Historical Particularism - Critique on the study

3 important questions on Historical Particularism - Critique on the study

What is the effect of language on culture according to Lee Whorf?

The language we use for things can affect our actions because it influences the way we thing about things. Whorf is saying that is very difficult to understand the effects of language on culture because we perceive all cultures through our own language, which is filled with fundamental assumptions about the nature of the world. A way around this problem is to study exotic languages to give us a new perspective on our own language.




What does Whorf claims?

Whorf claims: one must see important interconnections between language, culture and psychology as Sapir did.

What is the Sapir Whorf hyphotesis?


The grammatical and lexical categories of the language a person speaks organize the way they think and shape their behavior.
1.     Linguistic determinism: the manner in which the structure of a language affects cognition.
2.     Linguistic relativism: is the idea that the grammatical and lexical categories are unique tot that language and thus speakers of different languages inhabit separate conceptual words.

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