Benjamin Whorf

Benjamin Whorf
American linguist
hopi indians of north america and european languages
no words for time
no concept of abstract time
language determines our experience to our reality
we see and think

Benjamin Whorf, who's full name is Benjamin Lee Whorf, was born on April 24, in 1897. He turned out to become an American linguist ( and at the same time a fire prevention engineer). He is well known for his linguistic theories and ideas, his main concept concerning the way we view the world, and the way language is also able to determine our experience to reality. This idea has been named the "Sapir- Whorf hypothesis". Whorf himself called it the principle of linguistic relativity, in relation to Einsteins principle of physical relativity. This hypothesis encompasses the idea that a structure of a language affects the point of view from which the speaker or the listener conceptualize the world. This is related to an absolute truth, for according to Whorf, all languages create a different point of view for the people, and we there fore have varied outcomes from our cognitive processes. Whorf and his mentor Edward Sapir, after whom the theory was also partially named, hypothesized that there was no concept of abstract time. Whorf gained this insight when stumbling across the Hopi Indians of North America, who had no definable or specified concept of time, leading Whorf to question European definition of time and the words we use for this concept in European language. The Hopi Indian culture did not view the flow of time as a sequence of seperate events, like a day, etc, instead they view it as one unified process.This leads to the lack of nouns in the language that refer to units of time, as we have minutes or hours or days. As discussed in "What is Language", this once again proves that we define our own reality, with our words. If we did not have these words for time, which we created, we would not have the same concept of time as we are used to now. Whorf stated that the Hopi view of time was the basis for the other perspectives to their lives, behavioral patterns and culture. He died on July 26, 1941, at the age of 44 in Conneticut, but left behind this concept for other linguists to explore.