[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint
Well, you could claim that Sapir-Whorf never actually believed in hard linguistic determinism ("god gave us speech, and speech created thought"), and therefore as Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is shamed, it is really just the kooks who misunderstood who are being humiliated. I agree that Sapir and Whorf themselves were never hard linguistic determinists. That's fine with me. But in any case, it was honestly quite embarrassing. The whole idea was very poorly tested and relied on anecdotes about other "primitive" cultures to support itself. One of the key points they depend on was this assertion that Chinese language does not have counterfactuals, which is patently false if they had ever talked to a single Chinese person. Many studies have been done which show, for example, natural ability of Chinese language to handle counterfactuals. And piece by piece the anecdotes have been dismantled. Another angle on this is to look at the counter to linguistic determinism. The counter is to see language as being purely a manifestation of thought. There are compelling arguments that grammatical patterns and logical structures exist in the brain at the deepest levels. I personally think that linguistic determinism is shockingly pessimistic. Yes, we use symbols to assist us in thinking and communicating, but our symbols will *always* be a poor approximation of the powerful and crisp capabilities of our brains. Our brains can do things that will *never* be able to be represented in language, and to shackle all thinking by language is diabolical. In any case, I do not deny that language as a tool can impact thought proficiency, but as I said I believe that this case has been *vastly* overstated. It is by no means the high-order bit. > -----Original Message----- > From: jcowan@r... [mailto:jcowan@r...] > Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 10:44 AM > To: Joshua Allen > Cc: xml-dev@l... > Subject: Re: The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint > > Joshua Allen scripsit: > > > Not to spiral too quickly off-topic, but I wanted to point out that > > Sapir-Whorf has been thoroughly discredited, > > By no means. Certain strong forms have been discredited, but no SW > supporter > ever believed them anyway. > > > and although it [...] lends an air of mysterious > > authority to persons like Chomsky; > > Which persons like Chomsky did you have in mind? Not Noam himself, who > seems to hold (incorrectly IMO) that UG is incompatible with SW. > > -- > You let them out again, Old Man Willow! John Cowan > What you be a-thinking of? You should not be waking! > jcowan@r... > Eat earth! Dig deep! Drink water! Go to sleep! > www.reutershealth.com > Bombadil is talking. > www.ccil.org/~cowan
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