Talk:Benjamin Whorf

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[edit] comments

Recently the following sentences were removed from the article:

Of him, George Lakoff, a well known American linguist, has said:

Whorf was not only an outstanding linguist... he was an outstanding human being

Motivation for the deletion was that 'opinions on outstanding human beings are a dime a dozen'. I don't agree. But let me first quote Lakoff correctly. The quote comes from Lakoff's (1987) influential book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. It is the concluding remark of a section on Whorf's views in Chapter 18 (titled 'Whorf and Relativism') of the book. I quote:

Whorf was not only a pioneer in linguistics. He was a pioneer as a human being. That should not be forgotten.

In my opinion, a quote like this from a linguist like this is highly relevant to the article. Whorf was (and still is) controversial in linguistics; Lakoff admits so, but at the same time highly appreciates some of his thoughts, and furthermore adds that Whorf was a pioneer as a human being. I've re-added it, corrected it, and added the reference. — mark ✎ 00:48, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• So lemme see: Linguists like Lakoff (prominent, i guess?) are experts on being a "pioneer as a human being", which i can't deny, knowing little about linguistics and nothing about lingists like Lakoff. But still, how is this relevant ... hmmm, i can't very well make an argument against that, since i have not the slightest idea what it means to be "a pioneer as a human being".

I'll tell you what, i'll start over: What value could this conceivably add to the article?

--Jerzy(t) 05:00, 2005 Jan 22 (UTC)

Please don't feel too annoyed, I'll try to clarify myself. Granted, Lakoff is no expert on being a pioneer as a human being. What makes the quote relevant is that it is the opinion of a prominent linguist about someone that is still controversial in linguistics. In that light, the first part of the quote ('pioneer in linguistics') is no doubt more important and more substantial than the second part; but I think it makes sense to include the full quote (the "that should not be forgotten" part is of minor importance though). Furthermore, I think the change to 'pioneer' makes the quote more acceptable and more relevant than the previous ill-cited version. It is more easy to see why someone could be a pioneer as a human being than why someone would be just 'an outstanding human being'. In fact, Lakoff argues why Whorf was a pioneer as to his weltanschauung. I'll quote the context of his statement (Lakoff 1987:330):

One all-important thing should be remembered about Whorf. He did most of his work at a time when Nazism was on the rise in Europe and jingoism was prevalent in America. At that time, white people were assumed, even in much of the U.S., to be more intelligent than people with skins of other colors. Western civilaztion was assumed to be the pinnacle of intellectual achievement; other civilizations were considered inferior. 'Culture' meant European and American culture, not Hopi culture or Balinese culture. 'Literature' meant European and American literature. 'Logic' meant Western logic, not logic as it developed in China and India. 'Scientific thought' was the last word in rationality, and it of course belonged to us. It was even thought that Western languages were 'advanced' and that nowestern languages were 'primitive'. The very idea that 'uneducated' Indians, who were still considered savages by many, could reason as well as educated Americans and Europeans was extraordinary and radical. The notion that their conceptual system better fit scientific reality—that we could learn from them—bordered on the unthinkable

Whorf was not only a pioneer in linguistics. He was a pioneer as a human being. That should not be forgotten.

On reading the article again, I would say that the article could be more outspoken on Whorf's pioneering position in his time and background. The quote of course is a good start. Let me know what you think! — mark ✎ 10:22 & 11:09, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC) [Timestamp corrected by Jerzy(t) 18:37, 2005 Jan 22 (UTC)]

• I think the above explanation is a great help toward a worthwhile replacement for either of the things i removed. (But i still find it hard to see a role for the quote itself, even as an intro to this more relevant material. The quote is too cryptic, and too saturated with the pretentious overstatement of funeral eulogies, to convey this role -- a role that may actually deserve such praise.) Perhaps this history-of-ideas material duplicates, or should be the start of, a separate article about how racism stopped being a self-evidently virtue in white America, or in the West. (Any average liberal (in my esitmation of that category) who saw "Unforgivable Blackness", the new Ken Burns/Geoffrey Ward documentary on Jack Johnson and the great white hopes (see also The Great White Hope) in the past week is likely to share my awe at how hidden that transition has been. I don't know if WP covers it at all well.)

We certainly should have a link from Benjamin Whorf to such an article, next to something about "important figure in [whatever, or "the development of" whatever]". We're not talking about cultural relativism, i think (tho certainly there is a relationship): IMO CR is much more theoretical and intellectual, while this involves a lot of gut-level assumptions. Nor is this a matter of anti-racism, which is also much more self-conscious.

BTW, IMO, this makes it mandatory for the article to have two major sections, one on his linguistics work and one on the attitude shift, and i suggest that that, rather than a quote at the tail of a single section, is the useful starting point we need.

--Jerzy(t) 21:00, 2005 Jan 22 (UTC)

 :) I guess we won't come to an agreement about the quote (but I am glad that it's not 'utter bosh' to you anymore). Regarding the other points, I fully agree with you. Whorf isn't high on my to do list at present, but your sketch would be a good start. — mark ✎ 22:31, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

---

I examined the page history, hoping that the bibliography grew from some reasonable length to its present exhaustive size (unusable for encyclopedic purposes), and that i could keep the current versions of the original entries while moving the new ones here. But it sprang forth full-grown like Venus. If no one is prepared to move the excess to here in the next week, it should be moved here en masse, to serve as source material, while we wait as long as it takes for someone to come up with something like a half-dozen crucial items.
--Jerzy(t) 21:44, 2005 Jan 22 (UTC)

Wholeheartedly agree. An annotated bibliography would be great; at the very least, his most important works should be singled out. — mark ✎ 22:31, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

---

I feel that the page should include some criticism of Whorf's work, which is plentiful. At the very least, Whorf's explanation for the "empty" gasoline drum incident is laughable, it's far more likely the worker was fooled by his eyes than by any semantics of the word "empty." Whorf's claims about the Apache mind are even my ludicrous, as Steven Pinker points out in his book The Language Instinct (pg. 50), "First, Whorf did not actually study any Apaches; it is not clear that he ever met one. His assertions about Apache psychology are based entirely on Apache grammar-making his argument circular. Apaches speak differently, so they must think differently. How do we know that they think differently? Just listen to the way they speak!" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.65.63.52 (talk) 03:23, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bibliography

Despite the discussion above, it seems like the bibliography was never actually moved here. So here it is then, after all. Junes 12:47, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Brazeau, Peter. Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered, An Oral Biography. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1985.

Carroll, John B. "Benjamin Lee Whorf." Dictionary of American Biography: 819-20.

___. "Introduction." Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Ed. John B. Carroll. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1956.

Devitt, Michael and Kim Sterelny. Language and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987.

Fishman, Joshua A. "A Systematization of the Whorfian Hypothesis." Behavioral Sciences 5 (1960): 323-379.

___. "Whorfianism of the Third Kind: Ethnolinguistic Diversity as a Worldwide Social Asset." Language in Society 11 (1982): 1-14.

Gardner, Howard. Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi. New York: Basic Books, 1993.

Gruber, Howard E. "Aspects of Scientific Discovery: Aesthetics and Cognition." Vision of Aesthetics, the Environment, and Development: The Legacy of Joachim F. Wohlwill. Ed. Roger M. Downs, Lynn S. Liben, and David S. Palermo. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 19xx.

___. "Breakaway Minds" (interview with Howard Gardner). Psychology Today, July 1981: 68-73.

___. "Cognitive Psychology, Scientific Creativity, and the Case Study Method." In On Scientific Creativity. Ed. M.D. Graek, R.S. Cohen, and G. Cimino. Amsterdam: D. Reidel, 1980: 295-322.

___. "The Cooperative Synthesis of Disparate Points of View." The Legacy of Solomon Asch: Essays in Cognition and Social Psychology. Ed. Irvin Rock. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1990: 143-58.

___. "Coping With Multiplicity and Ambiguity of Meaning in Works of Art." Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 3(1988): 183-89.

___. "Creativite et fonction constructive de la repetition." Bulletin de psychologie de la Sorbonne: Numero special pour le 80e anniversaire de Jean Piaget. 1976.

___, with P.H. Barrett. Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

___. "Darwin's 'Tree of Nature' and Other Images of Wide Scope." In On Aesthetics in Nature. Ed. Judith Wechsler. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978: 121-40.

___. "The Emergence of a Sense of Purpose." In Beyond Formal Operations. Ed. M. Commons. New York: Praeger, 19xx.

___. "Ensembles of Metaphor in Creative Scientific Thinking." Cahiers de la Fondation Archives Jean Piaget (1987): 235-54.

___, and J. J. Voneche, eds. The Essential Piaget. New York: Basic Books, 1977.

___. "The Evolving Systems Approach to Creative Work." In Wallace and Gruber, Creative People at Work: Twelve Case Studies: 3-24.

___. "The Evolving Systems Approach to Creativity." In Towards a Theory of Psychological Development. Ed. Sohan and Celia Modgil. Windsor, England: NFER, 1980: 269-3xx.

___ and V. Gruber. "The Eye of Reason: Darwin's Development During the Beagle Voyage." Isis 53(1962): 186-200.

___. "Foreward." Notebooks of the Mind: Explorations of Thinking by Nora John-Steiner. New York: Harper and Row, 1985: ix-xii.

___. "The Fortunes of a Basic Darwinian Idea: Chance." In The Roots of American Psychology: Historical Influences and Implications for the Future. Ed. R.W. Rieber and K. Salzinger. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 291(1977).

___. "From Epistemic Subject to Unique Creative Person at Work." Archives de Psychologie 54(1985): 167-85.

___. "Giftedness and Moral Responsibility: Creative Thinking and Human Survival." In F.D. Horowitz and M. O'Brien, eds. The Gifted and the Talented: Developmental Perspectives. Washington: American Psychological Association, 1985.

___. "History and Creative Work: From the Most Ordinary to the Most Exalted." Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 19(1983): 4-15.

___ and S.N. Davis. "Inching Our Way Up Mount Olympus: The Evolving Systems Approach to Creative Thinking." In The Nature of Creativity. Ed. R.J. Sternberg. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988: 243-69.

___. "On the Hypothesized Relation Between Giftedness and Creativity." New Directions for Child Development 17(1982): 7-30.

___. "On the Relation Between 'Aha' Experiences' and the Con-struction of Ideas." History of Science 19(1981): 41-59.

___. "Piaget's Mission." Social Research 49(1982): 239-64. (PM)

___ and J.J. Voneche. "Reflexions sur les operations formelles de la pensee." Archieves de Psychologie 44(1976): 45-55.

___ and I.A. Sehl. "Transcending Relativism: Going Beyond the Information I am Given." In W. Callebaut, S.E. Cozzens, B.P. Lecuyer, A. Rip, and J.P. Van Bendegem, eds. George Sarton Centennial. Ghent, Belgium: Communication and Cognition, 1984.

___. "Which Way is Up? A Developmental Question." In Adult Cognitive Development. Ed. R.A. Mines and K.S. Kitchener. New York: Praeger: 112-33.

Gumperz, John J. and Stephen C. Levinson. "Rethinking Linguistic Relativity." Current Anthropology 32(1991): 613-24.

Harris, Randy Allen. The Linguistics Wars. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Hollander, John. "Asylum Avenue." The Wallace Stevens Journal 1.2 (1977): 68.

John-Steiner, Nora. Notebooks of the Mind: Explorations of Thinking. New York: Harper and Row, 1985.

Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Lavery, David. "Creative Work: On the Method of Howard Gruber." Journal of Humanistic Psychology 33.2 (1993): 101-21.

Lee,-Benjamin. "Peirce, Frege, Saussure, and Whorf: The Semiotic Mediation of Ontology." Semiotic Mediation: Sociocultural and Psychological Perspectives. ." Ed. Elizabeth Mertz and Richard J. Parmentier. Orlando, FL: Academic, 1985. 99-128.

___. "Semiotic Origins of Mind-Body Dualism." Semiotics, Self, and Society. Ed. Benjamin Lee and Greg Urban. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1989. 193-228.

Levinson, S. Language and mind: Let’s get the issues straight! In D. Gentner & S. Goldin-Meadow (eds.), Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and cognition (2003, pp. 25-46). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Levinson, S. Space in language and cognition: Explorations in cognitive diversity. Cambridge: CUP, 2003.

Lucy,-John-A. "Whorf's View of the Linguistic Mediation of Thought." Semiotic Mediation: Sociocultural and Psychological Perspectives. ." Ed. Elizabeth Mertz and Richard J. Parmentier. Orlando, FL: Academic, 1985. 73-97

Lucy,-John-A.; Wertsch,-James-V. "Vygotsky and Whorf: A Comparative Analysis." Social and Functional Approaches to Language and Thought. Ed. Maya Hickmann. New York: Academic, 1987. 67-86

Martin, Laura. "'Eskimo Words for Snow.' A Case Study in the Genesis and Decay of an Anthropological Example." American Anthropologist 88 (1986): 418-23.

d'Olivet. Fabre. The Hebrew Language Restored. Trans. Nayan Louise Redfield. 1921.

Pickering, George. Creative Malady. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.

Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

Pullum, Geoffrey. The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Ross, Philip E. Ross. "New Whoof in Whorf: An Old Language Theory Regains Its Authority." Scientific American, February 1992: 24-25.

Sampson, Geoffrey. Schools of Linguistics. Stanford, CA: Stanford U P, 1980.

Sapir. Edward. Selected Writings of Edward Sapir. Ed. David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley; University of California Press, 1951.

Schaff, Adam. Language and Cognition. Ed. Robert S. Cohen. Trans. Olgierd Wojtasiewicz. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973.

Steiner, George. "Whorf, Chomsky, and the Student of Literature." On Difficulty and Other Essays. New York: Oxford, 1978: 136-63.

Trager, George L. "Benjamin L. Whorf." International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, XVI: 536-38.

___. "The Systematization of the Whorf Hypothesis." Anthropological Linguistics 1(1959): 31-35.

Wallace, Doris B. "Studying the Individual: The Case Study Method and Other Genres." In Wallace and Gruber, eds. Creative People at Work: 25-43.

___. and Howard E. Gruber, ed. Creative People at Work: Twelve Cognitive Case Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Watkins, Mary. Waking Dreams. New York: Harper and Row, 1976.

Whorf, Benjamin. "An American Indian Model of the Universe." International Journal of American Linguistics 16(1950): 67-72; rpt. ETC, A Review of General Semantics 8 (1950): 27-33.(1936). In Language, Thought, and Reality: 57-64.

___. "Blazing Icicles." Hartford Agent, 1940.

___. "A Brotherhood of Thought." Main Currents in Modern Thought 1.4 (1941): 13-14.

___. "A Central Mexican Inscription Combining Mexican and Maya Day Signs." American Anthropologist 34(1932): 296-302; in Language, Thought, and Reality: 43-50.

___. Collected Papers on Metalinguistics. Washington, DC: Department of State, Foreign Service Institute, 1952.

___. "The Comparative Linguistics of Uto-Aztecan." American Anthropologist 37(1935): 600-608.

___. "Concerning Science and Religion." Benjamin Lee Whorf Papers. Yale University, Sterling Memorial Library.

___. "Decipherment of the Linguistic Portion of the Maya Hiero glyphs" (1940). In Language, Thought, and Reality: 173-198.

___. "Discussion of Hopi Linguistics" (1937). In Language, Thought, and Reality: 102-111.

___. "Dr. Reiser's Humanism." Main Currents in Modern Thought 1.5 (1941): 12- 14.

___. "The Expansion Theory." Benjamin Lee Whorf Papers. Yale University, Sterling Memorial Library.

___. "The Flux-Outlet Theory." Benjamin Lee Whorf Papers. Yale University, Sterling Memorial Library.

___. "Gestalt Technique of Stem Composition in Shawnee" (1939). In Language, Thought, and Reality: 160-72.

___. "Grammatical Categories." Language 21(1945): 1-11; In Language, Thought, and Reality: 87-101.

___. "H.G. Wells." Main Currents in Modern Thought 1.3 (1941): 6.

___. "The Hopi Language, Toreva Dialect." Linguistic Structures of Native America. Ed. Harry Hoijer. New York: Viking Fund, 1946: 159-83.

___. "The Hurrians of Old Chaldea." Main Currents in Modern Thought 1.3 (1941): 15.

___. "In Defense of Puritanism." Benjamin Lee Whorf Papers. Yale University, Sterling Memorial Library.

___. "Interpretation of Isotopes." Main Currents in Modern Thought 1.3 (1941): 12-13.

___. "Language, Mind, and Reality." The Theosophist 63(1942): 281-91; rpt. ETC, A Review of General Semantics 9(1952): 167-88; In Language, Thought, and Reality: 246-270.

___. "Language: Plan and Conception of an Arrangement" (1938). In Language, Thought, and Reality: 125-134.

___. Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Edited by John B. Carroll. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1956.

___. "Languages and Logic." Technology Review 43(1941): 250-52, 266, 268, 272; In Language, Thought, and Reality: 233-45.

___. "Light-Velocity and Expansion." Benjamin Lee Whorf Papers. Yale University, Sterling Memorial Library.

___. "A Linguistic Consideration of Thinking in Primitive Communities" (1936). In Language, Thought, and Reality: 65-86.

___. "Linguistic Factors in the Terminology of Hopi Architecture." International Journal of American Linguistics 19(1953): 141-45; In Language, Thought, and Reality: 199-206.

___. "Linguistics as an Exact Science." Technology Review 43(1940): 61-63, 80-83; In Language, Thought, and Reality: 220-232.

___. "Loan Words in Ancient Mexico." Philological and Documentary Studies 1(1943): 1-17; rpt. Studies in Linguistics 5(1947): 49-64.

___. "The Maya Manuscript in Dresden." Art and Archaeology 34(1933): 270.

___. "Maya Writing and Its Decipherment." Maya Research 2(1935): 367-82.

___. "Notes on the Tubatulabal Language." American Anthropologist 38(1936): 341-44.

___. "On Being." Benjamin Lee Whorf Papers. Yale University, Sterling Memorial Library.

___. "On the Connection of Ideas" (1927). In Language, Thought, and Reality: 35-39.

___. "On Psychology" (n.d.). In Language, Thought, and Reality: 40-42.

___. "The Origin of Aztec TL." American Anthropologist 39(1937): 265-74.

___. "Phonemic Analysis of the English of Eastern Massachusetts." Studies in Linguistics 2(1943): 21-40.

___. The Phonetic Value of Certain Characters in Maya Writing. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Vo. XIII, No. 8 Cambridge: Peabody Museum and Harvard University, 1933.

___. "Pines." Benjamin Lee Whorf Papers. Yale University, Sterling Memorial Library.

___. "The Punctual and Segmentative Aspects of Verbs in Hopi." Langugage 12(1936): 127-31; In Language, Thought, and Reality: 51-56.

___. "Purpose vs. Evolution." New Republic, 19 Dec. 1925.

___. "The Reign of Huemac." American Anthropologist 31(1929): 667-84.

___. "The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language." Language, Culture, and Personality. Ed. Leslie Spier. Menasha, WI: Sapir Memorial Publication Fund, 1941: 75-93; In Language, Thought, and Reality: 134-159.

___, with George L. Trager. "The Relationship of Uto-Aztecan and Tanoan." American Anthropologist 39(1937): 609-24.

___. Review of Living Light by E.N. Harvey. Main Currents in Modern Thought 1.1 (1940): 3-5.

___. Review of The Way of Things by W.P. Montague." Main Currents in Modern Thought 1.4 (1941): 10-11.

___. "Science and Linguistics." Technology Review 42(1940): 229-31, 247-48; In Language, Thought, and Reality: 207-219.

___. "Some Verbal Categories of Hopi." Language 14(1938): 275-86; In Language, Thought, and Reality: 112-24.

___. "Toward a Higher Mental World." Main Currents in Modern Thought 1.7 (1941): 14-15.

___. "Unanswered Questions from Ancient Times." Benjamin Lee Whorf Papers. Yale University, Sterling Memorial `Library.

___. "Universal Trinity in Unity." Benjamin Lee Whorf Papers. Yale University, Sterling Memorial Library.

___. "We May End the War That is Within All Wars That are Waged to End All Wars." Main Currents in Modern Thought 1.1 (1940): 9-10.

___. "Why I Have Discarded Evolution." Benjamin Lee Whorf Papers. Yale University, Sterling Memorial Library.

[edit] Whorf and his exposure to the Hopi

Did Whorf live among the Hopi people, and if so, for how long?

As far as I remember, he spent a few weeks among the Hopi - no more than that. Most of his informants were Hopi he knew in New York. My very personal opinion is that this fact invalidates a lot of his work on the Hopi language. His idea that language restricts what we can think could never apply to his informants, as they all spoke English as well as Hopi, and therefore were free of the restrictions.

There is a fairly convincing rebuttal of Whorf in Donald E. Brown's Human Universals, ISBN 007008209X for anyone who happens to have it and wants to dig up material to add to the article. Mlewan 21:56, 1 December 2006 (UTC)