Languages Reflect Societies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Languages Reflect Societies - Essay Example This word still aptly describes the hypothesis up to these days attracting continued studies about the relationship between language, thought and culture. Its strong version called Linguistic Determinism, posits that â€Å"people’s thoughts are determined by categories made available by their language† (Pinker, 1994, p. 57), that â€Å"language may determine our thinking patterns† (Liang, 2011, pp. 569-570), or that â€Å"one cannot think outside the confines of their language† (He, 2011, p. 562). Linguistic Relativity which is its weaker version, maintains that â€Å"differences among languages cause differences in thoughts of their speakers† (Pinker, 1994, p.57). Among the articles that I have read, I summarized the strengths and weakness of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis in Table 1. Pinker (1994) thoroughly debunked the hypothesis in his book The Language Instinct. From the circumstances that contributed to Whorf’s formation of the hypothesis – to the two aspects of the theory, the strong and weak versions, Pinker (1994) questioned them all using anthropological and logical reasoning and results of empirical studies. As Pinker (1994, p. 67) have said, â€Å"Linguistic determinism is just a conventional absurdity†. Liang (2011) also examined the same hypothesis and came up with views similar to the ones maintained by Pinker. The study of Chi-Shing and Altarriba (2008) yielded a result contrary to the theory. Though He (2011) in his study acknowledged the shortcomings of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis due to lack of empirical evidences, he focused on cross-cultural communication which made the hypothesis in one way, promote cultural diversity. If there are studies that question the authenticity of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, there are studies that support the views of Sapir and Whorf. One such study is that of Kodish (2003). As he penned it, Whorf â€Å"did not posit a language isolated from human behavior-in-a-culture as the sole, one-directional, single-valued