In this paper, I present the various views of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is the idea that language affects the way we think and ultimately how we see the world. Developed by Benjamin Lee Whorf and Edward Sapir, the stronger version of this hypothesis argues that language determines thought, while the weaker version suggests that language influences but does not determine our thoughts. I argue in support of the weaker version of this hypothesis, using not only Sapir and Whorf's own work as evidence but also the differing views that scholars hold of this hypothesis. More specifically, I examine studies by Hoffman, Lau, and Johnson (1986), Prins and Ulijin (1998), and Fausey and Boroditsky (2011), as support for the weaker version of the hypothesis. Ultimately I present my own version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is that all the languages in the world may be used as a way to communicate though not necessarily in the same way.

The Whorfian linguistic relativity hypothesis is a highly contested model linking cognition and perception, in which substantial cultural-linguistic differences between languages are proposed, which significantly constrain in individual's perception and world view. Due to the wide variation in color naming in cultures around the world, the constraints on naming imposed by color physics and the physiology of the visual system, and the near-ubiquitous nature of color communication, color naming has often been used as a model for testing linguistic relativity effects. However, by themselves, variations in color naming cannot give any useful information about whether color perception is affected by linguistic relativity. For this reason, we used color naming in conjunction with unique hue selection and multidimensional scaling (MDS) to test for the presence of Whorfian effects related to color naming for speakers of English and Somali, a language previously shown by our lab to show great inter-individual variation in both color naming and non-lexical measures of color perception. In Experiment I we tested English subjects using a non-metric MDS paradigm with heteroluminant stimuli and found it to generally replicate fiducial orderings of stimuli in CIE UV space. Experiment II added a unique hue selection task, and English speakers' unique hue selections in this task were concordant with those obtained from previous studies. We introduced a new method of MDS data collection, the binary sort protocol, in Experiment III, which allowed us to quickly gather MDS data from English and Somali-speaking subjects. Somali color naming showed similar patterns to previous experiments by our lab, but we were unable to gather data from a sufficient variety of Somali informants to robustly test for Whorfian effects. Somali speakers' MDS maps conformed more poorly to CIE UV space than English speakers' maps, though analysis of stress indicated that Somali subjects may use two dimensio (open full item for complete abstract)

In this dissertation, I look at selected Maya-Mam anthropological and linguistic data and suggest that they provide evidence that there exist overlapping cultural and grammatical themes that are salient to Mam speakers. The data used in this study were gathered largely via ethnographic methods based on participant observation over my twenty-five year relationship with the Mam people of Comitancillo, a town of 60,000 in Guatemala's Western Highlands. For twelve of those years, my family and I lived among the Mam, participating with them in the cultural milieu of daily life. In order to help shed light on the general relationship between language and culture, I discuss the key Mayan cultural value of centeredness and I show how this value is a pervasive organizing principle in Mayan thought, cosmology, and daily living, a value called upon by the Mam in their daily lives to regulate and explain behavior. Indeed, I suggest that centeredness is a cultural theme, a recurring cultural value which supersedes social differences, and which is defined for cultural groups as a whole (England, 1978). I show how the Mam understanding of issues as disparate as homestead construction, the town central plaza, historical Mayan religious practice, Christian conversion, health concerns, the importance of the numbers two and four, the notions of agreement and forgiveness, child discipline, and moral stance are all instantiations of this basic underlying principle. I also suggest that centeredness, in addition to being a pervasive Mam cultural principle, is also a grammatical theme, what Hale calls a “lexico-semantic…motif which functions as an integral component in a grammar” (1986: 234). This grammatical theme is instantiated in large measure, by the formal notion of origo, the “space-time-social centre” of the world (Levinson, 1983, 64). I show that the idea of spatial centeredness (or recenteredness (Hanks, 1990)) as a grammatical theme is evidenced in the Mam lexicon, as well as in (open full item for complete abstract)

This thesis examines the intersection of the dystopian novel and linguistic manipulation and projection in the last century. Through the examination of eight dystopian texts, I will consider the major linguistic changes and projections made by the authors as well as the implications of their inclusion in such dystopian worlds. I will also discuss the texts' engagements with major linguistic ideas of the twentieth century, in particular the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and linguistic relativity. The eight texts to be discussed include Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, Suzette Haden Elgin's Native Tongue, Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's 1984, Ayn Rand's Anthem, and Katharine Burdekin's Swastika Night. In line with some of the most influential theories of the century in the humanities and social sciences, language is seized by the authors of these works as a locus of control. However, their treatment of language also suggests a certain optimism that, through language and attentiveness to it, potential for positive reform may also be found.