Click here to listen to ‘The science and fiction of Sapir-Whorf’
It's a fun science fiction trope: learn a mysterious alien language and acquire superpowers, just like if you'd been zapped by a cosmic ray or bitten by a radioactive spider. But what's the linguistics behind this idea found in books like Babel-17, Embassytown, or the movie Arrival?
In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about the science and fiction of linguistic relativity, popularly known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. We talk about a range of different things that people mean when they refer to this hypothesis: a sciencey-sounding way to introduce obviously fictional concepts like time travel or mind control, a reflection that we add new words all the time as convenient handles to talk about new concepts, a note that grammatical categories can encourage us to pay attention to specific areas in the world (but aren't the only way of doing so), a social reflection that we feel like different people in different environments (which can sometimes align with different languages, though not always). We also talk about several genuine areas of human difference that linguistic relativity misses: different perceptive experiences like synesthesia and aphantasia, as well as how we lump sounds into categories based on what's relevant to a given language.
Finally, we talk about the history of where the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis comes from, why Benjamin Lee Whorf would have been great on TikTok, and why versions of this idea keep bouncing back in different guises as a form of curiosity about the human condition no matter how many specific instances get disproven.
Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.
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Here are the links mentioned in the episode:
Lingthusiasm episode 'Arrival of the linguists'
History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences podcast episode 31: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
‘The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’ by Harry Hoijer (1954) (archive.org)
Lingthusiasm bonus episode ‘North, left, or towards the sea? Interview with Alice Gaby’
'Samuel R. Delany, The Art of Fiction No. 210' Interview by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah for The Paris Review (unpaywalled photos here)
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Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.
Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.
Here’s the link again to ‘The science and fiction of Sapir-Whorf’
Thanks for listening, and stay Lingthusiastic!
Lauren & Gretchen
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