[PREV - CLASSIC_NAMES]    [TOP]

WHORF_THREE

                                             December 05, 2013
                                             April    21, 2014

I've been known to complain about Count
Korzybski getting no credit for his ideas,               EXCEPTION
e.g. academics seem to prefer phrases like
"the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis" for what I might call the        Roughly: the idea that the
"Korzybski Doctrine".                        structure of language greatly
                                             influences thought and perception.
But apparently I'm not the only one
who's noticed this oddity, and I've
late I've been seeing the phrase:
                                          
  Sapir-Whorf-Korzybski Hypothesis           
                                       [link] 

And further, this line of thinking has
been resuscitated of late by the work of
Lera Boroditsky of Stanford's Cognitive
Science Department, who has done some
experiments showing that color perception
is strongly influenced by the words you
have for colors: in the Russian language
they subdivide what we call Blue into two
other colors, Russians can perceive
shades of blue more easily.
                                                  The medium-strength
  She also makes the point that                   form of the
  "Whorfian" ideas have been expressed            Sapir-Whorf-Korzybski
  by many thinkers throughout history,            Hypothesis.
  so I expect we can look forward to              With cinnamon on top.
  long chains of hyphenated names.                
                                                  (Though I gather that  
                                                  "Linguistic Relativism"
                                                  is the term that's     
                                                  actually winning.)     
                                                                         
                                                                         
                                                                         
      George Boole, "The Laws of Thought" (1854):                        
                                                      
      "That Language is an instrument of human reason,
      and not merely a medium for the expression of   
      thought, is a truth generally admitted."        









--------
[NEXT - ARTIFICIAL_SLANG]