langauge. This he never argues fo r , yet only by taking t h i s as h i s s t a r t i n g point can he "see" every divergence from English grammar as a difference i n thinking, i n metaphysics.

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1 9 . I t is t r u e t h a t Whorf thought t h a t he could d iscern in s m e cases attconnectiontt between t h e metaphysics b u i l t i n t o a language and t h e cu l tu re of those who spoke t h e language (159) Whorf thought of t h i s as a claim t h a t goes beyond t h e claims of l i n - g u i s t i c re la t iv i sm. This can be seen from t h e following passage, i n which he poses two d i s t i n c t questions: "(1) Are our own concepts of 'time,' 'space,' and 'matter 'given i n subs t an t i a l ly t h e same form by experience t o a l l men, o r a r e they i n p a r t conditioned by t h e s t r u c t u r e of p a r t i c u l a r languages? (2) Are the re t r aceab le a f f in i t f t e s between (a) cu l tu re and behavioral norms and (b) la rge-sca le l i n g u i s t i c patterns?" (138) with t h e f a c t t h a t he goes on t o give an unqual i f ied ly a f f i rmat ive answer t o t h e first question while giving only a highly qua l i f i ed answer t o t h e second, shows t h a t he understood h i s r e l a t i v i s t i c t h e s i s i n such a way t h a t i ts v e r i f i c a t i o n was not t o depend on iany appeal t o ex t r a - l i ngu i s t i c ( cu l tu ra l o r behavioral) phenomena. I t seems c l e a r t o me from Whorf's wr i t ings t h a t he would have conf ident ly advanced h i s r e l a t i v i s t i c t h e s i s even i f t h e second of t h e above quest.ions had never even occurred t o him.

but it seems c l e a r t h a t

The f a c t t h a t Whorf treats these a s separa te questions, toge ther

20 . I t would seem far more sens ib le t o think t h a t t h e people whose care- lessness with smoking materials caused t h e f i r e were simply ignorant i n some way, e i t h e r o f t h e f a c t t h a t gasoline leaves a h ighly inflam- mable vapor o r of t h e f a c t t h a t t h i s vapor can accumulate t o dangerous l e v e l s i n open a i r areas such as t h a t i n which these drums were s tored . I t hardly seems p laus ib l e t o th ink t h a t t h e mere avoidance of t h e word ttemptytl would have a l e r t e d these smokers t o t h e po ten t i a l hazard. (In t h i s case Whorf seems t o have been misled by h i s r a t h e r pecu l i a r idea t h a t t h e word tlemptytt sometimes means Irvoid,lt which, i n tu rn , he construes i n a sense found only i n metaphyscial wr i t ings , such as Descartes'.)--Not a l l of these seven examples a r e equal ly implausible. In one of them he suggests t h a t had a f an which was used €or drying h ides not been ca l l ed blower'! (but perhaps ca l l ed a "sucker, ins tead) it would have been i n s t a l l e d a s an exhaust fan, thereby pre- venting a f i r e i n t h e drying room.--This i s somewhat more p laus ib le , but even so one may w e l l th ink t h a t t h e explanation of t h e f a u l t y i n s t a l - l a t i o n was not, as Whorf claims, because t h e fan was ca1led"a blower," but because it is on t h e blowing s i d e of a fan t h a t one most r ead i ly observes e f f e c t s of t h e spinning blades.

2l.This would seem t o hold t r u e even i n those cases i n which t h e ' thought ' t h a t i s co r re l a t ed (or i s believed t o be poss ib ly co r re l a t ed i n some way) with grammar is , i n some broad o r popular sense, philosophical but not metaphysical. For instance, Charles Hockett, when he c a l l s a t t e n t i o n t o what he th inks may be a 81corre la t ion" between a f ea tu re of Chinese grammar and a "doctrine of t h e mean" found i n t h e Taois t 'philosophy of l i f e , " goes on t o say t h a t " i f t h e r e i s indeed a determinable co r re l a t ion , then it would impress t h e wr i t e r t h a t t h e d i r ec t ion of c a J s a l i t y i n t h e matter i s i n a l l p robab i l i t y from 'philosophy of l i f e ' t o language, r a the r than v ice versa." (Language i n Culture, &. Cite, p.122.) There i s a l so a p o s s i b i l i t y not mentioned by Hockett, namely, t h a t t h e two grew up s i d e by s ide , ne i the r being t h e source of t h e o ther .

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JOHN W. COOK

22.1 am trying to bring out here the great difference between the idea (if anyoneehas the idea) that grammar could cause non-metaphysical thought or belief and the idea (which I take to be Whorf's idea, and an idea which he shares with many philosophers) that the grammar of a language has metaphysical implications, implications which the speakers of the language (unless they be philosophers like Bergson) do not challenge o r repudiate, e.g., the implication that there is a past, a present, and a future and that events come from the future into the present then into the past. The great difference between these ideas is seldom recognized by anthropologists, linguists, and psychologists when the discuss linguistic relativism. Henry Hoeningswald, who once remarked: "It seems to me that some Whorfians speak of world-view in two ways which it might be preferable to keep separate. They sometimes refer to attempts of the speakers of the language or members of the culture to engage in theory, however incipient and rudimentary. . . . And on other occasions they speak of which need the anthropologist's analysis to be brought out into the open. Now it seems to me that in the first case the concept of dependence of La world-view] on language structure is a very real and demonstrable proposition; and it may actually turn out that it is generally true that attempts at philosophizing, that is to say again however simply and crudely, are in effect nothing else a . . but language structure mas- querading as something else. Therefore, dependence has a very good and testable meaning. When it comes to the other thing i.e., features of the culture I don't know what the meaning of the word 'dependence' is." This brief and unamplified comment was made by Professor Hoeningswald at the Proceedings of the UCLA Sociolinguistics Conference in 1964 and is recorded in the publication of those proceedings, Sociolinguistics, ed. William Bright (Paris: Mouton & Coo, 1966), p. 160.

To my knowledge the sole exception is Professor

world-view as being7 features which are present in the culture and

23.h exception to this is that group of seven examples drawn from Whorf's experience as an investigator for a fire insurance company. instance he did apparently mean to use his examples to show that language can influence thought or behavior. (It should be noted, incidentally, that in this case the allegedly influenced behavior was already known to have occurred.) light on the meaning of linguistic relativism.

In this

But as I have argued, these examples can shed no

24.h apparent exception to this is found Whorf's attempt to show that cryptotypes (grammatical classes bearing no regular morphemic tag) function in the (non-conscious) thinking of those who speak the language. One such cryptotype, he tells us, is comprised of "transitive verbs of a covering, enclosing [or] surface-attaching meaning" (71) Formally the class is identified by the fact that these verbs may take "un-I' as a prefix "to denote the opposite.f1 Thus, says Whorf, we have the words "uncover," %ncoil," "undress," and %nfold" but no such words as ttunbreak," "unliftt1 or %nmelt.tf mere accident of our language that "un-" has so far been prefixed only to verbs of a certain (broadly defined) meaning, Whorf asks us to consider the following.

Then as if to show that it is no

Suppose that there were a newly coined verb

29


"flimmick" meaning "to take apart," a verb which does not fall within the cryptotype. Then, says Whorf, "there will be no tendimcy for anyone to make a form unflinrmick meaning 'put together'; e.g., 'he unflim- micked the set of radio parts'" (71). (This of course could be tested by suitably designed experiments.) Now it might be thought that if Whorf's prediction were confirmed by empirical evidence, that would prove that the cryptotype is somehow at work in our thinking. But to reason thus would involve an unspoken assumption, namely, that behind this regularity in our linguistic behavior there must be .intellect (thought, reason) at work. And clearly enough Whorf himself is making this assumption. He is not, of course, so naive as to think that if subjects in an experiment were asked why they decline to € o m the word "unflimmick" they would say: "Because 'flimmick' does not have a covering, closing, or surface-attaching meaning." Whorf Imows full well that no ordinary speaker, without the help of a linyllist, will recognize the (in his phrase) "subtle, intangible meaning" of this cryptotype, which must be "dredged up from its own plane of thought formations" (71). But because he thinks that there must .3e an inner idea guiding this linguistic behavior, he characterizes cryptotypes as "unconscious presuppositions" (83). But this assumption that an inner idea must be guiding our linguistic behavior is a purely a pr ior i assumption. Whorf offers no evidence for it, nor could tnere be any. So where Whorf might have appeared to be making a potentially testable claim about cryptotypes in our thinking, we find that the test itself would presuppose the point at issue.--1 might add here that what Whorf is failing to allow is that there can be cases in which a regularity can be found in human behavior where those who exhibit the behavior are not themselves following a rule. If I regularly drive on the right- hand side of the road, I may be following a rule, but a Texan who drawls is not following some rule about the pronunciation of vowels, and it would prove nothing to the contrary if, when shown in print a newly coined word, he also pronounced it with a drawl. (For a further discussion of this matter see Norman Malcom, "The Myth of Cognitive Processes and Structures," Thought and Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 19771, pp. 159-169.)

25 . Lewis Feuer, "Sociological Aspects of the Relations between Language and Philosophy," Philosophy of Science XX (1953), p. 95. Einar Haugen has stated this criticism more explicitly: "To me the Whorfian hypothesis is questionable . . simply because it denies by implication its own opposite, namely that all languages are translatable into one another. And this I believe also to be a valid statement. All languages are translatable one into the other." Sociolinguistics, ed. William Bright, 9- C&., p. 165.

26. This objection has been stated by several philosophers, for example, Lewis Feuer, &. E., p. 07, and Max Black, "Linguistic Relativity: The Views of Benjamin Lee Whorf," The Philosophical Review LXVIII (1959 p. 236.

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JOHN W. COOK

27. Del Hymes, in Sociolinguistics, ed. William Bright, %. E., p. 165. Capitals in the original.

28. A version of this criticism is found in Lewis Feuer’s essay, 9. *., pp. 95-97.

Documents

Whorf's Linguistic Relativism I -- John W Cook