The Current Status of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis. Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 4, Number 2.

The linguistic relativity hypothesis is the view that the language a person speaks influences his perception of the world. This hypothesis is frequently misunderstood to be a question of the influence of language on culture, when in reality it emphasizes the influence of language on the cognition of its speakers. This distinction between culture and cognition needs to be made clear, since the time dimension is different; the relationship between language and culture is diachronic, whereas that between language and cognition is synchronic. Lately, the hypothesis of linguistic relativity has lost influence because of the growth of interest in linguistic universals. Acceptance of one does not dictate rejection of the other, in that the two deal with language at different levels of abstraction. Experiments conducted to test the hypothesis of linguistic relativity have contributed to its loss of credibility, in that they have contained conceptual and methodological shortcomings. However, certain psychological concepts, such as selectivity and distortion in perception, offer sound support for the hypothesis. For future use, the hypothesis needs to be restricted in definition, emphasizing that language is only one of many factors influencing individual perception and cognition. (LG)