"Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation." (Sapir, 1958 [1929], p. 69)
"We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds - and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees." (Whorf, 1940, pp. 213–14)
"Contrary to popular belief, the Eskimos do not have more words for snow than English. They do not have four hundred words for snow, as it has been claimed in print, or two hundred, or one hundred, or forty-eight, or even nine. One dictionary puts the figure at two. Counting generously, experts can come up with about a dozen, but by such standards English would not be far behind, with snow, sleet, slush, blizzard, avalanche, hail, hardpack, powder, flurry, dusting, and a coinage of Boston's WBZ-TV meteorologist Bruce Schwoegler, snizzling." (Pinker, The Language Instinct (1994), p. 64)
6 Further reading
Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. by Benjamin Whorf, edited by John Carroll. MIT Press.
Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality. By Edward Sapir, edited by David G. Mandelbaum. University of California Press.
Language Diversity and Thought: A Reformulation of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis. By John Lucy. Cambridge University Press.
Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. Edited by John Gumperz. Cambridge University Press.
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. By Steven Pinker. Perennial.
The Languages of Pao—science fiction novel depicting a social engineer who designs new languages for societies that wish to change their lot
Babel-17—science fiction novel by Samuel R. Delany that supposes that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is strongly true, depicting a fictional language, Babel-17, which causes anyone who learns it to become a traitor to their political organisation.
non-sexist language—often promoted on the grounds that sexist attitudes are aided by sexist language
Lojban—a language designed in part to test the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by placing radically different constraints on speakers
Anthem— Ayn Rand's short novel where the word "I" is prohibited by a collectivist state
Nuspeak —a language found in Robert Heinlein's short story " Gulf", which is designed to increase the speed of thinking by expressing concepts more compactly
