Language and the Sapir-Whorf Thesis
symbols strung together to communicate thought. Equipped with language, we can share
understandings, pass experience and knowledge from one generation to the next, and
make plans for the future. In short, language allows culture to develop. Consequently,
sociologists commonly think of language as a cultural invention that distinguishes humans
from other animals.
In the 1930s, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Wharf proposed an influential argument
about the connection between experience, thought, and language. It is now known
as the Sapir-Whorf thesis (Whorf, 1956). It holds that we experience important things
in our environment and form concepts about those things (path 1 to 2 in Figure 2.1).
Then, we develop language to express our concepts (path 2 to 3). Finally, language itself
influences how we see the world (path 3 to 1).
For example, different types of camel are important in the environment of nomadic
Arabs, and different types of snow are important in the lives of the Inuit in Canada’s
far north (path 1 to 2). Consequently, nomadic Arabs have developed many words for
different types of camel and the Inuit have developed many words for different types of
snow (path 2 to 3). Distinctions that these people see elude us because types of camel and
snow are less important in our environment.
In turn, language obliges people to think in certain ways (path 3 to 1). If you’re
walking in a park, you will know whether a certain tree is in front of you, behind you,
to the left or to the right. When asked where the tree is, you will use such directions to
describe its position. We think “egocentrically,” locating objects relative to ourselves.
However, egocentric directions have no meaning for speakers of Tzeltal in southern
Mexico or of Guugu Yimithirr in Queensland, Australia. They
lack concepts and words for left, right, and so on. They think
geographically, and will say that the tree is to the “north,” “south,
“east,” or “west.” Trained from infancy to attend to geographic
direction, Tzeltal speakers are obliged to think in those terms.
If a tree to the north is located behind them and they are asked
where the tree is, they will point to themselves, as if they don’t
exist. Reportedly, a Tzeltal speaker can be blindfolded, put in a
dark room, and spun around 20 times until he’s dizzy yet still
point without hesitation to the north, south, east, and west
(Boroditsky, 2010; Deutscher, 2010). To take an example closer
to home, income and power inequality between women and
men encourages some men to use terms like fox, babe, bitch, ho,
and doll to refer to women. However, the use of such words in
itself influences men to think of women simply as sexual objects.
If they are ever going to think of women as equals, gender inequality
will have to be reduced, but the language such men use
to refer to women will also have to change.
Culture as Freedom and Constraint
A Functionalist Analysis of Culture:
Culture and Ethnocentrism
Despite its central importance in human life, culture is often invisible. That is, people
tend to take their own culture for granted. It usually seems so sensible and natural that
they rarely think about it. In contrast, people are often startled when confronted by cultures
other than their own. The ideas, norms, values, and techniques of other cultures
frequently seem odd, irrational, and even inferior.
Judging another culture exclusively by the standards of one’s own is called ethnocentrism
(Box 2.1). Ethnocentrism impairs sociological analysis. This fact can be illustrated
by Marvin Harris’s
(1974) functionalist analysis of a practice that seems bizarre
to many
Westerners: cow worship among Hindu peasants in India.
Hindu peasants refuse to slaughter cattle and eat beef because, for them, the cow is a religious
symbol of life. Pinup calendars throughout rural India portray beautiful women with
the bodies of fat, white cows, milk jetting out of each teat. Cows are permitted to wander the
streets, relieve themselves on the sidewalks, and stop to chew their cud in busy intersections
or on railroad tracks, forcing traffic to a halt. In Madras, police stations maintain fields where
stray cows that have fallen ill can graze and be nursed back to health. The government even
runs old-age homes for cows, where dry and decrepit cattle are kept free of charge. All this
care seems mysterious to most Westerners, for it takes place amid poverty and hunger that
could presumably be alleviated if only the peasants would slaughter their “useless” cattle for
food instead of squandering scarce resources to feed and protect these animals.
However, according to Harris, ethnocentrism misleads many Western observers
(Harris, 1974: 3–32). Cow worship, it turns out, is an economically rational practice in
rural India. For one thing, Indian peasants can’t afford tractors, so cows are needed to
give birth to oxen, which are in high demand for plowing. For another, the cows produce
hundreds of millions of pounds of recoverable manure, half of which is used as fertilizer
and half as cooking fuel. With oil, coal, and wood in short supply, and with the peasants
unable to afford chemical fertilizers, cow dung is, well, a godsend. What is more, cows in
India don’t cost much to maintain because they eat mostly food that is not fit for human
Post a Comment