Language and Thinking: Principles of Famous Linguists

People have speculated that language arose through emotively expressive cries, by virtue of human rationality, and from our need to interact socially and maintain advantageous social relations with our fellows. But whichever of these speculations is correct, they all required the biological development for the production of language in speech and its management in the brain. Humboldt seems to have conceived the idea that the interdependence of language and thought was affected by the cultural environment of language speakers (itself responsive to the physical environment), such that different languages reflect the different world-views of their language communities. Humboldt is arguably the originator of the so-called “Sapir-Whorf,” “Whorfian,” or “linguistic relativity” hypothesis: “Die Sprache ist das bildende Organ des Gedanken” (Humboldt 1836: LXVI). Humboldt judged that because language and thought are intimately connected, the grammatical differences between languages are manifestations of different ways of thinking and perceiving. The structure of language affects perceptual processes and also the thought processes of speakers. Language mediates world-view such that different world-views correlate with different language structures that no sole individual can change; consequently, languages are stable organic wholes. This view passed via Steinthal to Whitney for whom “the ‘inner form’ of language” causes “the mind which was capable of doing otherwise has been led to view things in this particular way, to group them in a certain manner, to contemplate them consciously in these and those relations” (Whitney 1875: 21f) – and thereafter to Boas (1911), Sapir (1929), and Whorf (1956). Whereas there is evidence that one’s language necessarily influences the way entities in the (physical and metaphysical) world are spoken of, and this must reflect cognitive processes, it would seem that these different ways of thinking in different language communities have little effect except on the language used. In the words of Slobin (1996: 91), it “affects the ways in which we think while we are speaking” but is by no means a mental strait-jacket: the human mind can and does go anywhere.