Ursula,
That's a fascinating article in the Times. Thanks for sharing the link.
I am a strong advocate for systems thinking, and what I see when I consider
the influence of language is an interaction between systems.
When we receive data from our senses, it gets processed into information,
internally, in a fundamentally physical way, which eventually alters the
physical structures that manifest our minds. It won't be anywhere near as
clean-cut and "black & white" as Sapir-Whorf suggests, but it ought to be
there, as one of many "forces" that are constantly tweaking our minds. This
all changes our responses, which become languaging we make to other systems
like us. And that closes the feedback loop.
I'm no linguist, so my knowledge of Sapir-Whorf comes from what other
experts have said, and a bit of SF (Sam Delany published a novel I enjoyed
immensely as a freshman called Babel-17, in which a language was developed
in a future war that drastically altered the way one thought once one
learned it. While it's written as a space opera, it considered a number of
issues about personal identity. He wasn't the only SF author who riffed off
Sapir-Whorf.) It seems to me that Sapir-Whorf was as many other ideas of
that period, mechanistic and oversimplified - because that was still a
common worldview. I'm also not surprised that - assuming the science
content of the NYT piece is robust - there's a germ of truth to it.
The example in the NYT piece - regarding schadenfreude - connected with me
strongly because I still remember the time before I'd learned the word. I
can say that once I'd learned the term, it solidified a concept I was only
vaguely aware of before; I became more sensitive to recognizing instances
of schadenfreude, which I'm sure affected my subsequent thinking and
behaviour. Anecdotal, I know, but still supportive of the ideas Deutscher
wrote about in the NYT, I think.
\V/_ /fas
*Prof. Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.*
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/
ORCID: 0000-0002-3689-5112 <http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3689-5112>
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."
On 7 July 2016 at 05:12, Ursula Tischner <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> hello all,
> >
> > Sapir-Whorf.... really?
> > this hypothesis has been proved wrong already long time ago ....
> > however, there is a connection between language and our ways of thinking
> that has been explored empirically
> > but it is not in the way Whorf has described it.
> >
> > this NYT article by 'Guy Deutscher' :-)
> > summarizes it well.
> >
> > From The New York Times:
> >
> > Does Your Language Shape How You Think?
> >
> > The idea that your mother tongue shapes your experience of the world may
> be true after all.
> >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?mwrsm=Email
> >
> > best ....
> >
> > Ursula Tischner
> > Econcept
> > Cologne
> >
> > Von meinem iPhone gesendet
> >
> >
> > Von meinem iPhone gesendet
>
>
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