Linguistic Determinism

From our first moments on earth, humans began constructing a worldview. Our native language has been our intimate partner from the beginning of this journey. Each language has a unique way of coding and categorizing events, locations, objects — everything! So, it would make sense that language would affect how we perceive the world. But the question is: how much does it impact us?

The theory of linguistic determinism believes that language determines how we think. That’s a significant impact! Other theories, like linguistic relativism, agree that language impacts our thinking, but to a lesser extent. There is a lot to unpack about linguistic determinism and how language interacts with human thought.

Linguistic Determinism: Theory

A linguist named Benjamin Lee Whorf formally introduced the basic theory of linguistic determinism in the 1930s.

Anyone who knows how to speak more than one language can personally attest to the fact that the language you speak will influence how you think. A simple example is an English speaker learning Spanish; they must learn how to consider objects as either feminine or masculine because Spanish is a gendered language.

Linguistic determinism theory goes beyond recognizing the connection between language and thought, though. Proponents of linguistic determinism would argue that language controls how humans think and therefore how entire cultures are structured.

If a language lacked any terms or ways of communicating about time, for example, the culture of that language might not have a way to understand or represent time. Benjamin Whorf argued this exact notion. After studying various indigenous languages, Whorf concluded that language indeed directly influences how cultures understand reality.

Fig. 1 - Time is an example of a non-tangible phenomenon that helps shape our experience.

These findings confirmed the theory of linguistic determinism initially posited by Whorf’s teacher, Edward Sapir.

Linguistic Determinism: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Because of their work together, linguistic determinism is called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Edward Sapir was a major contributor to modern linguistics in the United States, and he devoted much of his attention to the crossover between anthropology and linguistics. Sapir studied how language and culture interact with one another and believed that language could actually be responsible for the development of culture.

His student Benjamin Whorf picked up this line of reasoning. In the early twentieth century, Whorf studied various North-American indigenous languages and found striking differences between those languages and many standard average European languages, particularly the way they reflected on and represented reality.

According to this Whorf's perspective about language, society is confined by language because language develops thought, not the reverse (which was the previous assumption).

Both Sapir and Whorf argued that language is largely responsible for creating our worldview and shapes how we experience the world, which was a novel concept.

Linguistic Determinism: Examples

Some examples of linguistic determinism include:

1. The Eskimo-Aleut Language Family includes multiple words for "snow," reflecting the importance of snow and ice in their environment. This has led to the idea that their language has shaped their perception and understanding of the physical world around them.

2. The Hopi language of Native Americans has no words for time or temporal concepts, leading to the idea that their culture and worldview does not prioritize linear time as Western cultures do.

3. The use of gendered pronouns in languages such as Spanish or French can influence how individuals perceive and assign gender roles in society.

4. The Japanese language has different words for addressing people based on their social status or relationship to the speaker, reinforcing the importance of social hierarchies in Japanese culture.

As you can see from above, there are many examples of how language influences the human brain. There are, however, varying degrees of just how central the role of language is. The following example is one of the more “extreme” cases of language influencing how people understand their existence.

There are two tenses in Turkish grammar, for example, definite past tense and reported past tense.

• Definite past tense is used when the speaker has personal, usually firsthand, knowledge of an event.

  • Adds one of the suffixes dı/di/du/dü to the verb root

• Reported past tense is used when the speaker only knows about something through indirect means.

  • Adds one of the suffixes mış/miş/muş/müş to the verb root

Fig. 2 - If you want to discuss an earthquake in Turkish, you'd first need to decide your level of experience.

Due to this distinction, Turkish speakers must adjust their use of language based on the nature of their involvement or knowledge of a past event. Language, in this case, influences their understanding of past events and how to communicate about them.

Linguistic Determinism Criticisms

The work of Sapir and Whorf has been largely criticized.

Research examining the role of language in human thought processes and behavior has been mixed. Generally speaking, it’s agreed that language is one of many factors to influence thought and behavior. There are many instances where the structure of a particular language requires speakers to think in light of how the language is formed (remember the gender example in Spanish).

Today, research points to a “weak” version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as a more likely way to explain the interplay between language and the human perception of reality.

Linguistic Determinism vs. Linguistic Relativity

The “weaker” version of linguistic determinism is known as linguistic relativity.

Although the terms may be used interchangeably, the difference is that linguistic relativity argues that language influences — as opposed to determines — the way humans think. Again, there is a consensus in the psycholinguistic community that language is inextricably connected to each person's worldview.

Linguistic relativity explains that there is a degree to which languages might vary in their expression of a single concept or way of thinking. No matter what language you speak, you have to be mindful of the meaning that is grammatically marked in that language. We see this in the way the Navajo language uses verbs according to the shape of the object to which they’re attached. This means Navajo speakers are likely more aware of the shape of objects than speakers of other languages.

In this way, meaning and thought may be relative from language to language. Much more research is needed in this area to fully explain the relationship between thought and language. For now, linguistic relativity is accepted as the more reasonable approach to express this part of the human experience.