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Talk:Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (view source)
Revision as of 04:00, February 28, 2009
, 04:00, February 28, 2009no edit summary
::Here's a nice quote from [[George Orwell]], author of ''1984'':
::Here's a nice quote from [[George Orwell]], author of ''1984'':
::*"The purpose of [[Newspeak]] was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc [English Socialism], but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought--that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc--should be literally unthinkable, at least as far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect method. This was done partly by the invention of new words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever...A person growing up with Newspeak as his sole language would no more know that ‘equal' had once had the secondary meaning of "politically equal," or that ‘free' had once meant "intellectually free," than, for instance, a person who had never heard of chess would be aware of the secondary meanings attaching to ‘queen' or ‘rook.' [http://www.angelfire.com/journal/worldtour99/sapirwhorf.html] --[[User:Ed Poor|Ed Poor]] <sup>[[User talk:Ed Poor|Talk]]</sup> 09:55, 27 February 2009 (EST)
::*"The purpose of [[Newspeak]] was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc [English Socialism], but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought--that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc--should be literally unthinkable, at least as far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect method. This was done partly by the invention of new words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever...A person growing up with Newspeak as his sole language would no more know that ‘equal' had once had the secondary meaning of "politically equal," or that ‘free' had once meant "intellectually free," than, for instance, a person who had never heard of chess would be aware of the secondary meanings attaching to ‘queen' or ‘rook.' [http://www.angelfire.com/journal/worldtour99/sapirwhorf.html] --[[User:Ed Poor|Ed Poor]] <sup>[[User talk:Ed Poor|Talk]]</sup> 09:55, 27 February 2009 (EST)
==Clarification needed==
I heard that the Hypothesis was mainly developed as backstory for the 1966–1969 [[television]] series ''[[Star Trek]]''. ''Star Trek'' featured an [[alien]] race called the "[[Klingon]]s", who could speak accented [[English]] but preferred to communicate in their own invented language of gutteral grunts. The Klingons' language was constructed to sound harsh and warlike, and its [[dictionary]] was filled with words for [[weapon]]s and [[military]] [[tactics]]. As a result, ''Star Trek'''s Klingon character [[Lieutenant Worf]] was written as a belligerent weapons specialist. A [[throwaway line]] in one episode referred to the Sapir hypothesis as the "Sapir-Worf hypothesis", and the linguistics community adopted the extra [[eponym]] — possibly just because the extra syllable sounded better, or perhaps because many academic linguicians at the time were avid "Trekkies". Does that sound plausible to you? --[[User:MarianT|MarianT]] 23:00, 27 February 2009 (EST)