Language diversity and thought : a reformulation of the linguistic relativity hypothesis / John A. Lucy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lucy, John Arthur, 1949-

Series:

Studies in the social and cultural foundations of language ; no. 12.

Studies in the social and cultural foundations of language ; no. 12

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Language and languages--Variation.

Language and languages.

Thought and thinking.

Physical Description:

xi, 328 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Summary:

Language diversity and thought examines the Sapir-Whorf linguistic relativity hypothesis: the proposal that the grammar of the particular language we speak affects the way we think about reality. Adopting an historical approach, the book reviews the various lines of empirical inquiry which arose in America in response to the ideas of anthropologists Edward Sapir and Benjamin L. Whorf. John Lucy asks why there has been so little fruitful empirical research on this problem and what lessons can be learned from past work. He then proposes a new, more adequate approach to future empirical research. A companion volume, Grammatical categories and cognition, illustrates the proposed approach with an original case study. The study compares the grammar of American English with that of Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language spoken in southeastern Mexico, and then identifies distinctive patterns of thinking related to the differences between the two languages.

Contents:

General orientation 1

Focus of the present research 5

Overview of the research 8

1. Development of the linguistic relativity hypothesis in America: Boas and Sapir 11

Language as the reflection of culture: Boas 11

Language and the relativity of the form of thought: Sapir 17

2. Development of the linguistic relativity hypothesis in America: Whorf 25

The linguistic analysis of experience 26

The relation of languages to thought and culture 38

3. Approaches in anthropological linguistics: typical ethnographic case studies 69

Grammar as a direct reflection of culture: the work of Lee 70

Grammar as language, vocabulary as culture: the work of Mathiot 72

Thematic parallels between language and culture: the work of Hoijer 75

4. Approaches in anthropological linguistics: theoretical and methodological advances 84

Controlled comparison of structural diversity 85

Diversity in the cultural uses of language 102

Susceptibility to awareness of language structure and function 115

5. Approaches in comparative psycholinguistics: experimental studies on the lexical coding of color 127

The psycholinguistic approach to the relativity question 128

Linguistic structure as a determinant of color cognition 157

Color cognition as a determinant of linguistic structure 177

6. Approaches in comparative psycholinguistics: experimental studies on grammatical categories 188

Form classes and habitual classification 188

Logical connectors and formal reasoning 208

Overall conclusions 255

7. Overview and assessment of previous empirical research 257

Overview of past empirical research 257

Towards a new empirical approach 263.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 308-321) and index.

ISBN:

0521384184

0521387973

OCLC:

24174700