Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Sapir and Whorf’s rhetoric answered to a contemporary moral panic about the use and abuse of language. The young 20th century saw public discourse perverted by new forms of propaganda, disseminated by such new technologies as radio and film, all of which accompanied and facilitated the catastrophic upheavals of the First World War and the political
... See moreJames McElvenny • Our Language, Our World
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Benjamin Lee Whorf, who seduced a whole generation into believing, without a shred of evidence, that American Indian languages lead their speakers to an entirely different conception of reality from ours.
Guy Deutscher • Through the Language Glass
The German polymath Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), brother of the famous explorer Alexander von Humboldt, likewise tried to develop a universalist and philosophical approach to the study of languages. The central fact of language is that speakers can make infinite use of the finite resources provided by their language. Though the capacity for
... See moreBill Mayblin • Introducing Linguistics
Tim Seyrek • Does Language Shape Thought? From Philosophy to Neuroscience
Benjamin Lee Whorf, to whom we shall return in a later chapter, captivated a whole generation when he taught that our habit of separating the world into objects (like “stone”) and actions (like “fall”) is not a true reflection of reality but merely a division thrust upon us by the grammar of European languages.
Guy Deutscher • Through the Language Glass
But not all languages are equal. Languages are theories. In their vocabulary and grammar, they embody substantial assertions about the world.