The Case for Linguistic Determinism in Social Research. Papers from the Michigan Linguistic Society Meeting, Vol. 1, No. 2.

Social scientists have tended to neglect the relationship of language and "reality" in their formulations of mind, self, and society. Recently, however, a flurry of studies dealing with the congruence of language, cognition, and society has emerged. The initial sources of this concern may be traced to the rich tradition of the French school of Durkheim, the symbolic interaction perspective of American sociology, and the early efforts of Boas and his students in American Indian studies. But, perhaps an even greater impetus was furnished by the language-world view analysis. Humboldt, Boas, Cassirer, Sapir, Whorf, and Hoijer, among others, have been concerned with the character of language in its role as foundation and instrumentality of the social construction of reality. The so-called nominalistic, or extreme, interpretation of linguistic determinism, usually associated with the work of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, will be reviewed in this paper to assess: (1) the present state of the linguistic determinism argument, (2) the research generated from this positions, (3) present trends in sociolinguistics, and (4) recent efforts to articulate a linguistically-based social science. (Author)