Jonathan,
As you probably know, that language is constituative of thought is known as the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It has been thoroughly discredited since the dawn of
generative grammar. A recent book by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson,
_Philosophy in the Flesh_, does argue for a kind of determinism, but this has
to do with semantics and metaphor. Their argument is that metaphor itself
arises directly out of the structure of human thought. We speak of life as a
journey, of problems as solid objects (to be got over, surmounted, etc.), and
so forth--all of which arise out of our sensuous appreciation of the physical
world (called the Regier Model of cognition). Assertions we make about life or
problems or so forth are controlled by the kinds of metaphors we use to speak
about them (specifically, by their semantic fields), rather than by the things
in and of themselves. Thus, according to this argument, language controls what
we can easily say about a topic, process, or thing, but not what we can
possibly think about it.
Hope this is useful,
Stephen
Jonathan Barlow wrote:
> I have noticed,
> for instance, in scholarship that is sensitive to the concerns of
> post-modernism (such as Jordan's _The Invention of Sodomy in Christian
> Theology_) that language, in this case the artificially bounded
> category 'sodomy', is said to be constitutive of thought. My question
> to the list is whether or not the kind of sentiment about language,
> expressed above and in Jordan's book, etc., can be articulated without
> falling prey to the linguistic fallacies exposed by James Barr and
> embodied in every linguist's favorite fallacious example:
> Bo(w?)man's _Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek_.
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