Sapir Whorf's theory of linguistic relativity briefly. Summary: Sapir-Whorf Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

Hypothesis of linguistic relativity (Sapira-Whorf) is a scientific concept expressed by the American anthropologists E. Sapir and B. Whorf, which is based on the following provisions:

• Language makes us see things as they are, and not as others.
• A person who grew up in a particular language environment perceives the world and interprets his experience of perception within the framework defined by this language.

It can be decided that under such conditions understanding of a foreign culture is completely impossible - let's learn the meaning of words, but their true meaning will still remain inaccessible. Indeed, many shades of meaning, due to culture, elude in translation, elusive nuances of the language can provoke misunderstandings and cause difficulties in understanding. However, it is known that communication is feasible because there are constant, unchanging meanings and constant conditions for the use of words.“Linguistic and cultural systems are vastly different from each other, but there are semantic and lexical universals that point to a common conceptual basis on which human language, thinking and culture are based,” writes A. Vezhbitskaya. That is, there are some general laws according to which human thinking developed, which was embodied in the vocabulary and grammar of the language. And the specific rules reflect the variety and variations of these general laws..

E. Sapir was surprised that in the Hopi language there was only one verb to designate all objects in the air. It was used in relation to a flying plane, a bird, a leaf falling from a tree, a stick thrown up. At the same time, there was a grammatical form - a verbal suffix used to denote movement on a plane in a certain direction along the cardinal points. That is, this suffix immediately indicated whether the movement was towards the east, or south, or northwest. We need four words to say that the train was driving west. The Hopi can add a suffix to the verb "did" to make it clear where the train was going. E. Sapir found an explanation for such a grammatical form: it could have arisen only in the culture of nomads, for whom the direction of movement is always important, landmarks to the cardinal points are important. It turns out that in this culture there is no concept of abstract movement, but only of movement in a specific direction.

We have already managed to consider a lot of interesting things related to linguistics. But, the deeper we dive into this topic, the more useful and very interesting we learn. So, quite recently we discovered another interesting, so to speak, linguistic topic - the hypothesis of linguistic relativity.

The hypothesis of linguistic relativity implies that the linguistic structure affects the worldview and worldview of native speakers, as well as their cognitive processes. Often this hypothesis is also called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and we want to talk about it further.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

To begin with, we note that there are two different formulations of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (strict and soft):

• The essence of the strict formulation is that thinking is determined by language, which means that cognitive categories are determined and limited by linguistic categories.
• The essence of the soft formulation is that thinking, together with linguistic categories, has a decisive influence on the influence of traditions and some forms of non-linguistic behavior.

However, the very concept of the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”, by and large, is erroneous, since the American linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf were not co-authors of the hypothesis and never even talked about presenting their ideas as scientific hypotheses.

In addition, the emergence of the two formulations described above also belongs to a later period and is considered an innovation: despite the fact that both scientists never resorted to such a division, in their writings some were able to find both a mild and strict description of the hypothesis of linguistic relativity.

A Brief History of the Sapir-Whorf Conjecture

The main features of the idea of ​​linguistic relativism (the idea of ​​linguistic relativity) were already formulated in the works of philosophers of the 19th century, such as, for example, the German thinker Wilhelm von Humboldt, who perceived language as the spirit of the nation.

At the beginning of the 20th century, American anthropologists, led by Edward Sapir and Franz Boas, also made attempts to approach this hypothesis, but it was Sapir who most criticized linguistic determinism, which was traced in his works. And Benjamin Whorf, who was a student of Sapir, actively supported both his mentor and other supporters of the theory of relativism. Whorf, who studied the languages ​​of the American Indians, was able to publish his work, which described the impact of linguistic differences on the cognitive and behavioral structures of people. And already another student of Sapir named Harry Hoyger introduced the very concept of the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”. A strict formulation was generally introduced only in the early 1920s by the German linguist Leo Weisgerberg.

The principle of linguistic relativism was reformulated as a scientific hypothesis as such by the linguist Eric Lenneberg and the psychologist Roger Brown when they conducted their own research on the dependence of people's color perception on the classification of colors in their native languages.

When research in the field of the universal nature of language and cognition turned out to be the most relevant direction in the 60s, linguists lost interest in the idea of ​​linguistic relativity. But in the late 1980s, proponents of the new school of linguistic relativism, busy investigating the consequences arising from differences in the linguistic categorization of cognition, provided invaluable support in terms of experimental base for relativistic versions of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

The essence of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

The meaning of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that the structure of language has a formative effect on human thinking and how it cognizes the world around it. According to its basic assumptions, peoples who speak different languages ​​have differences in the perception of the main categories of the world around them, such as the concept of property, quantity, number, space, time, etc. No less significant is the difference in how native speakers of different languages ​​evaluate real events and phenomena. And the main difference of the hypothesis itself is the idea, based on which, people who are able to speak several languages ​​are able to apply several ways of thinking.

The system of language, corresponding to the theory of linguistic relativity we are considering, determines a unique classification of the surrounding world, where reality appears before a person in the form of a constantly changing stream of images and impressions.

Thus, among the main objects of the hypothesis are:

• Cognitive and thinking potential
• Awareness of time
• Awareness of cause and effect relationships
• Color perception
• Perception of forms

As the study proceeded, the individual effects of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis managed to manifest themselves only in a few areas of semantics, but, in fact, proved to be quite weak. And today, the majority of linguists take a more restrained position regarding linguistic relativism: they, to a greater extent, support the idea that language affects some types of cognitive processes, although this is not so obvious, but other processes are already in themselves are subjective, with regards to universal factors. And scientific research aims to formulate the ways of such influence, as well as to determine the extent to which language generally affects the thought process.

Pros and cons of the Sapir-Whorf theory

One of the first confirmations of the hypothesis of linguistic relativity was based on finding out the difference between how English speakers perceive the surrounding reality and the American Navajo Indians. Through studying the classification of language forms, it was possible to find that Indian children used the categorization of objects based on their form much more often than English children. And scientists explained this by the fact that in the language of the Navajo tribe there is a unique dependence of verbs and forms of objects with which any manipulation is performed.

In addition, the Sapir-Whorf theory was also confirmed by a study that was conducted with groups of children from African American families who speak English and children from European families who also speak English. The children in both the first and second groups performed well on the task of making geometric figures, although the African-American children belonged to low-income families and had a rather vague idea of ​​​​how to play with blocks.

But the relativistic theory has also received a refutation. Scientists conducted a study of 78 languages, which showed that people who belong to different cultures and speak different languages ​​perceive colors in almost the same way. However, despite this, some scientists suggest that the presented results cannot be interpreted as a refutation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, because people's color perception is due mainly to the biological structure of human vision, which means that it is identical in all people.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis today

Even in our time, disputes continue on the topic of the veracity of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis between specialists interested in the theory of linguistic relativity. And to a huge extent this is facilitated by the fact that there is no unambiguously convincing evidence that could confirm or refute this theory.

The results that have been obtained in the course of multiple studies can be perceived from different angles. Probably, it is precisely for this reason that the ideas of linguistic relativism today do not have ardent adherents or professional followers.

But, be that as it may, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, along with the interaction of language and thinking, over the years has become the object of interest of various scientific areas, from philosophy to anthropology and . In addition, together they became the source material for the creation of artificial languages, and also served as a source of inspiration for many works of literature.

And if you are interested not only in linguistics and linguistics, and you want to improve your literacy, pay attention to ours.

Maria Buras,
General Director of the Center for Applied Communications,
Maxim Krongauz,
Doctor of Philology, Director of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian University for the Humanities
"Science and Life" №8, 2011

In all sciences there are theories that occupy a very special place. The ordinary life of a hypothesis is divided into several stages: putting forward an idea, testing it, confirming / refuting it. Some of them do not have a confirmation stage - they are immediately refuted; others are initially confirmed and even acquire the status of theories, only to be refuted later anyway and give way to new assumptions. But there are hypotheses whose fate is not so linear. They are repeatedly refuted, repeatedly confirmed, forgotten, again attracting the interest of researchers, overgrown with legends and become part of not only science, but also culture in general.

Such is the life and fate of the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, better known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

As is often the case with ideas, the exact birth date of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is unknown. It is believed that it arose in the 30s of the last century, or rather, it was formulated during lectures by Benjamin Lee Whorf. It was he who gave it the name "hypothesis of linguistic relativity". His idea has the properties that a great scientific hypothesis should have: extreme simplicity and fundamentality.

In short, Benjamin Whorf argued that language determines thinking and the way of knowing. This elementary formulation has been discussed for many decades. As a result of alternating confirmations and refutations, two variants are formulated: strong and weak, which differ, in fact, only in the verb. In a strong version, the statement says that language determines thinking, and in a weak version, that language affects thinking.

Let's not now dig into the philosophical differences between verbs, but rather turn to the history of the issue.

Ideas are not born in an empty place, the idea of ​​the connection between language and thinking also has predecessors. The great German philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt is considered the first and main one. Partly under the influence of his no less great traveler brother Alexander, he became interested in exotic languages. His last, unfinished work is devoted to Kawi, one of the languages ​​of the island of Java. Perhaps all this led to the formulation of the idea of ​​​​the connection between the language and the spirit of peoples, which can be illustrated by one of Humboldt's most famous quotes: "The language of the people is its spirit, and the spirit of the people is its language, and it is difficult to imagine anything more identical" .

Humboldt's ideas were picked up and developed to this day. Among his most significant followers are neo-Humboldtians, such as the famous German linguist Leo Weisgerber (1899–1985). He himself was born in Lorraine, an area located on the border of Germany and France, and therefore was bilingual, that is, he was equally fluent in two languages: German and French.

In general, information about learning exotic languages ​​or mastering several languages ​​is very important for understanding why and how a scientist thinks about the connection between language and thought and begins to look for evidence of this connection.

Weisgerber believed that each language is unique and each language has its own so-called picture of the world - a culturally specific model. So we can say that the way of thinking of the people is determined by language, that is, about a kind of "style of appropriation of reality" through language. It was Weisgerber who introduced the concept of a linguistic picture of the world, which has become popular in modern linguistics.

Much less dependent on Humboldt's ideas is another - the American - line. It was called "ethnolinguistics", and the great American linguist Eduard Sapir is considered its creator. However, ethnolinguistics owes much of its appearance to Franz Boas, the founder of the anthropological school, Sapir's teacher. Together with his students, Sapir studied the languages ​​and culture of the American Indians and accumulated a huge amount of material - a description of the languages ​​of North and Central America. He put forward the principle of cultural relativism, which essentially denied the superiority of Western culture and argued that people's behavior, including speech, should be evaluated within the framework of their own culture, and not from the point of view of other cultures that consider such behavior meaningless or even barbaric.

Eduard Sapir, using the accumulated material, compared the grammatical systems of numerous languages, showed their differences and made more extensive conclusions on this basis. He believed that language is a "symbolic key to behavior" because experience is largely interpreted through the prism of a particular language and is most evident in the relationship of language and thought. Sapir's influence among American linguists cannot be overestimated. He, like Boas, created his own school, but, unlike his teacher, it was already purely linguistic. Among the students of Sapir was a chemist-technologist who served as an inspector in an insurance company - Benjamin Lee Whorf. His interest in language manifested itself even in his workplace. So, investigating cases of fire in warehouses, he noticed that people never smoke next to full gasoline tanks, but if the warehouse says “ Empty petrol drums”, that is, “empty gasoline tanks”, workers behave in a fundamentally different way: they smoke and casually throw cigarette butts. He noted that this behavior is caused by the word empty(empty): even knowing that gasoline vapors in tanks are more explosive and flammable than just gasoline, people relax. In this and other similar examples, Whorf saw the influence of language on human thought and behavior.

But, of course, his contribution to science was not these curious, but quite amateurish observations, but the fact that, following his teacher, Whorf turned to Indian languages. The difference between the languages ​​and culture of the Indians from what he knew well turned out to be so significant that he did not understand the nuances and united all the "civilized" languages ​​and cultures under the common name "Central European standard" ( Standard Average European).

One of his main articles, which formed the foundation of the hypothesis, is just devoted to comparing the expressions of the concept of time in European languages, on the one hand, and in the language of the Hopi Indians, on the other. He showed that the Hopi language does not have words for periods of time, such as instant, hour, Monday, morning, with the meaning of time, and the Hopi do not consider time as a stream of discrete elements. In this work, Whorf traced how the grammatical and lexical ways of expressing time in different languages ​​correlate with the behavior and culture of speakers.

Another famous example, which is hard to avoid mentioning, has to do with the number of words for snow in different languages. Quoting his teacher Boas, Whorf said that in Eskimo languages ​​there are several different words for different types of snow, but in English they are all combined in one word. snow. Whorf expressed his main idea, in particular, in this way: “We divide nature along the lines laid by our native language,” and called it the hypothesis of linguistic relativity.

It was she who was destined for a long, stormy life with ups and downs, with glorification and reproach.

In 1953, Harry Hoyer, another student of Sapir and Whorf's colleague, organized a famous conference dedicated to this hypothesis, and attracted not only linguists, but also psychologists, philosophers and representatives of other humanities - both supporters and opponents. The discussions turned out to be extremely fruitful, and a collection was published as a result of the conference. Soon a complete collection of Whorf's articles appeared, published posthumously, in fact - his main work. All this was the first peak of scientific and public interest in the hypothesis, which marked its rise.

And then began a series of disappointments and troubles, which consisted in exposing both the idea and Whorf himself. The scientist was accused of never going to the Hopi Indians, but working with the only representative of this people who lived in the city.

Moreover, in 1983, Ekkehart Malotki published a book on time in the Hopi language. There were only two sentences on the first page of the book. One is a quote from Whorf, where he argued that there are no words, no grammatical forms, no constructions or expressions in the Hopi language that would directly correlate with what we call time. This quote was followed by a sentence in the Hopi language and its translation into English. In Russian, it would sound like this: Then the next day quite early in the morning, at the hour when people pray to the sun, around this time he woke the girl again. In other words, Malotki completely undermined Whorf's conclusions about time in the Hopi language.

The second revelation concerned the famous example of the names of snow in the Eskimo languages. While quoting Whorf, the number of words for different types of snow grew steadily until an editorial in " The New York Times” in 1984 did not reach 100. American scientists scoffed at this, noting that there are no such number of words in the Eskimo languages, but in English, in fact, there is much more than one.

These revelations, however, were slightly unconvincing. In the second case, it was not Whorf who was exposed at all, but an incorrect quotation from the newspaper. In the first case, it remains not entirely clear what has happened in almost 50 years in the Hopi language (for example, whether changes have occurred in it under the influence of English) and whether Whorf is really wrong. Moreover, according to other testimonies, he went to the Hopi and seriously studied their language.

A stronger "enemy" was the theory of universal grammar, developed by no less remarkable American linguist, our contemporary Noam Chomsky. He is one of the most cited scientists in the world, a living classic, the founder of generative grammar, which determined the direction of development of linguistics in the twentieth century. One of Chomsky's main ideas concerned the innate ability of language. He argues that grammar is universal and is given to man in finished form, just like the laws of nature. From the thesis about innateness, the thesis about the deep unity of all languages ​​is derived. And all existing differences are recognized as superficial. In other words, all languages ​​of the world have something in common at a deep level, and knowledge of the general is innate for a person, which gives him the opportunity to master any language.

Thus, the theory of universal grammar turned out to be opposite to the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, because, in accordance with it, language abilities and thinking turned out to be unrelated and mutually independent.

The main battle between the two key ideas of the twentieth century - relativism and universalism - unfolded in the field of color naming. Relativists argued that the structure of the vocabulary of color terms in different languages ​​is different, which affects thinking, which, in turn, affects the perception of color by speakers. Among the universalists, the study of Brent Berlin and Paul Kay turned out to be the most authoritative. They showed that the area of ​​color designation obeys general laws, which are determined by the physiological capabilities of a person to perceive color. Scientists have identified 11 primary colors and proposed their hierarchy: (black, white) → (red) → (green, yellow) → (blue) → (brown) → (grey, orange, pink, purple). The hierarchy meant that less important colors (such as gray or slightly more significant brown) occur in a language only if all higher-ranking colors already exist in it.

Although Berlin and Kay published the work in 1969, the debate between universalists and relativists continues to this day. Relativists point out that the physiology of color perception is in many cases less important than the so-called prototypes. So, in Russian, to distinguish between blue and blue colors, it is not the physiological ability to perceive the corresponding wavelength of light that is more important, but the appeal to two prototypes: the sky and river water.

By the way, modern, rather complex experiments show that speakers of those languages ​​in which there are separate words for certain colors have an advantage in recognizing these colors (higher speed).

Although the struggle between universalists and relativists continues, the situation has changed in recent years. Roughly speaking, the period of "exposing" the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is over. This is primarily due to two factors: the emergence of new language data and their experimental verification. However, old data are also experimentally verified. Today, without an experiment, talking about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is even somehow indecent. Let's talk about several languages ​​that make us look at the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in a new way.

First, of course, the language of the feast. Indeed, in the words of Bulgakov, “what is it with you, whatever you miss, there is nothing!”. There are no (or almost no) numerals in the Pirahã language, words for color and kinship, past and future tenses. There are no complex sentences, which, by the way, contradicts Chomsky's theory. Of particular interest is the absence of numerals. But first - about what a feast is. It is the language of the Pirahá people (a little over 300 people), hunters and gatherers who live in the Amazon, in a remote northwestern region of Brazil, along the banks of the Maisi River, a tributary of the Amazon River. The uniqueness of the people is that they do not want to assimilate. They almost do not speak Portuguese and do not use the achievements of civilization. Basic information about the people came to us from the explorer Daniel Everett and his wife Keren.

Everett established that in the Piraha language there are two words with the meaning of quantity: "little" and "many". If Everett piled a pile of stones on a table and asked for a similar one to be placed next to it, the Indians could do this by matching each pebble from the first pile with its own. But if the first pile was removed, the Indians could no longer restore the number of stones, since they did not have the corresponding numerals to help remember the desired number. Moreover, when Everett tried to engage in enlightenment and teach the pirates to count, they refused, deciding that they did not need it.

It seemed that the Pirahã language is that wonderful find, which confirms that language and thinking are interconnected. Piraha living here and now do not know grammatical tenses, subordinate clauses and all that they do not need for life. But the universalists also got out of the situation here. They stated that it was not the Pirahã language that influenced their individual thinking, but life, living conditions, completely independently influenced, on the one hand, the structure of the language, and on the other hand, how they think and cognize the world. The argument turned out to be decisive in many respects in the sense that it became clear that no specific data could put an end to the dispute. These are two different views of the world.

Let's take a look at some more great examples.

In the languages ​​of the world, there are different types of orientation in space. There are three main ones: egocentric, geographical and landscape. Egocentric means that all objects are oriented relative to the speaker. So, for example, we say “to my right”, “ahead of me”. Even when we say "to the left of the house", we mean the way we look at the house. That is, in "egocentric" languages, words like right, left, ahead, behind, above, from below. In addition to the Russian language, “egocentric” include English, German, French, and indeed all widely spoken languages.

Geographical and landscape orientations, which are present in rather exotic languages, are arranged quite differently. With a geographical orientation, the speaker places all objects in the cardinal directions: north, south, east and west, and with a landscape orientation, the most noticeable elements of the landscape act as landmarks: a mountain, a sea, or the top / foot of a hill. Interestingly, even for small objects and small distances, such large landmarks are still used (for example, south of the finger or seaward from the nose).

So, in Guugu Yimithirr - the language of the eponymous people of the Australian Aborigines living in the north of Queensland - all objects are oriented not relative to themselves, but relative to the cardinal points. Here is one example beloved by linguists. We will say something like “the ant is to the right of your foot”, and the native will express the same thought differently: south of your foot, or to North, or east- depending on how the ant is actually located (although it will always be to the right of the leg). It is clear that at home, natives easily determine the cardinal points - by the sun, by moss, by natural signs, simply knowing, in the end, where north, south, east and west are. The most amazing thing, however, is that they do not lose the ability to navigate to the cardinal points and in unfamiliar areas and situations, including being taken to some city, as if they had a built-in compass in their head. At least, such are the testimonies of experimenters.

The Tzeltal-speaking Mayans (who live in the state of Chiapas in Mexico) orient objects relative to the features of the natural landscape of the area in which they live, placing them either up the hill or below. That is, about the same ant, they could say something like "the ant is up the hill from your foot."

The linguist Steven Levinson conducted experiments with representatives of the Tzeltal people taken to Holland. It turned out that the Tzeltal Indians solve some spatial problems better than the Dutch, because they establish identities based on other spatial principles. The Dutch, like us, consider identical objects that are actually mirror images of each other. Roughly speaking, if a Dutchman and a Tzeltal Indian are shown two hotel rooms located on opposite sides of the hotel corridor, they will see them differently. The Dutchman, seeing in both rooms the bed to the left of the door, and the table to the right, will consider that the rooms are the same. The Tzeltal Indian, on the other hand, will notice fundamental differences, because the bed in one room is located to the north of the door, and the table is to the south, and in the other room everything is exactly the opposite.

Actually, for universalists, these experiments will not become proof, but that's not the point. Today, scientists are not focused on proving or debunking the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Instead, they explore the relationship between thought, language, and culture and describe specific mechanisms of mutual influence. Moreover, the parallels between language and thought established in recent decades are impressive even to specialists.

Disputes and discussions about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis turned out to be extremely fruitful for the development of not only linguistics, but also many humanities. However, we still cannot say for sure whether this hypothesis is true or false. What's the matter?

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis sags in its second part. We do not really understand what thinking and consciousness are and what it means to "influence them." Some of the discussions are connected with attempts to somehow reformulate the hypothesis, to make it more testable. But, as a rule, other formulations made it less global and, as a result, reduced interest in the problem. Apparently, one of the very interesting ways in which the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was abandoned in linguistics was the use of the term "linguistic picture of the world." Thus, linguists refuse to talk about the obscure matters of "thinking" and "cognition", but introduce some beautiful, proper linguistic concept of "linguistic picture of the world" and enthusiastically describe its various fragments. It is clear that, for example, our, Russian, picture of the world and the picture of the world of feasts are very different: for example, what ideas have developed in relationships related to family, color, and the like. But, firstly, there is no single and integral linguistic picture of the world, fragments of the same language may contradict each other. Say, in the Russian picture of the world sky was interpreted as a high vault (hence the compound word firmament), according to which the sun rises and for which it comes in. The flat nature of the sky is also indicated by the choice of the preposition By in a phrase Clouds float across the sky. However, the interpretation sky as space is also possible, and then the word is already combined with the preposition V. Let us recall at least a phrase from Yuri Shevchuk's song: “Autumn. Ships are burning in the sky.

Secondly, the status of the concept of "language picture of the world" is not defined. It seems to be in the competence of linguistics and partly protects linguists from criticism of other scientists. It is more or less obvious that language affects the picture of the world, but what this picture itself is, how it is connected with thinking and cognition, is completely unclear. So the introduction of a new term, while protecting linguists and allowing them to do their own thing, at the same time reduces the significance of research.

There is another very important and, perhaps, the most relevant way of reformulating the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Today, language is trying to be associated with human cognitive abilities. The word "cognitive" - ​​extraordinarily fashionable - opens all doors in our time. But, unfortunately, this does not make it any clearer. After all, in fact, "cognitive" means "associated with thinking."

Thus, it can be recognized that over the 80 years of the existence of the hypothesis, it was precisely the not very strict formulation that allowed it to become a super-productive research and methodological framework. To paraphrase Faina Ranevskaya's words about the Mona Lisa, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis can now choose for itself who likes it and who does not.

Literature:
1) Edited by V. A. Zvegintsev. Chapter "The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis"// New in linguistics. - M., 1960. - Issue. 1. S. 111–215.
2) Stephen Pinker. Language as instinct. - M.: Editorial URSS, 2004.

Blinov A.K.

So, what is the ratio of determinism, conventionality of the causality of meanings - or what is the nature of their determinism or causality? Where are the limits of their alternatives? How are they defined?

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity is - here one must agree with Davidson - one of the most striking examples of theories of the conventionality of meaning, proceeding from the opposition of the conceptual scheme on which the description is based, and the content of the "external" world that fills the scheme, transcendent to the description.

1. Epistemological foundations of the concept of linguistic relativity

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is directly related to the ethnolinguistic studies of the American anthropological school. The forms of culture, customs, ethnic and religious ideas, on the one hand, and the structure of the language, on the other, were of an extremely peculiar character among the American Indians and differed sharply from everything that researchers in such fields had to deal with before meeting them. This circumstance, according to the generally accepted opinion, brought to life in American structuralism the notion of a direct connection between the forms of language, culture and thought.

The hypothesis of linguistic relativity was based on two thoughts of Edward Sapir:

Language, being a social product, is such a linguistic system in which we are brought up and think from childhood. Because of this, we cannot fully comprehend reality without resorting to language, and language is not only a by-product of solving some particular problems of communication and thinking, but our "world" is built by us unconsciously on the basis of linguistic norms. We see, hear and perceive one way or another, these or other phenomena, depending on the language skills and norms of our society.

Depending on the living conditions, on the social and cultural environment, different groups may have different language systems. There are no two languages ​​so similar that it could be argued that they express the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are different worlds, not just the same world with different labels. In other words, each language contains a peculiar view of the world, and the difference between the pictures of the world is greater, the more languages ​​differ from each other.

We are talking here about the active role of language in the process of cognition, about its heuristic function, about its influence on the perception of reality and, consequently, on our experience: a socially formed language, in turn, affects the way society understands reality. Therefore, for Sapir, language is a symbolic system that does not simply refer to experience largely independent of that system, but in some way defines our experience. Sapir, according to Davidson, follows the direction well known from T. Kuhn's presentation, according to which different observers of the same world approach it with incommensurable systems of concepts. Sapir finds much in common between language and the mathematical system, which, in his opinion, also registers our experience, but only at the very beginning of its development, and over time takes shape in an independent conceptual system that provides for every possible experience in accordance with some accepted formal restrictions. .. (Meanings) are not so much revealed in experience as imposed on it, due to the tyrannical influence exerted by the linguistic form on our orientation in the world.

Developing and concretizing the ideas of Sapir, Whorf tests them on the concrete material of the Hopi language and culture and, as a result, formulates the principle of linguistic relativity.

We dissect nature in the direction suggested by our native language. We distinguish certain categories and types in the world of phenomena not at all because they (these categories and types) are self-evident; on the contrary, the world appears before us as a kaleidoscopic stream of impressions, which must be organized by our consciousness, and this means mainly by the language system stored in our consciousness. We dismember the world, organize it into concepts and distribute meanings in this way and not otherwise, mainly because we are parties to the agreement that prescribes such a systematization ...

This circumstance is of exceptional importance for modern science, since it follows that no one is free to describe nature absolutely independently, but we are all bound to certain modes of interpretation even when we consider ourselves the most free ... We are thus faced with the new principle of relativity, which states that similar physical phenomena make it possible to create a similar picture of the universe only if the language systems are similar, or at least correlative.

Whorf gave a more radical formulation of Sapir's thoughts, believing that the world is a kaleidoscopic stream of impressions that must be organized by our language system. Thus, living conditions, culture and other social factors influenced the Hopi language structures, shaped them and, in turn, were influenced by them, as a result of which the tribe's worldview took shape.

There are connections between cultural norms and linguistic patterns, but not correlations or direct correspondences... These connections are found not so much when we focus on purely linguistic, ethnographic or sociological data, but when we study culture and language... as something whole in which interdependence between separate areas can be assumed.

But Whorf focuses on the influence of language on the norms of thinking and behavior of people. He notes the fundamental unity of thinking and language and criticizes the point of view of "natural logic", according to which speech is only an external process associated only with the communication of thoughts, but not with their formation, and different languages ​​are basically parallel ways of expressing one and the same thing. same conceptual content and therefore they differ only in minor details that only seem important.

According to Whorf, languages ​​differ not only in how they build sentences, but also in how they divide the world around them into elements that are the units of the vocabulary and become the material for constructing sentences. For modern European languages, which represent one language family and have developed on the basis of a common culture (Whorf combines them in the concept of "common European standard" - S AE), the division of words into two large groups is characteristic - a noun and a verb, subject and predicate. This causes the division of the world into objects and their actions, but nature itself is not divided in this way. We say: "lightning flashed"; in the Hopi language, the same event is depicted by a single verb r e h p i - "sparkled", without dividing it into a subject and a predicate.

In SAE languages, some words for temporary and transient phenomena are verbs, while others are nouns. Unlike them, in the Hopi language there is a classification of phenomena based on their duration. Therefore, the words "lightning", "wave", "flame" are verbs, since all these events are of short duration, and the words "cloud", "storm" are nouns, since they have a duration sufficient, albeit the least, for nouns. .

At the same time, in the language of the Nootka tribe there is no division into nouns and verbs, but there is only one class of words for all kinds of phenomena. Thus, it is impossible to determine a phenomenon, a thing, an object, a relationship, etc., based on nature; their definition always implies an appeal to the grammatical categories of a particular language.

SAE languages ​​provide artificial isolation of certain aspects of continuously changing natural phenomena in its development. As a result, we consider the individual aspects and moments of developing nature as a collection of individual objects. "Sky", "hill", "swamp" acquire for us the same meaning as "table", "chair", etc. The question, then, is this:

What is the division type?

why do we classify the world in this way and not in another way?

Whorf argues not that the division of the phenomena of the world is characteristic only of S AE languages, but that languages ​​that differ greatly from each other also have a different system for analyzing the world around them, a different type of division into isolated sections. He reinforces his thesis by emphasizing the influence of language norms not only on the process of thinking, but also on people's perception of the outside world. This position is explicitly formulated by Sapir and taken as an epigraph in one of Whorf's works:

We see, hear and perceive in one way or another one or another phenomenon mainly due to the fact that the language norms of our society presuppose this form of expression.

Whorf examines how the categories of space and time are fixed in S AE and Hopi, and concludes that Hopi does not know the category of time that is characteristic of our languages, while the category of space is similar in both cases. Our language is not inclined to distinguish between the expressions "ten people" and "ten days", although there is such a difference: we can directly perceive ten people, but we cannot immediately perceive ten days. This is an imaginary group, as opposed to the "real" group, which is formed by ten people. Terms such as "summer", "winter", "September", "morning", "dawn" also form the plural and are calculated like those nouns that denote objects of the material world. Whorf believes that this reflects the peculiarities of our language system, and calls this phenomenon "objectification", since here temporal concepts lose their connection with the subjective perception of time as "becoming more and more late" and are objectified as countable quantities, i.e. segments consisting of individual quantities, in particular lengths, since the length can actually be divided into inches. "Length", "segment" of time are conceived in the form of identical units, like, say, such relevance as a row of bottles.

Comparing the expression of time in the S AE languages ​​with the Hopi, Whorf notes that the plural and cardinal numbers in the Hopi language are used only to designate those objects that form or can form a real group. Such an expression as "ten days" is not used. Its equivalent can be an expression indicating the process of counting, and counting is carried out using ordinal numbers. The expression "they stayed ten days" becomes in the Hopi language "they lived until the eleventh day" or "they left after the tenth day". This method of counting cannot be applied to a group of different objects, even if they follow one another, because even in this case they can be combined into a group. However, it is applied in relation to the successive appearance of the same person or object that is not able to unite in a group. "Several days" is perceived not as several people, as Whorf believes our languages ​​are prone to, but as the successive appearance of the same person. Whorf considers unfounded the view that the Hopi, who know only their own language and the ideas generated by the culture of their society, should have the same concepts of time and space that we have and which are generally considered universal.

The concept of "time", characteristic of the S AE languages, and the concept of "duration" among the Hopi, according to Whorf, are different. At the same time, he insistently emphasizes that the features of the Hopi language do not in the least prevent them from correctly orienting themselves in the world around them. Moreover, in his opinion, this language is closer to modern science - the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics - than the Indo-European languages, which make it possible to perceive the universe as a collection of separate objects, which is most characteristic of classical physics and astronomy.

Whorf's works mainly deal with fundamental ideas - the categories of substance, time, space, i.e. just those which, without further assumptions, can be assumed to be most likely to be common to all people. Therefore, when languages ​​fix the concepts of substance, time and space in their elements, the researcher is most likely to find a common content in these elements.

The relevant question here can be formulated as follows: what is at stake in such a discussion - about the categorical structure of human thinking or about the specific content of the corresponding concepts? If we believe that categories are forms of thinking, then we must admit that we have no reason to consider possible "non-objective" thinking, not connected with ideas about the object and its properties (which are imposed on us by the categories of substance and accident). In the same way, a natural language is hardly possible, devoid of any expressive means that allow one to think in terms of non-qualitative-quantitative or spatio-temporal characteristics of objects. The only point in Whorf's work that calls into question the "objectivity" of thinking - the assertion that in the Nootka language there is no division into nouns and verbs, but there is only one class of words for all kinds of phenomena - leaves many ambiguities. Sapir, on the contrary, insisted on the universality of this division:

However elusive the distinction between noun (noun) and verb may be in individual cases, there is no language that completely neglects this distinction. The situation is different with other parts of speech. None of them is absolutely necessary for the life of the language.

So, Whorf's studies call into question the universality of the categories of thinking as forms of connection of some mental content.

2. Conventionality of grammar

The grammatical meanings of linguistic units turn out, from this point of view, to be connected with the "division" of the world with the help of grammatical categories. For example, in English the word "wave" is a noun, while in Hopi it is a verb. It belongs to different grammatical categories, and thus the language in the first case "forces" us to consider the wave as an object, and in the second - as an action. Answer the question "what is a wave - an object or an action?" without referring to the grammatical categories of a particular language, according to Whorf, it is impossible. This conclusion, which he generalizes to the meaning of the principle, is obviously the essence of the whole concept.

Consider the question of the role of grammatical categories and their associated grammatical meanings.

In linguistics, it is customary to distinguish between grammatical and non-grammatical meanings, for example, as follows. A meaning is called grammatical if it is necessarily expressed in a given language, that is, whenever an element appears in a statement whose meaning can be combined with a given grammatical meaning; moreover, such elements form large classes in the language and therefore appear quite often in texts. If a certain meaning is not necessarily expressed and does not appear in the texts often enough, then it is considered ungrammatical. From this point of view, the meaning of number in Russian is grammatical, since every noun necessarily has an indicator of number - singular or plural. The grammatical rules of the Russian language force us to express this meaning, regardless of whether we consider it essential for the message or not. On the contrary, in Chinese the meaning of a number is non-grammatical: it remains unexpressed unless there is a need to specifically indicate the number of objects in question. Meanings that are grammatical in one language may be non-grammatical in another. Moreover, in accordance with the rules of one or another language, a forced categorization of grammatical meanings can occur.

It can be assumed that not every meaning can be grammatical, since it is difficult to imagine a language in which, say, the difference between an oriole and a jay would be expressed grammatically. Usually as grammatical, i.e. subject to mandatory expression, more or less abstract meanings appear (time, number, agent, object, cause, goal, contact, possession, knowledge, sensation, modality, reality, potentiality, possibility, skill, etc.). From a linguistic point of view, those meanings that are grammatical in at least some languages ​​are of interest: it is they that "include" in the structure of the language (message encoding rules), regardless of whether they are grammatical in a given language or not.

It is believed that the language is the more perfect, the smaller the proportion of obligatory information expressed in the utterance, forced solely by the rules of coding, and not by the essence of what is reported. Analyzing the Latin phrase illa alba femina quae venit ("that white woman who comes"), E. Sapir points out that logically only the case requires expression in it; the remaining grammatical categories are either completely unnecessary (gender, number in demonstrative and relative words, in adjectives and verbs), or they do not relate to the essence of the syntactic form of the sentence (number in a noun, person and tense). Nootka is even less perfect in this respect. The grammatical structure of this language forces the speaker every time he mentions or addresses someone to indicate whether this person is left-handed, bald, short, has astigmatism and a large appetite. Nootka language forces the speaker to think of all these properties, completely irrespective of whether he considers the relevant information essential to his message or not.

The verb system of the Navajo language differs sharply from the usual system in European languages ​​in the abundance of categories that describe all aspects of movement and action. The grammatical categories of the Navajo verb make it necessary to classify as different objects the movement of one body, two bodies, more than two bodies, as well as the movement of bodies that are different in shape and distribution in space. Even objective concepts are not expressed directly, but through a verb stem, and therefore objects are thought not as such, but as connected with a certain type of movement or action.

In this regard, it can be assumed that the difference between the oriole and the jay could also be expressed with the help of grammatical meanings. If some tribe knew only these two types of birds (or at least not a very large number of them), then in the language system of this tribe such verb endings could exist, one of which would refer the verb ("flies", "sits", "pecks") to the oriole, another to the jay, and the third to all other birds or objects in general. In this case, the speaker could not say "flies" without at the same time indicating that he is flying: an oriole, a jay, or something else - just as in Russian we cannot say "read" without simultaneously indicating, whether this message refers to a masculine, feminine, or neuter being: read - read - read.

The above example testifies in favor of the fact that, in principle, any lexical differences can be expressed with the help of grammatical categories and thus represented as grammatical meanings in any - albeit possible - language. Irrespective of language, no boundary can be drawn between lexical and grammatical meanings.

So, the language that we use and from the circle of which we can get out only by falling into another circle prescribes to us the appropriate systematization and categorization of the world. From this point of view, the language system is a priori: it is designed to organize a "kaleidoscopic stream of impressions"; the synthesis of this "sensory diversity" with the linguistic form gives us a picture of the world, which can be similar to other pictures only if the language systems are similar, or at least correlated:

It is impossible to determine a phenomenon, thing, object, relationship, etc., based on [their] nature; their definition always implies an appeal to the grammatical categories of a particular language.

Grammatical categories and their corresponding meanings are more conservative and change much more slowly than vocabulary. This leads to the fact that the new content, fixed in the lexical meanings of language units, begins to contradict the grammatical meanings with which it is associated. For example, we know that lightning is not an object, like a table, chair, etc., and even more so, in itself it does not have any generic characteristics, although the word "lightning" in Russian is a feminine noun. So, some grammatical categories seem to us completely "artificial", not corresponding to anything in reality, such as, for example, the category of the gender of nouns for inanimate objects in Russian, while others - "natural", pointing to the modes of existence of external reality: the category of number, tense category for verb forms, etc.

It is common for modern everyday consciousness to distinguish between real reality and the conceivable and, parallel to this, lexical meanings (the conceptual composition of thinking) from the grammatical forms of their expression. But ordinary consciousness was not always like this. For example, the ancient Greek still hardly distinguished his thinking from real existence, himself from nature in general: myth was for him an integral, final, really existing reality. As for the concept and the word, even in much later times their indistinguishability, unity, reaching complete identity, found its expression in the term????? , which has no exact analogue in modern European languages. The grammatical characteristics of a word did not differ from its conceptual content and, together with this latter, were transferred to the real thing. In a certain respect, it can be said that some grammatical categories of modern languages ​​are monuments of past eras in the development of human consciousness. So, for example, the category of gender of nouns can be considered, apparently, as a vestige of the animistic consciousness of our ancestors, to whom physical objects were represented as animated beings. Lexical and grammatical meanings complement each other and only in their unity form a picture of the world fixed in a given language. We encounter this "additionality" when translating from one language to another: the same information in some languages ​​is recorded in lexical, and in others - in grammatical meanings (for example, translation from Russian into Chinese entails the transformation of the grammatical meaning of a number into lexical ).

3. Conventionality of vocabulary

Representatives of modern neo-Humboldtianism, supporters of the so-called theory of semantic fields - L. Weisgerber, J. Trier and others pay the greatest attention to the conventionality of vocabulary; from their point of view, the lexical composition of the language is a classification system, through the prism of which we can only perceive the world around us, despite the fact that in nature itself there are no corresponding divisions. The classification system contained in the language forces us to distinguish in the world around us such objects as "fruit", "cereal", and contrast them with "weed" in terms of their suitability for humans. We single out "fruit" and "cereal" and oppose them to "weed" not because nature itself is so divided, but because these concepts fix various ways, rules of our behavior. After all, in relation to the weed, we do not act in the same way as we do to the cereal. This difference in the ways of our action, fixed by the word, determines both our vision of the world and our future behavior. For example, Whorf cites a situation in which the word "empty" applied to empty gasoline tanks indicated careless handling of fire by people working nearby, although these tanks are more flammable due to the accumulation of gasoline vapors than full ones.

The thesis that there is a more or less specific classification system in a language is usually not objectionable; the question is how great is the influence of language and the classification system contained in it on the perception of the world. Where is the evidence that, for example, the perception of color depends on this or that terminology? As studies of a wide variety of languages ​​have shown, the spectrum is "distributed" by different languages ​​in different ways.

The problem of the influence of vocabulary on perception contains at least two questions:

can a person perceive those phenomena, properties - for example, colors - for which there are no special words in his native language?

Does the vocabulary of the language influence the perception of these phenomena in practice, in everyday life?

The number of color names, as well as their distribution in different parts of the spectrum in different languages, depends primarily on the practical interest in distinguishing colors and in their designation, on the frequency with which certain colors are found in the outside world. If, for example, we divide colors into three groups (achromatic, red-yellow and green-blue), then it turns out that in Russian (as well as in German, English, French) there are more names for chromatic colors than for achromatic ones, and for there are more red-yellow groups than for the green-blue, but in the Nenets language the names are evenly distributed among all these groups. One of the explanations for the relatively high level of development in the Nenets language of names for achromatic, as well as for green and blue colors, can be sought in the practical significance of distinguishing the corresponding colors in the conditions of life in the Far North. And vice versa, explaining the reason for the absence of a special word for blue in the language of the African tribe of Aranta, they indicate that in the nature surrounding the people of this tribe, with the exception of the sky, there is no blue color. The word for yellow and green can also be used by the people of this tribe to mean blue; however, it does not follow from this use of words that the Arantas actually mix these colors visually.

The number of colors that the human eye is able to distinguish in objects is determined in the range from about five hundred thousand to two and a half million. Meanwhile, the number of simple color names (red, lemon) registered in the explanatory dictionaries of European languages, as a rule, fluctuates around a hundred, and the number of compound names (blood red, lemon yellow) is several hundred. There is a disproportion between the number of colors distinguished by the eye and the number of their names. Thus, the human eye can also perceive those colors and color shades for which there are no names in the language, but a person quickly and easily perceives and differentiates what his native language suggests.

Considering a language as a dynamic system indicates the need for a genetic approach to the analysis of lexical meanings: in fact, human knowledge is always conditioned by the thinking of previous generations, fixed in the language, in its lexical composition. The centuries-old practice of the language community, the established system of thinking have accumulated and transformed the collective empirical experience, as a result of which the results of perception always contain, to a greater or lesser extent, the moment of rational processing. A thought based on the base of a ready-made language form arises, other things being equal, faster and easier than a thought that does not have such support in the native language of the speaker. Language influences the formation of new thoughts through the meanings of terms in which, in one way or another, the cognitive activity of previous generations and their experience were reflected and consolidated; it imparts stability and the necessary certainty to the emerging thought. By virtue of this alone, we can say that the meanings of terms, determined by external reality, are formed not independently of a given language, but under the influence of the empirical and rational experience of previous generations, fixed in the language system.

Language does not equally influence the formation of thought in different cases: thus, it can be assumed that its role here is all the more important, the less direct and immediate is the connection with the corresponding object of external language of reality. For example, although Russian and English form the thought of such objects as an arm and a leg in different ways (Russian directs attention to these limbs as a whole, without needlessly noting which of their parts is meant, and English or French emphasizes that or another part of the arm or leg, even when it is not necessary), yet these objects themselves are such that it is easy to see the difference in their parts and one can soon become accustomed to framing the thought of them as two different parts, or, on the contrary, get used to thinking about them as a whole.

In the same way, Russian and English languages, on the one hand, and French and German, on the other hand, form their thoughts differently when it comes to knowledge. One can know all sorts of things: mathematics, traffic rules, German, a certain person, his phone number, etc., without thinking that all these types of knowledge are essentially different. The Russian language, just like English, does not "suggest" anything in this respect, does not suggest a classification of types and varieties of knowledge. On the contrary, the French language requires users to distinguish between knowledge as "a concept of something, or scientific (theoretical) knowledge" and knowledge as "practical knowledge, skill", and designate these two types of knowledge, respectively, with words with nna i tr e and savoir.

In the first case, such objects of thought as a leg and a hand are quite understandable, definite and without denoting them in words: they are available for direct sensory perception, etc. Therefore, the features of linguistic design fade into the background, not having significant significance for the thought itself. In the second case, the influence of language (i.e., the formation of a thought under the influence of previous social experience deposited in the semantics of the language) is for the most part decisive for the emergence of precisely this and not another thought. It is possible to distinguish between two types of knowledge, in addition to individual special cases, and to distribute these special cases among them, using such broad generalizing words as Russian to know and English to know, is possible only by attracting additional linguistic means. Conversely, having acquired with language the habit of constantly differentiating the two kinds of knowledge by means of such words as the French co nna i tr e and savoir, it is difficult to abstract from the corresponding distinctions and think "knowledge in general." Here the shaping of a thought turns out to be inseparable from the creation of the thought itself, from its content. Language already persistently imposes this or that generalization and distinction in the understanding of individual facts of reality.

As a result of the fact that each language is an individual, unique system of linguistic meanings, the individual meanings included in the system of a given language often turn out to be incommensurable with the meanings of another language, and because of this, translation seems theoretically impossible. However, it can be assumed that, with theoretical untranslatability, translation exists practically due to the fact that the meanings of both languages ​​denote the same reality, and therefore it is possible, using combinations of meanings, to give in any language an approximate equivalent to a given meaning of any other language. The simpler the meaning we take, the more reason we can speak of untranslatability and lack of adequacy. The more complex the meaning, the closer the translation is possible, since, within a certain limit, the totality of the meanings of one and the other language reflects one and the same external reality. But how can we be sure that the system of meanings of the Hopi language as a whole coincides with the system of English? The reference to the same external reality does not prove anything, because the lexical meanings of the first language could reflect (due to the specific conditions of life and activity) some aspects of this reality, and in the vocabulary of the second language - its other aspects and aspects.

Our perception of the external world is always conceptually directed. The orientation of vision is already manifested in the fact that, for example, we are able to consider a photograph as an image, a view of a house. At the same time, we do not see the photograph itself - paper with black and white spots. Conversely, a six-month-old baby who already recognizes the mother very well cannot "see" her in the photograph. Thus, what we are able to see in the world around us, what “objects” we single out in it, depends on the development of our concepts or (which in this case is the same) on the content of the lexical composition of the language.

The question that arises in this connection brings us back to the concept of Aidukevich's "closed language": so, does the structure of the language impose any restrictions on its lexical composition, or can the vocabulary (conceptual apparatus) expand without limit?

Thus, in the works of opponents of the hypothesis of linguistic relativity (for example, Max Black) it is assumed that the structure of the language does not impose any significant restrictions on the vocabulary and the corresponding conceptual apparatus. From this point of view, differences between languages ​​in vocabulary are interpreted as an empirical fact rather than a logical necessity. From this circumstance, it follows that there are no fundamental restrictions on the range of concepts among native speakers of a given language, since it can be replenished, and therefore, the picture of the world that has developed on the basis of their language and the corresponding conceptual system can be identical to other pictures of the world associated with other language systems.

Indeed, natural language is an open system in the sense that if the language does not have a word to express any new concept, then the latter can be conveyed by a phrase borrowed from another language, or a specially invented word. Hence, the differences in the structure of the language are determined by extralinguistic factors: the nature and history of the culture of the community of native speakers of a given language, etc.; the language is an open system, from this point of view, primarily for two reasons:

Language seeks to fix all the phenomena of the external world and all the relationships between them, despite the fact that there is an unlimited number of fixed phenomena, which, moreover, are constantly changing.

The language seeks to fix the phenomena in accordance with the most effective system of rules of action (metalanguage). But these rules are also constantly changing due to changes in the vocabulary of the language and ongoing attempts to improve the rules themselves.

However, in this form, the language can only be described ideally. The closer the description of a language is to real practical purposes, the more concrete and closed it is. Applied researchers initially determine what restrictions they set when describing, what goals they set for themselves, what will be the composition of the selected vocabulary and grammar, and how they will have to work on the selected material. The result of their efforts will always be a closed language system, more or less different from its open ideal. Mastering a number of closed systems allows students of a particular language system to develop skills in working with the material and brings it closer to the maximum mastery of the system. The comprehension of a natural language continues for a person all his life; the system of that language itself is, however, in a state of constant change, and attempts to fully comprehend it can therefore never be completed.

Therefore, when we talk about describing natural language as an open system, we are actually talking more about describing it as a system of closed systems. Abstracting from a certain technical difference in the definition of a closed language by Aidukevich and Tarski, we can say that the selection of a separate language by the latter, in which statements about the semantic properties of the original object language are formulated, in a certain sense, is intended precisely to overcome the dichotomy of open and closed languages ​​by representing an open language in form of a system of closed languages. This approach is consistent with the results described in § 2.2.2 in connection with the identification of values ​​in referentially opaque contexts. Therefore, when referring to the epistemological foundations of the distinction of the conceptual schema vs. the content of the world, it turns out that the grounds for verifying the meanings are found in its first part. In other words, the truth of an expression can be described as being true with respect to some conceptual structure.

Indeed, the relativity of truth seems to be an indispensable prerequisite if we try to talk about the conventionality of meaning, while retaining ideas about the connection between the meaning of a linguistic expression and the conditions for its truth.

Sapir E. Grammarian and his language. - Sapir E. Selected works on linguistics and cultural studies. M., 1993. S. 248-258.

Sapir E . Conceptual Categories in Primitive Languages. - Science, 1931. Vol. 74.P. 578.

Whorf B. L. Science and linguistics. - In the book: New in linguistics. Issue I. M., 1960. S. 174 - 175.

Whorf B. L. The relation of norms of behavior and thinking to the language. - In the book: New in linguistics. Issue I. S. 168.

Whorf B. L. Science and linguistics. S. 170.

Whorf B. L. Linguistics and Logic. - In the book: New in linguistics. Issue I. S. 187.

Whorf B. L. The relation of norms of behavior and thinking to the language. - In the book: New in linguistics. Issue I.

Whorf B. L. The relation of norms of behavior and thinking to the language. S. 142.

There. S. 154.

Sapir E. Language. Introduction to the study of speech. - Sapir E. Selected works on linguistics and cultural studies. S. 116.

Apresyan Yu. D. Ideas and methods of modern structural linguistics. M., 1966. S. 105-106.

Sapir E. Language. Introduction to the study of speech. S. 97.

Sapir E. Abnormal speech techniques in nootka. - Sapir E. Selected works on linguistics and cultural studies. pp. 437-454.

Hoijer H. Cultural Implication of Some Navaho Linguistic Categories. - Language, v.27, #2, 1951.

Whorf B. L. Science and linguistics. S. 177.

Nida E. Language Structure and Translation. Stanford, 1975. Pp. 185-188.

Black M. Linguistic relativity (theoretical views of Benjamin L. Whorf). - In the book: New in linguistics. Issue. 1. S. 212.

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Hypothesis of Linguistic Relativity

Chapter 2

2.1 Initial study

2.2 Rebuttals of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

2.3 New evidence for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

2.4 New rebuttals of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Conclusion

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

Numerous questions that confronted man in the process of evolution are related to the receipt, encoding, storage and transmission of information. Information received from the outside, and then actively processed by the individual in the process of thinking, relate to different aspects of his life, undergo changes over time and, therefore, need constant systematization, encoding and re-coding necessary for their preservation and further transformation.

With the development of thinking, as information accumulated, a person inevitably had a desire to display this information in the form in which it can be stored or transmitted from one member of the team to another. The thought processes of abstraction required the creation of an adequate system for reflecting objects that were not currently in the individual's field of vision. Language is such a system.

Meanwhile, language is not only the means by which we obtain most of the information about culture and cognitive processes, but, according to a number of theories, also the main factor that determines our thought processes. The latter requires detailed discussion.

It is widely believed that language is a means by which a person expresses his feelings and thoughts, and it does not matter where a person was born. However, the opposite situation is no less common: a person’s thinking is conditioned by his language. The answer to the question of what role is played by the fact that a person speaks this particular language, and not some other, is given (among other hypotheses) by the hypothesis of linguistic relativity (the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis).

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a concept according to which the structure of the language and the systemic semantics of its units correlate with the structure of thinking and the way of knowing the outside world among a particular people. In other words, knowledge of the external world depends on the language we speak. However, this is only one of the few interpretations of this hypothesis.

In our work, we will consider various interpretations of the hypothesis of linguistic relativity in the light of the theory of knowledge, a number of experiments confirming and refuting the hypothesis, and we will try to summarize the philosophical propositions that were made on the basis of the hypothesis under consideration.

The purpose of the work is to consider the Sapir-Whorf hypotheses about linguistic relativity in language. To achieve the goal, the following tasks are required:

Consider the emergence of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis;

Give the concept of linguistic relativity;

To study the materials confirming the hypothesis;

Examine materials that refute the hypothesis;

Determine the significance of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for the development of linguistics.

The relevance of this topic is determined by the fact that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis gave impetus to the development of both linguistics and many humanities, and discussions about it have been exhausted.

CHAPTER 1. THE HYPOTHESIS OF LINGUISTIC

RELATIVITY

The doctrine of relativity in linguistics arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. in line with relativism as a general methodological principle and it is generally believed that it originates from the works of the founders of ethnolinguistics - the anthropologist Franz Boas, his student Edward Sapir and the last student Benjamin Whorf. In the most radical form that entered the history of linguistics under the name "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis", the hypothesis of linguistic relativity was attributed to B. Whorf on the basis of a number of his statements and spectacular examples contained in his articles. Meanwhile, B. Whorf accompanied his statements with a number of reservations, while Sapir had no categorical formulations at all.

Note that ideas comparable to the principle of linguistic relativity were developed in line with neo-Humboldtianism. in its two branches - European (L. Weisgerber, I. Trier, H. Glints, G. Ipsen) and American (which, in addition to E. Sapir and B. Whorf, included D. Himes and others). Similar ideas were expressed by A. Kozhibsky, K. Aidukevich, L. Wittgenstein, L.V. Shcherba and other researchers.

The formative role of language in cognitive processes is also recognized in Marxist psychology, which studies the mediating influence of linguistic meanings on the processes of categorization in thinking, perception, memory, attention, etc., but in the hypothesis of linguistic relativity this role is absolutized, which leads to an incorrect idea of ​​" fenced off" cognition, carried out through the structures of language, from the real world, to the separation of meanings from social practice and the erroneous thesis about the identity of language and thinking.

We also note that the neo-Humboldtian ideas regarding the influence of language on mental and cognitive processes go back to the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt "On the difference in the structure of human languages ​​​​and its influence on the spiritual development of mankind", where, in particular, it is said that "man is predominantly - and even exclusively, insofar as his sensation and action depend on his ideas, he lives with objects in the way that language presents them to him.

An important point in Humboldt's theory is that he considers language to be an "intermediate world", which is located between the people and the objective world surrounding it: "Each language describes around the people to which it belongs, a circle, from which it is possible to get out only if if you enter another circle." Man, according to Humboldt, turns out to be completely subordinate to language in his perception of the world.

However, if Humboldt believed that the differences in the "picture of the world", fixed in the language system, testify to the greater or lesser development of its speakers, then the linguistic relativism of F. Boas and his students was based on the idea of ​​biological equality and, as a consequence, the equality of linguistic and mental abilities.

Based on the fact that in a particular language the number of grammatical indicators is relatively small, the number of words is large, but also finite, the number of phenomena designated by this language is infinite, F. Boas concludes that the language is used to designate classes of phenomena, and not each phenomenon in separately. At the same time, each language carries out the classification in its own way; language narrows the universal conceptual space, choosing from it those components that are recognized as the most significant within a particular culture.

Both vocabulary and grammar have a classifying function. In grammar, as the most regulated and stable part of the language system, those meanings that must be expressed without fail are fixed. So, in Kwakiutl, the language of North American Indians, which F. Boas studied for many years, in the verb, along with the categories of tense and aspect, the grammatical category of evidentiality, or witnessing, is also expressed: the verb is equipped with a suffix that shows whether the speaker was a witness the action described by this verb, or learned about it from other people's words. Thus, in the "picture of the world" of Kwakiutl speakers, special importance is attached to the source of the information being reported.

E. Sapir understood language as a strictly organized system, all components of which (sound composition, grammar, vocabulary) are connected by rigid hierarchical relationships. The connection between the components of the system of a single language is built according to its own internal laws, as a result of which it is impossible to project the system of one language onto the system of another without distorting the meaningful relationships between the components. Understanding linguistic relativity precisely as the impossibility of establishing component-by-component correspondences between the systems of different languages, Sapir introduced the term "incommensurability" (incommensurability) of languages. The language systems of individual languages ​​not only fix the content of cultural experience in different ways, but also provide their speakers with different ways of understanding reality and ways of perceiving it.

In the article "The Status of Linguistics as a Science", E. Sapir notes that "two different languages ​​are never so similar that they can be considered a means of expressing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are different worlds , and not at all the same world with various labels hung on it ... We see, hear and generally perceive the world around us in this way, and not otherwise, mainly due to the fact that our choice in interpreting it is predetermined by the language habits of our society " .

The most radical views on the "picture of the world of the speaker" as a result of the action of linguistic mechanisms of conceptualization were expressed by B. Whorf. Whorf's conceptualization tool is not only the formal units distinguished in the text (individual words and grammatical indicators), but also the selectivity of language rules, that is, how certain units can be combined with each other, which class of units is possible and which is not possible in that or some other grammatical structure. On this basis, Whorf proposed to distinguish between open and hidden grammatical categories: the same meaning can be expressed regularly in one language using a fixed set of grammatical indicators, that is, it can be represented by an open category, and in another language it can be detected only indirectly, by the presence of certain prohibitions. , and in this case we can speak of a hidden category.

B. Whorf should also be considered the founder of studies on the role of linguistic metaphor in the conceptualization of reality. It was he who showed that the figurative meaning of a word can influence how its original meaning functions in speech. Whorf's classic example is the English phrase empty gasoline drums. Whorf drew attention to the fact that people underestimate the fire hazard of empty tanks, despite the fact that they may contain flammable gasoline vapors. The figurative meaning of the word empty ("meaningless, having no consequences") leads to the fact that the situation with empty tanks is "modeled" in the minds of the carriers as safe. “It has been established,” Whorf writes, “that the basis of the language system of any language (grammar) is not just a tool for reproducing thoughts. On the contrary, grammar itself forms a thought, is a program and guide for the mental activity of an individual.”

As David Matsumoto aptly remarked on linguistic relativity studies, many scientific papers "look as if they weren't the same hypothesis—in fact, they dealt with several different Sapir-Whorf hypotheses." The fact is that, as already mentioned above, the hypothesis of linguistic relativity was attributed to B. Whorf on the basis of a number of his statements. It is quite natural that there is no single formulation of the hypothesis, and, as D. Matsumoto noted, we have several different hypotheses:

Language determines human thinking and the process of cognition as a whole, and through it - the culture and social behavior of people, worldview and a holistic picture of the world that arises in the mind;

People who speak different languages ​​create different pictures of the world, therefore being carriers of different cultures and different social behaviors;

Language not only conditions, but also limits the cognitive capabilities of a person;

Not only the difference in the content of thinking depends on the difference in languages, but also the difference in the logic of thinking;

languages ​​embody a "set of speech patterns" that is made up of established ways of expressing thought and experience;

A native speaker has a system of concepts for organizing experience and a certain worldview;

The linguistic system to a certain extent determines the conceptual system associated with it;

The basis of a linguistic system largely determines the worldview associated with it;

The perception of facts and the "essence of the universe" are derived from the language in which they are reported and spoken about;

In addition to the problem of the linguistic representation of the achieved knowledge, there is the problem of understanding this knowledge by the addressee.

Note also David Matsumoto's distinction between "strong" and "weak" versions of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The first includes the claim that differences in language cause differences in thought. The second is that differences in thinking are simply related to language, not necessarily caused by it.

The hypothesis of linguistic relativity was based on the assumptions of E. Sapir that a) language, being a social product, is such a linguistic system in which we are brought up and think from childhood; and b) depending on the living conditions, on the social and cultural environment, different groups may have different language systems.

We cannot fully comprehend reality without resorting to language, and language is not only a by-product of solving some particular problems of communication and thinking, but our "world" is built by us unconsciously on the basis of linguistic norms. We see, hear and perceive one way or another, these or other phenomena, depending on the language skills and norms of our society.

We are talking here about the active role of language in the process of cognition, about its heuristic function, about its influence on the perception of reality and, consequently, on our experience: a socially formed language, in turn, affects the way society understands reality. Therefore, for Sapir, language is a symbolic system that does not simply refer to experience largely independent of that system, but in some way defines our experience. Meanings are not so much revealed in experience as imposed upon it, by virtue of the tyrannical influence exerted by linguistic form on our orientation in the world.

According to B. Whorf, language is a system of interrelated categories, which, on the one hand, reflects, on the other hand, fixes a certain view of the world. At the lexical level, each language encodes some areas of experience in greater detail than others.

Whorf's hypothesis about the relationship between culture and cognitive processes actually contains two statements that are worth considering separately. First: groups of people speaking different languages ​​perceive and comprehend the world in different ways (proper linguistic relativity).

The second statement goes beyond the simple assumption that there are differences in cognitive processes associated with language differences. It is argued that language is the reason for these differences. This doctrine of linguistic determinism essentially means that there is a one-way causal relationship between language and cognitive processes.

CHAPTER 2

SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESES

2.1 The initial stage of study

One of the earliest studies on language, by linguistic scholars Carol and Casagrande, compared Navajo speakers with English speakers in terms of how they approach things. They studied the relationship between Navajo's shape classification system and how children pay attention to the shape of objects when trying to classify them. Like the Japanese language we talked about above, the Navajo language has an interesting grammatical feature, which consists in the fact that certain verbs that mean handling objects (for example, "pick up", "throw") are converted into different linguistic forms in depending on the type of item being handled. In total, there are 11 such linguistic forms for objects of various shapes and properties: rounded spherical objects, thin rounded objects, long flexible things.

Noting how Navajo has a more complex linguistic system than English, Casagrande and Carol suggested that such linguistic features may influence cognitive processes. In their experiment, they compared how often children whose primary language was Navajo or English used their shape, appearance, or type of material to classify objects. Children whose primary language was Navajo were significantly more likely than English-speaking children to classify objects according to their shape. This study also allowed Carol and Casagrande to report that children from low-income English-speaking African-American families completed the task in a very similar way to children from European-American families. This discovery is particularly important because poor African-American children, unlike Euro-American children, were not familiar with building blocks or matching and shaping games.

The results of these experiments, together with the observations regarding the relationship between culture and vocabulary of a language, or the culture and pragmatics of a language, which we discussed above, provided the first support for the idea that the language we speak affects what thoughts come to us. to the head. Language can thus play the role of a mediator, helping to determine how children understand certain aspects of the world around them. Apparently, language is one of the factors influencing the way we think.

Another selection of scientific studies that test the validity of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis are works in the field of color perception. One of the first statements on this topic was made by Gleason: “The continuous scale of color shades that exists in nature is represented in language by a series of discrete categories ... Neither in the properties of the spectrum itself, nor in the properties of its perception by a person, there is nothing that would force it to be divided in this manner. This particular method of division is part of the structure of the English language."

Research on language and color perception has tended to look at how colors are categorized and what they are called in different languages. For example, Brown and Lenneberg found a positive relationship between the ease of language coding of a color and the accuracy of remembering that color in a memory task. In this experiment, ease of coding was measured by how easily English speakers agreed on the name of a given color, how long the name was, and how long it took them to pick up the name. The results of this study provide some support for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

2.2 Rebuttals of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Despite the positive results of the research mentioned above, other early work related to color perception actually casts doubt on the validity of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

For example, Berlin and Kay studied 78 languages ​​and found that there are 11 basic color names that form a universal hierarchy. Some languages, such as English and German, use all 11 names, others, such as Dani (New Guinea), use only two. Moreover, scientists note the evolutionary order in which languages ​​encode these universal categories. For example, if a language has three color names, those three color names would describe black, white, and red. This hierarchy of color names in human languages ​​is as follows.

1. All languages ​​contain words for black and white.

2. If a language has three color names, then that language also contains a word for red.

3. If a language has only four color names, it also has a word for either green or yellow (but not both).

4. If a language has five color names, it contains words for both green and yellow.

5. If a language has six color names, it also has a word for blue.

6. If there are seven color names in a language, it also has a word for brown.

7. If a language contains eight or more color names, it also has words for purple, pink, orange, gray, or some of these words.

To test the validity of claims like Gleason's, Berlin and Kay undertook a study of the breakdown of colors by name in 20 languages. They asked international students studying at universities in the United States to compile a list of "basic" color names in their native languages. The researchers then asked these subjects to select the most typical or best sample of a particular primary color.

Berlin and Kay found that there are a limited number of basic color names in any language. In addition, they noticed that pieces of glass chosen as the best examples of these primary colors usually fall into color groups, which scientists called focal points. If a language had a "basic" name for blue-blue colors, the best example of that color for people who spoke all such languages ​​turned out to be the same "focal blue". These discoveries suggest that people of different cultures perceive colors very similarly, despite the radical differences in their languages. Many began to doubt the correctness of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, since it seems to be inapplicable to the field of color perception.

If a language has a "primary" name for blue-blues, the best example of that color for people who speak all such languages ​​is the same "focal blue". Thus, it is clear that people of different cultures perceive colors very similarly, despite the radical differences in their languages.

These results were subsequently confirmed by a series of experiments set up by Roche. In her experiments, Roche tried to test how universal these focal points are for all cultures. She compared two languages ​​that differ markedly in the number of basic color names:

English with its many words for different colors, and Dani, a language with only two color names.

Dani is a language spoken by a tribe of Stone Age culture living in the mountains of one of the islands of New Guinea. One of the names of colors found in this language, miles, referred to both "dark" and "cold" colors (for example, black, green, blue), another name, mola, meant both "light" and "warm" colors. (e.g. white, red, yellow). Roche also explored the relationship between language and memory. If Sapir-Whorf's position was correct, she reasoned, then, due to the poverty of the color vocabulary in the Dani language, the ability to distinguish and remember colors in people who speak this language should be less.

It turned out that, according to the data provided by Hader and Oliver, people who speak the Dani language are no more confused in color categories than people who speak English. Those who speak Dani also performed as well as those who spoke English on the memory tasks.

However, judgments about the validity of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis based on studies of color perception must take into account the fact that the way we perceive colors is largely determined by our biological structure, in particular the biological structure of our visual system. This system is the same for people of all cultures. De Valois and his colleagues studied a species of monkeys with a visual system similar to the human one. They claim that we have cells that are stimulated by only two colors (for example, red + green or blue + yellow), and that at any given moment these cells can only be stimulated by one color of the pair. For example, cells for "red + green" may respond to either red or green, but not both at the same time. This is interesting enough, as many people point out that although it is possible to mix red and green, a person cannot perceive this combination in the same way that we perceive a mixture of blue and green as turquoise or red and blue as burgundy. Therefore, "red-green" is impossible, both from the standpoint of perception and from the standpoint of semantics.

All this convinces us that our biological structure plays a very important role in our perception of color and can lay a universal basis for the nature of this perception, regardless of the linguistic differences in the names of colors. In such a case, it would be strange to find differences in color perception based on language. Thus, we cannot reject the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis just because language seems to have little effect on how we perceive colors. Indeed, if we turn our attention to other areas of human behavior, we find strong evidence supporting the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

2.3 New evidence for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Since the appearance of the first scientific papers supporting and then challenging the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, many other studies have been carried out, and some of them confirm the correctness of this hypothesis.

One area of ​​human behavior that seems vulnerable to Wharfian effects is the understanding of causality, that is, how we explain why things happen the way they do.

Niekawa-Howard examines the relationship between Japanese grammar and the Japanese perception of the causes of events. In Japanese, there is traditionally one interesting passive verb form that includes the following meaning: since the subject of the sentence "was forced" to take the action expressed by the main verb, he is not responsible for the action itself and for its results. Of course, we can convey this information in English, but for this we will have to use a mountain of additional words and phrases. The Japanese verb in the passive form conveys this meaning in a veiled way. Niekawa-Howard observes that people whose native language is Japanese and who often encounter this passive form are more likely than English speakers to place responsibility on others, even if the results of the action are positive.

Another piece of evidence supporting the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis comes from Bloom, who reports that Chinese speakers are less likely than English speakers to give hypothetical interpretations of hypothetical stories. He interprets these results as strong evidence that the structure of language mediates cognitive processes because Chinese and English differ in how they convey hypothetical meaning.

In English, the subjunctive mood is used (If I were you, "if I were in your place", literally "if I were you"). In Chinese, there is no subjunctive mood in the sense of requiring a mandatory change in the form of the verb (the grammatical Chinese equivalent of the phrase "if I were in your place" in literal translation is something like this: "it will be if I am you."

Another voice in support of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the discovery by other scientists that at least some of the differences in cognitive abilities are based on differences in the structure of language. They compared the thought processes of people who speak English and Tarajumara, a language native to Mexico's Yucatán peninsula that doesn't distinguish between blue and green.

The researchers gave the participants two non-linguistic tasks, both of which involved choosing from pieces of colored glass the one that was “most different” in color from the other pieces. It turned out that participants were better at separating colors when they could use the color naming strategy, which clearly shows us that linguistic differences can affect the performance of non-linguistic tasks.

Several other works provide strong evidence in support of linguistic relativity. For example, Lucy, comparing American English with the language of the Yucatán Maya of southeastern Mexico, highlights distinctive thought patterns associated with differences in the two languages. Husain shows how the unique features of the Chinese language affect the ease of processing information. Garro, comparing American English and Mexican Spanish, demonstrates the influence of language on color memory. Site and Baker, in their study of the impact of language on the quality and order of reproduction of figures in the form of pictorial images, also conclude in favor of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Lin and Schwanenflugel, comparing English in America and Chinese in Taiwan, demonstrate the relationship between the structure of language and the structure of knowledge of categories in people who speak English and Chinese. Taken together, these works provide substantial support for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

2.4 New rebuttals of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Despite the convincing evidence in favor of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which we have just reviewed, some work still leads to results that do not support the theory of linguistic relativity. Liu, for example, disputes Bloom's interpretation of his data. Liu reports the results of five experiments designed to replicate Bloom's experiment using Chinese and English versions of the same stories Bloom used, and concludes that the propensity for hypothetical interpretations is probably unrelated to the use of the subjunctive mood in the language. Liu also failed to replicate Bloom's experiment.

Takano brings up both the conceptual and methodological problems associated with Bloom's experiments, arguing that Bloom's positive results may be the product of methodological omissions. To investigate the nature of these omissions, Takano conducted three experiments and concluded that the differences reported by Bloom could be due to differences in math skills rather than linguistic differences. There are also other studies, conducted several decades after the hypothesis was put forward, that challenge its validity. Although my acquaintance with this literature shows that such works are far inferior in quantity and quality to those studies whose results support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, they nevertheless raise important and interesting questions regarding the linguistic relativity and applicability of this theory in various cultures. So the debate around the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in the scientific literature continues, and, undoubtedly, the importance of its possible consequences and branches plays an important role here. In the absence of solid evidence to support or refute this hypothesis, some scholars have recently put forward several alternative models of the relationship between language and thought.

Perhaps the best way to make sense of this area of ​​research is to refer to the Sapir-Whorf analysis of the underlying hypothesis, which has been published for some time. Many of the scientific papers that test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis look like it's not the same hypothesis - in fact, they consider several different Sapir-Whorf hypotheses.

In 1960, Joshua Fishman published a comprehensive classification of the most important ways of discussing this hypothesis. In his description, these various approaches are ordered in ascending order of complexity. The level of complexity to which a particular version of the hypothesis can be assigned is determined by two factors. The first factor is which particular aspect of the language is of interest to researchers, such as vocabulary or grammar. The second factor is what kinds of cognitive activities of native speakers are studied, such as topics related to culture or non-linguistic issues such as performing a decision task. Of the four levels, level 1 is the easiest, and level 4 is the most difficult. Levels 3 and 4 are actually the closest to Sapir and Whorf's original ideas, which were about the grammar and syntax of a language rather than its vocabulary.

When reviewing the literature on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, it is extremely important to always pay attention to the level at which the hypothesis is being tested. The Navajo and English speaker object classification experiment is one of the few studies of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis conducted at levels 3 and 4 of the Fishman scheme.

In contrast, a significant proportion of research compares lexical differences in language with either linguistic (Fishman Level 1) or non-linguistic behavior (Fishman Level 2). Most of these papers fall into level 2, comparing the vocabulary of languages ​​and non-linguistic behavior. When such comparisons show differences in behavior, it is concluded that language is the cause of these differences. For example, if we describe in Fishman's terms an experiment concerning memory for colors, the characteristic of language here will refer to lexical/semantic (color coding), and memory should be attributed to non-linguistic types of cognitive activity.

Viewed in terms of Fishman's classification, the area of ​​lexical differences between languages ​​has been the most studied, providing only partial and weakest support for the hypothesis of linguistic relativity. Such results make sense, since vocabulary appears to be only minimally related to thought processes, which may account for some of the skepticism towards the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. However, the less explored area of ​​syntactic and grammatical differences between languages ​​provides us with compelling evidence to support the notion that language influences the way we experience the world.

CONCLUSION

Today, scientists are not focused on proving or debunking the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Instead, they explore the relationship between thought, language, and culture and describe specific mechanisms of mutual influence. Moreover, the parallels between language and thought established in recent decades are impressive even to specialists.

Disputes and discussions about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis turned out to be extremely fruitful for the development of not only linguistics, but also many humanities. However, we still cannot say for sure whether this hypothesis is true or false. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis sags in its second part. We do not really understand what thinking and consciousness are, what it means to "influence them." Some of the discussions are connected with attempts to somehow reformulate the hypothesis, to make it more testable. But, as a rule, other formulations made it less global and, as a result, reduced interest in the problem. Apparently, one of the very interesting ways in which the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was abandoned in linguistics was the use of the term "linguistic picture of the world." Thus, linguists refuse to talk about the obscure matters of "thinking" and "cognition", but introduce some beautiful, proper linguistic concept of "linguistic picture of the world" and enthusiastically describe its various fragments. It is clear that, for example, our, Russian, picture of the world and the picture of the world of feasts are very different: for example, what ideas have developed in relationships related to family, color, and the like. But, firstly, there is no single and integral linguistic picture of the world, fragments of the same language may contradict each other. For example, in the Russian picture of the world, the sky was interpreted as a high vault (hence the compound word firmament), along which the sun rises and beyond which it sets. The flat nature of the sky is also indicated by the choice of the preposition po in the phrase "Clouds are floating across the sky." However, the interpretation of the sky as space is also possible, and then the word is already combined with the preposition в. Let us recall at least a phrase from Yuri Shevchuk's song: “Autumn. Ships are burning in the sky.

Secondly, the status of the concept of "language picture of the world" is not defined. It seems to be in the competence of linguistics and partly protects linguists from criticism of other scientists. It is more or less obvious that language affects the picture of the world, but what this picture itself is, how it is connected with thinking and cognition, is completely unclear. So the introduction of a new term, while protecting linguists and allowing them to do their own thing, at the same time reduces the significance of research.

There is another very important and, perhaps, the most relevant way of reformulating the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Today, language is trying to be associated with human cognitive abilities. The word "cognitive" - ​​extraordinarily fashionable - opens all doors in our time. But, unfortunately, this does not make it any clearer. After all, in fact, "cognitive" means "associated with thinking."

Thus, it can be recognized that over the 80 years of the existence of the hypothesis, it was precisely the not very strict formulation that allowed it to become a super-productive research and methodological framework.

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