Linguistic Relativity Principle

This paper distinguishes three phases in the popularization of linguistic relativity: the phase initiated by Benjamin Lee Whorf himself; a second phase during which linguistic relativity was formulated and tested as a research hypothesis; and the current phase during which language-relativistic assumptions have penetrated the mass media. To diagnose the spread of relativistic assumptions, 560 articles in both English and Greek print and electronic media were considered. The articles were published over the period 2010–2019. They fall, roughly, into eighteen categories. Some of the articles report explicitly on linguistic relativity research, while others presuppose language-relativistic ideas in handling issues as disparate as the effectiveness of managerial discourse, the appropriateness of political correctness, or the possibility of communicating with aliens. The large number of article categories as well as the tacit assumption of linguistic relativity in a growing number of art...

Study of a small corpus of Hopi coyote stories, a traditional fable genre common in much of native western North America, shows that this type of Hopi narrative, unlike European traditional narratives (both oral and written) lacks an evaluative section. Such a section is clearly bounded and vouches for the story's tellability. Although this Hopi genre has evaluative devices throughout the structure, it rarely has a discrete section with this function. Note that if a narrative is told on request (coyote story, fairy tale) that it will tend to lack an evaluation section. If it comes from personal experience, it will probably require such a section. Further, if stylistic variation in structure is valued, the use of evaluative devices will predominate. * This paper stems from an undergraduate seminar conducted in 1982 at the University of California, Berkeley. It was sponsored by a grant from the Graduate Assembly and a grant from the Council for Educational Development of that institution. The Department of Linguistics provided office space and clerical support for the project. We would like to thank and gratefully acknowledge all of the support that allowed us to come together and share. Albert selected and edited the stories, and gave technical advice. Golston wrote the section on the architecture of the Coyote story. Satory was responsible for the analysis of the problem of evaluative sections in this genre. Shaul supplied the other sections, edited and unified the paper. Albert and Shaul translated the Hopi texts into English.

The main objective of this article is to determine Eduard Sapir´s role in the North American and world idioethnic Language Philosophy as well as to clarify the significance of his concept as the main inspiration for the "linguistic relativity" idea in the United States. To this end, we analyze the early works by E. Sapir (published predominantly during the Canadian period of his scientific activity) related to the interpretation of the ideas by J. G. Herder (1905), the uniqueness of the conceptual structure of languages (1911-1919), as well as the problem of language and race (1921-1925).

Whorf's use of the term "tensor" to describe certain adverbial particle s and constructions in Hopi has been called "impractical and alienating" by Malotki. However, when Whorf s rationale for the use of the term is reconsidered in the context of field data and descriptions provided by Malotki, it is found to be justified. Whorf's analysis of these peculiarly dynamic "expressions ... of Operation" draws attention to the way they can be thought ofas expressing (or operationalizing), at sentence anddiscourse level, conceptual activity which contributes significantly to the abstraction and construction ofmeaningful human experience from the ongoingflow of experiential data. The term "tensor" has potential for use in descriptions oflanguages other than Hopi, and Whorf s analysis ofHopi tensors suggests another starting pointfor thinking about communicable conceptual activity.