Page 108 - Sociology and You

78 Unit 2 Culture and Social Structures
How to Speak with Your Hands
Figure3.1 SignLanguage.Handmovementsinsignlanguagearesymbols.
hypothesis of linguistic relativity
theory stating that our idea
of reality depends largely upon language
“England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
G. B. Shaw British playwright
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
According to Edward Sapir (1929) and Benjamin Whorf (1956), language is our guide to reality. How we think about a thing relates to the number and complexity of words available to describe that thing. In effect, our per- ceptions of the world depend in part on the particular language we have learned. Since languages differ, perceptions differ as well. This theory is known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, or the hypothesis of linguistic relativity.
What can vocabulary tell you about a culture? When something is important to a society, its language will have many words to describe it. The importance of time in American culture is reflected in the many words that describe time intervals—nanosecond, millisecond, moment, minute, hour, era, interim, recurrent, century, light-year, afternoon, eternal, annual, meanwhile, and regularly, just to name a few. When something is unimpor- tant to people, they may not have even one word for it. When Christian mis- sionaries first went to Asia, they were dismayed because the Chinese lan- guage contained no word for sin. Other missionaries were no less distressed to learn that Africans and Polynesians had no word to express the idea of a single, all-powerful God. While English has only a few words that describe snow, the Inuit (Eskimo) language has over twenty.
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