I Need help on this one. the PARAGRAGH is below In response to the strong form o
ID: 3460632 • Letter: I
Question
I Need help on this one. the PARAGRAGH is below
In response to the strong form of Sapir-Whorfian Hypothesis, Pinker's position is "No, language does not determine our thoughts." Give your best summary for the paragraph below. Do you agree with Pinker? Why? If not, why not?
" Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic determinism, stating that people's thoughts are determined by the categories made avail• able by their language, and its weaker version, linguistic relativity, stating that differences among languages cause differences in the thoughts of their speakers. People who remember little else from their college education can rattle off the factoids: the languages that carve the spectrum into color words at different places, the fundamentally different Hopi concept of time, the dozens of Eskimo words for snow. The implication is heavy: the foundational categories of reality are not "in" the world but are imposed by one's culture (and hence can be challenged, perhaps accounting for the perennial appeal of the hypothesis to undergraduate sensibilities).
But it is wrong, all wrong. The idea that thought is the same thing as language is an example of what can be called a conventional absurdity: a statement that goes against all common sense but that everyone believes because they dimly recall having heard it some• where and because it is so pregnant with implications. (The "fact" that we use only five percent of our brains, that lemmings commit mass suicide, that the Boy Scout Manual annually outsells all other books, and that we can be coerced into buying by subliminal messages are other examples.) Think about it. We have all had the experience of uttering or writing a sentence, then stopping and realizing that it wasn't exactly what we meant to say. To have that feeling, there has to be a "what we meant to say" that is different from what we said.
Sometimes it is not easy to find any words that properly convey a thought. When we hear or read, we usually remember the gist, not the exact words, so there has to be such a thing as a gist that is not the same as a bunch of words. And if thoughts depended on words, how could a new word ever be coined? How could a child learn a word to begin with? How could translation from one language to another be possible?"
Explanation / Answer
Pinker defies any relationship with words and thoughts. According to him it is utter absurdity to relate words and thoughts. He emphasizes that our thoughts are not guided by mere words. There's an influence of culture on our thoughts and how we express through the words.And sometimes there are instances where we do not find appropriate words to express ourselves. Also, when we hear or read, we do not exactly remember the exact words but the gist of what we heard or read. Also, there would have been no new words if the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is true. Thus, Pinker makes his stance stronger against the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
The Pinker argument against Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is true to some extent, as we do not remember the exact words that we read or hear, but we take the essence or the central theme of those. We do fall short for words to exactly convey our emotions and feelings. And there is an impact of culture on the way people think and express, thus, Pinker is right in saying that language is not the determinant of our thoughts, but knowledge of language is important for to communicate and express our thoughts to others. Without knowing the name of concepts it's difficult to have ideas and thoughts. Hence, language is important for thinking, and also are the factors which Pinker has stated.
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