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1、Sapir-Whorf hypothesis 萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说 1. The philosophical basis of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is empirical and the theoretical background is structuralism.萨丕尔和沃尔夫是语言相对论思想的集大成者。2. While we reject the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, its weaker version is generally accepted by most scholars.尽
2、管我们反对萨丕尔-沃尔夫假设的强假设，而大部分学者却普遍接受了其弱假设。Sapir-Whorf hypothesis l Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, proclaimed that the structure of the language people habitually use influences the ways they think and behave, i.e. different languages offer people different ways of expressing the world around, they think
3、 and speak differently, this is also known as linguistic relativity.l Sapir and Whorf believe that language filters peoples perception and the way they categorize experiences. This interdependence of language and thought is now known as Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.Strong version & weak version l Strong v
4、ersion believes that the language patterns determine peoples thinking and behavior;l Weak version holds that the former influence the latter. -The study of the linguistic relativity or SWH has shed two important insights:l There is nowadays a recognition that language, as code, reflects cultural pre
5、occupations and constrains the way people think.l More than in Whorfs days, however, we recognize how important context is in complementing the meanings encoded in the language.Much was made of the Inuit language where there is no precise equivalent to the single English word snow.Because snow is su
6、ch an important part of survival of people of the north, they had nineteen different words that varied according to the condition of snow.At first, some argued that this was only a matter of what sizes and shapes of boxes are the words we use in which to put experiences.In English, however, we have
7、no single word meaning the chemical, di-hydrogen oxide (H2O).If you want to object and say, But we have the word water, let me point out that the word water does not apply to conditions of H2O when it is frozen, crystallized or vaporized, for which we have other words (ice, snow, steam, fog, clouds,
8、 humidity).From the time we are born, we are inundated with thousands of bits of information per second, as sound, smell, touch, temperature and sight.They are many and random. In themselves, they have no meanings.It is only through our interaction with other human beings that we begin to apply meaning, and we start to put a range of different information bits into the same categories, words.Those words, or categories of large numbers of information bits, differ from language to language.
