Article: 5400 of fa.future-culture Path: ifi.uio.no!internet-mailinglist From: "free agent .rez" Newsgroups: fa.future-culture Subject: SAPIR-WHORF [relatively short] Date: 21 Nov 1993 03:57:48 +0100 Organization: Internet mailing list Lines: 152 Sender: news@ifi.uio.no Message-ID: <2cmlfc$hej@ifi.uio.no> Reply-To: Future Culture Return-Path: <<@UAFSYSB.UARK.EDU:owner-futurec@UAFSYSB.UARK.EDU>> Original-Message-Id: <19931121025741.17869.ifi@ifi.uio.no> Original-Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1993 20:58:48 -0500 Comments: To: FUTUREC@UAFSYSB.UARK.EDU Comments: cc: adamfast@u.washington.EDU To: Multiple recipients of list FUTUREC thought i'd kill all potential birds with one stone. hey, you all know how to use the delete key... .rez -- THE SAPIR-WHORF IN LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY There are two interpretations of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the Strong and the Weak. The Strong version hypothesizes that the components of a native speaker's language determine their fundamental worldview; that humans who speak significantly different languages perceive the world in fundamentally different ways according to the tools granted by that language. This interpretation of the S.W. hypothesis has been largely rejected on several grounds. Firstly, the humans in question still have the same perceptual apparatus, and thus the way they perceive the world cannot be entirely different; any difference must lie in the way they choose to MODEL that world. Secondly, there are too many similarities between languages and cultures to sustain this Strong interpretation. Indeed, in our Clark text, Noam Chomsky represents well the notion that there may be underlying and fundamental /similarities/ between cultures and their languages. He chooses to model this as a genetically inherent capacity. The interesting ideas for us can be found in the Weak interpretation of the S.W. hypothesis, which theorizes that native language influences and helps shape cultural thought and behavior. This was demonstrated by Whorf in his initial studies where he examined the ways in which workers at a factory behaved around differently labeled canisters: one type was labeled "Fuel " and the other was labeled "Empty." Although the fumes of gasoline in the so-called "empty" canisters were obviously still flammable, the workers would act with much less caution when in those areas. The interesting thing about the Weak interpretation of S.W. is the notion that, although there are universals of syntax and thus language formation, the culture's "vernacular" and specialized local language is an over-lay upon the surface of that underlying structure. One metaphorical way to interpret the differences in cultural behavior as linked to languages would be to model universal grammar as the "valleys and gullies" of culture, where-as the linguistic overlay is seen as the native "flora and fauna." Just as different geographical regions will have completely different terrain overlaying that fundamental structure, so languages will be very different locally but similar when structurally compared. Yet another metaphor is a comparison to the structure of modern day computers. Computers have a built-in system of circuitry, called hardware, which determines in a very fundamental way what can and cannot be done with that computer. This is analogous to the universal grammar within the structure of the human mind. But computers would do nothing of use without their software -- sets of instructions which are overlaid upon that hardware and which determine specific tasks for the computer to work out. Just as one language is different from another, so is word-processing software different from computer drawing software. The Weak interpretation of the S.W. hypothesis can help us to understand the relations between thought, language, culture, and our natural world. If we begin with the universal grammar which may well underlie all thought, we can look at the language used by a local culture as an overlay predicted by the Weak interpretation of the S.W. hypothesis. This overlay then effects, through such traits as caste behavior and sociosexual identities, the way that local culture develops and behaves over time. This, in turn, helps us to understand how different cultures behave in very different ways towards their environment. Industrial nations with the power to agree to a conspicuously sociolinguistic creation as money can buy and sell land which they treat much differently than would an indigenous people living upon that land. Conversely, if we begin with the natural surroundings of the people, we can see the progression backwards to the level of human thought. A favorite example would the native Eskimo cultures. because of the prevalence of snow in their native terrain, their very culture is shaped and organized differently that would be that of the desert nomad. Their language, in a very Whorfian sense, reflects this: Eskimos have a suitably large number of words for snow one wonders, in fact, if native cultures have ANY words for sand...]. However, the Strong interpretation would go on to suggest that this indicates a fundamental difference in the way the nomads and the Eskimos think. There are reasons why this interpretation is inadequate. The largest is that the very apparatus which each human has for interacting with their environment is very very similar. A human being without food or shelter would not survive long in the environment of the Eskimos, regardless of the number of words they retained for the surrounding snow. However: the linguistic overlay of culture upon the bedrock of universal grammar and thought tells us that the native Eskimo would be more likely to retain cultural information towards how to build a makeshift shelter within that natural environment than would our displaced nomad. This idea seems to be a very important one if we are to understand cultural behavior [which many say we must do in order to survive as a planet]. There are various theories on how this works. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is one which deals with the possible morphology [overall structures] of a shifting cultural overlay upon universal grammar. Studies of vernacular speech also deal directly with these interesting but difficult issues, examining the ways in which cultural behavior [of which human expression is one] changes in accordance with the local culture's position in relation to each other. Studies of the vernacular demonstrate that cultural shift over large geographical distances [or small ones] does not vary in leaps so much as in subtle -- almost uncountable -- gradients of vernacular and local behavior. Thus it seems that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis would deal, in its Weak interpretation, with what Saussure called "parole," [language-as-used] as opposed to the more questionable terrain of "langue" [language-as-structure] which must by definition partake of both the universal grammar as well as the structures of parole which persist over an extended period of time. I have run into an interesting idea which, while needing great development, can work as yet another way to explain and make clear this issue. Chomsky speaks of the genetic heritage of universal grammar. If vernacular parole is not necessarily genetic, then [as we do accept, provisionally, the Weak interpretation of the S.W. hypothesis], then what is it? In his 1976 text "The Selfish Gene," Oxford zoologist and sociobiologist Richard Dawkins introduces an interesting idea: that of a replicator of culture, a cultural unit: the "MEME." Pronounced to rhyme with gene, it can be seen as the fundamental unit of transient cultural replication just as genes would be to the underlying universal grammar. Exactly what constitutes an individual "meme" is in question; a meme, however, can be seen as any idea which spreads [thus emphasizing its parole nature, its transience in relation to the more settled sediments of genetic universal grammar]. One example of a meme, in modern culture, might be fads and catch-phrases which sweep through youth-culture. Certain words become outdated within a very short period of time; others remain. An intriguing example of a meme would be the behavioral trick of "starting a fire." This could be passed on through example. So, we can see, could the activity of diagram drawing, and thence ideograms and ultimately grammatical alphabets. As such a system spread over time, its more persistent forms might be seen as settling into established patterns which are ultimately genetically determined [or at least genetically facilitated.] This idea also helps explain why children "pick up" the complex "memetic" overlay of culture and language so readily [a favorite topic of Chomsky's]. In geography, valleys and gullies remain long after climates have changed and flora and fauna have rotated and evolved. Even so, a genetic "universal grammar" could easily remain as memetic cultural tides changed over time. "Memetics" would suppose to discuss cultural and linguistic behavior as behavior which is copied, insofar as it is mimicked, within a linguistic environment. The mother repeats "ma-ma" to the child until the child learns to copy the sound-image [Saussure], linking that sound-image contextually to the presence of its mother. This idea also suggests, however, that much of what we call "meaning" is picked up or intuited contextually. Obviously memetics would deal with parole language. However, far from challenging the necessity of "langue," it identifies it as its necessary complement, the long-lasting terrain of culture as passed down genetically from human to human which allows the linguistic layer of local culture to appear and thrive. Where genetic universal grammar would pass its structure down through biology, so-called "memetic" linguistic and behavioral culture would pass its information down through encoded and decoded symbol systems, or "signifiers" [Saussure]. All of this is, of course, speculation which had come from a field outside the direct study of this course; I bring it up as an example in order to show not only how there is indeed a difference between langue and parole -- between universal grammar and Weak S.W., -- but also that this distinction can be reconciled into a complementary understanding of the two ideas as a part of the same thing. That "thing" is, of course, the more and/or less transient manifestations of this thing we call human culture. -- REFERENCE: [Out-of-class source:] Dawkins, Richard. 1976. "The Selfish Gene." Oxford University Press, Oxford.