# Linguistic Relativity **Domain:** Cognitive Science / Linguistics **Doc Type:** Concept Node **Maturity:** Developing **Aliases:** Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (weak form); language-perception effects ## Definition **Linguistic relativity is the proposition, supported in its weak form by experimental evidence, that the structure of a language measurably influences how its speakers perceive, categorize and remember.** ## Evidence Winawer, Witthoft, Frank, Wu, Wade and Boroditsky (*PNAS*, May 2007) showed that Russian speakers, whose language obliges a distinction between light blue (*goluboy*) and dark blue (*siniy*), discriminate colours across that boundary faster than within it, and that the advantage disappears under verbal interference; English speakers show no such boundary effect. Christiansen and Chater (*Behavioral and Brain Sciences*, 2008) supply the evolutionary complement: language is an organism shaped by its learners, and the organism in turn structures its hosts' cognition. ## Corpus Reading If vocabulary shapes perception, then the institution that fixes a language's reference edition shapes what its speakers find natural to see and think. That is the cognitive basis of [[wiki/Semantic Jurisdiction|semantic jurisdiction]] and of the parasitic-interface thesis in [[articles/Kybernetik Anthropology and The Colonial Architecture of Digital Intelligence|Kybernetik Anthropology]]; [[articles/war with empire/Authorship of the West|Authorship of the West]] applies it to the machine reference layer. ## Relationships - **Concepts:** [[wiki/Language|Language]] · [[wiki/Semantic Jurisdiction|Semantic Jurisdiction]] · [[wiki/Semiotic Colonization|Semiotic Colonization]] · [[wiki/Lexicographic Succession|Lexicographic Succession]] · [[wiki/Superior Parasitic Capture|Superior Parasitic Capture]]. - **Source article:** [[articles/war with empire/Authorship of the West|Authorship of the West]]. - **Omission:** [[wiki/Lexical Omission|Lexical Omission]]. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > “Language is the expression of ideas; and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas, they cannot retain an identity of language.” > **— Noah Webster**, *Preface to An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828* [[reminders/Information/A People Without an Identity of Ideas Cannot Keep an Identity of Language by Noah Webster|A People Without an Identity of Ideas Cannot Keep an Identity of Language by Noah Webster]] > “Following Darwin, we view language itself as a complex and interdependent “organism,” which evolves under selectional pressures from human learning and processing mechanisms. That is, languages themselves are shaped by severe selectional pressure from each generation of language users and learners.” > **— Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater**, *“Language as shaped by the brain,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2008* [[reminders/Evolution/Language Is an Organism Shaped by Each Generation of Learners by Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater|Language Is an Organism Shaped by Each Generation of Learners by Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater]] > “I am apt to imagine, that, were the imperfections of language, as the instrument of knowledge, more thoroughly weighed, a great many of the controversies that make such a noise in the world, would of themselves cease; and the way to knowledge, and perhaps peace too, lie a great deal opener than it does.” > **— John Locke**, *An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690* [[reminders/Information/Many Controversies Would Cease If the Imperfections of Language Were Weighed by John Locke|Many Controversies Would Cease If the Imperfections of Language Were Weighed by John Locke]] ## Sources / Provenance - Jonathan Winawer et al., [Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0701644104) (*PNAS* 104:19, May 2007). - Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater, [Language as shaped by the brain](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/language-as-shaped-by-the-brain/EA4ABB50915417A1A10569707F574F5E) (*Behavioral and Brain Sciences*, 2008).