Linguistic subcultures and social work practice.

The article discusses linguistic subcultures in social work practice. The article argues that social workers should realize that people from cultural backgrounds different from their own would actually perceive the same situations and objects differently than they do. In linguistics, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that language not only reflects cultural differences but that it determines them. The forms of a person's thoughts are controlled by patterns learned early, of which he is mostly unconscious. The fact of the matter is that the real world is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached. An illustration of linguist Benjamin Lee Whorl's hypothesis is his claim that different concepts of time and space are dictated by different languages. European languages, like English, force speakers to view objects or events as either having been, being, or as they will be in contrast, in the Hopi Indian language tenses discriminate a period that extends up to and includes the present, a future, and a generalized timelessness governing things that have always been true. Subcultures use their own particular dialect of a language, including jargon and idioms which effectively exclude outsiders from full participation in that subculture.