RSSThe Language Hoax
Dec 09
AUTHOR: John H McWhorter
TITLE: The Language Hoax
SUBTITLE: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2014
REVIEWER: Peter Backhaus, Waseda University
SUMMARY
In the author’s own words, this book is a “manifesto” (ix) against the common
idea that language influences thought in any meaningful way. The main
arguments are briefly sketched in the introductory section, which describes
how this idea, best-known by the name of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or, as
the author prefers, Whorfianism, has seen a revival in recent years. This
renewed interest in possible ways that our language might shape the way we
think has been triggered by a number of widely reported experimental studies
of so-called Neo-Whorfian researchers as well as popular science books on the
topic, most notably Deutscher’s Through the Language Glass (2010), to which
the present book’s subtitle alludes. While McWhorter in his introduction
expresses a largely favorable stance towards both the research itself and the
secondary literature on it, he criticizes their somewhat self-enlarging effect
in public discussion, to the extent that grammar can easily be conceived of as
a pair of glasses that produces a certain “‘wordview’” (xviii). To show that
this is a mistake is the main aim of this book.
Chapter 1, “Studies have shown,” reviews some of the recent research within
the Neo-Whorfian paradigm, including the frequently quoted Russian color
experiment (Winawer et al. 2007) that showed different reaction times in
recognizing shades of blue depending on the participants’ first language; a
controversially discussed study on Piraha numbers (Gordon 2004), which, as may
be added here, also became a topic on LINGUIST List (e.g. Everett 2004); and
Levinson’s (1996) well-known turning-the-tables research on language and
space, among others. McWhorter one by one refutes the purported implications
of these studies, on accounts which can be summarized as follows: “I’m unaware
of a Neo-Whorfian study in which neither of these things are true: (1) it’s
hard to say what it has to do with what it is to be human, or (2) the whole
claim is like saying a tribe’s lack of a word for _calf_ is why they don’t
raise cattle” (21).
Chapter 2 is called “Having It Both Ways”, and explains just why having it
both ways is a problem. McWhorter argues against the assumption of a
complementary relationship, in which cultural patterns influence linguistic
structures, which — once in place — will have repercussions on how speakers
of that language think. At this point, McWhorter introduces his “bubbles
theory,” which holds that certain linguistic structures “pop up” at a certain
point in time not because of cultural necessity but rather by mere chance. He
exemplifies this with a discussion of the occurrence of evidential markers
across the world’s languages, as well as the lack thereof, which he considers
at least as important. McWhorter demonstrates that it is extremely difficult
to find any regularities that could be attributed to the cultural environments
in which evidential markers tend to be found. In this respect, as the author
emphasizes, languages essentially differ from cultural things such as works of
art or architecture, which are deeply imprinted by culture. Unlike these,
however, and “that’s just it — languages are not things” (55).
Chapter 3 is a brief “Interregnum On Culture,” inserted by the author to make
clear that he does consider culture an important factor in the study of
language. The best point to bring this home is the grammatical complexity of a
given language, for which a statistically robust inverse correlation has been
found with the size of a society using that language (e.g., Sinnemäki 2009).
The whole point here, however, is that culture shapes language, not vice
versa. McWhorter also takes this chapter as an opportunity to distance himself
from the generative paradigm, whose continued predominance in linguistics he
sees as one likely reason for the “spontaneous affection for Whorfianism among
so many linguists and fellow travelers” (71).
In Chapter 4, called “Dissing the Chinese,” McWhorter introduces a somewhat
uglier face of Whorfianism. The chapter centers on Bloom’s (1981) monograph on
Chinese vs. English and how, in a wider sense, the two languages and their
differing degrees of grammatical complexity can very easily be read as
differences in cognitive patterns. The one difference between Bloom’s study
and most other studies in the Whorfian paradigm, is that in the case of
Chinese and the “telegraphic nature” of its grammar, it is the ‘other’
language that seems to be somewhat deficient, thus turning the benevolent
nature of the Whorfian mission on its head. In the author’s words: “If
languages that are bubbling over with fine-grained distinctions about
materials and the definiteness or actuality of things are windows into the
minds of their speakers, then what are we to suppose Chinese’s grammar tells
us about the minds of _its_ speakers?” (77, emphasis original). As McWhorter
points out, this Mr. Hyde edition of Whorf has not commonly been pursued by
researchers, and when it was, as in the case of Bloom, it met with severe
criticism.
In Chapter 5, McWhorter intentionally puts on a Whorfian hat to explore
“What’s The Worldview From English.” He provides a detailed analysis of the
sentence “Dey try to cook it too fast, I’m-a be eatin’ some pink meat!” (106)
and the underlying thought patterns one might excavate here — if only one
wanted to. No matter how hard we try, however, and McWhorter tries fairly
hard, he concludes that there is nothing about this sentence, or any other
sentence for that matter, to be reasonably identified as indicative of a
worldview shared by the speakers of English around the globe. At the same
time, he wonders whether such a worldview wouldn’t have been attestable much
more easily if the same sentence “had been uttered by a farmer in the hills of
Vietnam” (132).
Chapter 6 is the concluding chapter, and it is called “Respect for Humanity.”
Starting with the summarizing verdict that “the visceral appeal of Whorfianism
is not scientific” (136), it recaptures the main points of the argument from
the previous chapters and formulates three major problems of Whorfianism: (1)
the question of how to deal with less favorable features in the grammar or
vocabulary of a language, (2) a frequent exotification of other cultures
and/or their languages, and (3) the way (neo-)Whorfian ideas feed into public
discourse. Particularly with regard to this last point, the book, which
clearly addresses a non-scientific audience too, concludes with an appeal to
marvel at the universals that all languages share, rather than their
differences.
EVALUATION
_The Language Hoax_ is a well-written and stimulating book that asks
uncomfortable questions and turns common arguments on their head. The author
uses examples from an impressive number of languages across the globe to
provide counter-examples to claims that may easily be made (and occasionally
have been made) about the influence of language on thought. The discussion of
evidential markers in Chapter 2 is but one example of this. In addition, and
largely thanks to Chapter 3, McWhorter manages the difficult task of properly
positioning himself within the vast territory between the two extremes of
linguistic determinism and biolinguistics. His demonstration of what may
happen when we get real about Whorf — the inconvenient conclusions that would
need to be drawn with respect to grammatically less complex languages such as
Chinese (Chapter 4) and the all too shiny pearls of wisdom one could easily
come up with when searching for the worldview of _the_ English speaker
(Chapter 5) — is at once entertaining and enlightening.
A point of criticism is the book’s tendency to take issue with the idea of
“Whorfianism” as a whole, when there are actually rather distinct camps to be
considered: Whorf and his immediate research legacy, the Neo-Whorfians with
their more sound and sober approach to the topic, popular science books such
as Deutscher’s (2010), which the author keeps referring to throughout his
argument, and a general public (rightly) perceived to be all too easily
excited over linguistic differences and their possible impacts on culture and
thought. Of course McWhorter is well aware of these camps and sure to
disentangle them on various occasions (most notably in the introduction (xix)
and the conclusion (167)). However, frequent catch-all references to
“Whorfianism”, “the Whorfian”, or “Whorfian thought” at times leave it unclear
what exactly is the respective target of his criticism.
A second issue is McWhorter’s take on the empirical findings of Neo-Whorfian
research, particularly differences in reaction time for solving certain
experimental tasks and how these are pinned down to differing first languages
of the participants. While acknowledging the empirical validity of the
differences themselves, the author disregards these “nano-peep[s]” (87) as
“weensy bias that has nothing to do with anything any psychologist,
anthropologist, or political scientist could show us about how the people in
question manage existence” (28). Given the significance of mental chronometry
in so many scientific fields, including psychology, I’m not sure if his
somewhat ridiculed “_one tenth of a second_” (9, emphasis original) should be
done away with that easily.
Finally, and perhaps related to the second point, I was a little confused by
the following statement towards the end of the book: “the media as well as
academia continue to promulgate the idea that the question as to whether each
language is a special pair of lenses is an open one” (135). To the best of my
knowledge, this question is indeed an open one and, though I’m almost
uncannily in line with the author’s views on the topic, for the time being
should remain that way. That’s how science works.
As can be seen from the above, McWhorter’s thought-provoking manifesto
provides much stuff to think about and keep the discussion on language,
culture and thought going. It is suitable for both undergraduate and graduate
classes (I just did it in one of mine, in combination with Deutscher’s book),
to provide answers to the – yes, open – question of whether the world looks
different in other languages, or just the same in any language.
REFERENCES
Bloom, Alfred H. 1981. The Linguistic Shaping of Thought: A Study in the
Impact of Language on Thinking in China and the West. Hillsdale: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
Deutscher, Guy. 2010. Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks
Different in Other Languages. London: Random House.
Everett, Daniel. 2004. Re: Mundurucu, Piraha Counting. LINGUIST List 15.3121.
https://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-3121.html
Gordon, Peter. 2004. Numerical cognition without words: Evidence from
Amazonia. Science 306. 496-499.
Levinson, Steven C. 1996. Relativity in spatial conception and description. In
J.J. Gumperz & S.C. Levinson (eds.), Rethinking Linguistic Relativity (pp.
177-202). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sinnemäki, Kaius. 2009. Complexity in core argument marking and population
size. In G. Sampson, D. Gil & P. Trudgill (eds.), Language Complexity As an
Evolving Variable (pp. 126-140). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Winawer J., Witthoft N., Frank M.C., Wu L., Wade A.R., Boroditsky L. 2007.
Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences 104(19). 7780-7785.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Peter Backhaus is Associate Professor at Waseda University, Tokyo. His main
research interests are in sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and written language.
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