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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   4102 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 5, 2023

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I just saw this video by Tom Scott on linguistic determinism, or the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.

"Does the language you speak change how you think?" This is the title of the video. And my answer is: Yes! Of course! Obviously! It's a concept I was aware of before, but always took it as a given. I didn't even think that it's a controversial position. But Tom calls it 'not serious' and "easily disprovable."

Usually I will find some snarky blog post or a racist Substack defending a widely rejected theory, but I have not been able to find anything using my usual search terms, eg. "In defense of..." etc.

What are the best essays, papers, and books in defense of linguistic determinism?

I always thought hard S-W has been long recognized as bunk, while soft S-W is kinda wishy-washy area depending on definitions of "influencing" and "changing". Sure, framing is a thing. Pretty big thing actually, even if you discount non-reproducible studies. But it's not an ironclad barrier, it's just a hue in the big palette of things.

A while ago I read this: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18579574-the-language-hoax which is very anti-SW. I liked it. I'm not sure I am qualified to judge whether the arguments expressed there are the scientific truth (actually I am pretty sure I am not) but it's surely was illuminating for me.

What is the working definition of hard vs. soft here? My sense was that the popular rejection of S-W was almost entirely motivated by aesthetics rather than hard data, and "linguists think" is a weak argument because linguists are (based on my impression from taking some graduate courses in their department during grad school) not very good at entangling their reasoning with reality. As a matter of fact, with the right framing adjacent academic communities are still quite open to S-W.

My sense was that the popular rejection of S-W was almost entirely motivated by aesthetics rather than hard data

The popular rejection is based on the strong version being basically voodoo that defies laws of physics, and is at times backed by outright fraud. There are "reputable sources" out there claiming language can cause you to not be able to perceive the color blue (a claim made about ancient Greeks), or that you can pick a shade of green from a lineup, that is off by 2 bits on the RGB scale from the others, if your language has more names for the color green.

I think i buy SW in conceptual spaces. There are lots of abstract topics that are pretty difficult if not impossible to discuss without the proper vocabulary. Could you really explain something complex like artificial intelligence to someone from the year 1500 that doesn’t have the language necessary to understand computers, algorithms, or machine learning?

Most languages lacked the vocabulary for that up until a few decades ago, but they adapted rather quickly. It seems obvious to me that if you'd take people from medieval times and confront them with this knowledge, they'd also struggle for a while, but develop the necessary vocabulary and then not really do worse (all else being equal, so not accounting for developmental stunting due to malnutrition etc.).

At that point it would no longer be a medieval language. This would be the case of material conditions creating a need for abstract language, to which the medivial man would in turn adapt by changing his language.

Is it a question of language, or is it a question of them never seeing any of f those things before? If they had a language with those words, would they have a clue what they mean?

I can buy that language affects how you see things, but not what you see.

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