It emphasizes that language either determines or influences one’s thoughts.įor example, different words mean various things in other languages. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that the grammatical and verbal structure of a person’s language influences how they perceive the world. Their joint theory, known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis or, more commonly, the Theory of Linguistic Relativity, holds great significance in all scopes of communication theories. Twentieth-century linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf are known for this very principle and its popularization. Basically, that thought depends on language, not the other way around. In that, what one perceives is dependent on the spoken word. This idea believes that what one says depends on how the world is encoded and decoded in mind. That is, perception and expression are understood to be synonymous, and it is assumed that speech is based on thoughts. It is widely thought that reality and how one perceives the world is expressed in spoken words and are precisely the same as reality. But one intriguing question is – can it actually affect how we think?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |