Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941)

I was reading this in German and did not finish. Certainly this is a book that probably shouldn't be translated, but would need to be totally rewritten for the new language. The fact that it was even attempted, and that decades after the book was first published, shows the important place Whorf holds in the history of linguistics.

Having said that in an attempt to be fair, I quit because of Wharf and not because of the translation. I am not interested in theosophism. If I want to learn Sanscrit terms I will do it in a book about Hinduism or yoga, and not as a few pages in the middle of a linguistic argument. Without wanting to reduce what we owe him, the points he taught are available in more modern, better written books.

Bottom line: If you need to read Wharf for historical reasons, do it in English. If you want to learn about language, read more recent books by his students.… (plus d'informations)

Whorf has been used, abused, lionized, trampled, resurrected, and the funny thing is it seems more like coincidence than anything else. It's a classic idea, linguistic relativism. Your language determines--shapes--influences--reflects--indicates--your worldview. An unavoidable idea, whatever you think about it. Whorf's version is very reasonable, openhanded, suddenly extreme and absurd, and then okay again. He sees language as a cultural product, and cultures as radically different and amazing. He celebrates the human palimpsest, and in doing so exoticizes the other in all the ways with which we are very familiar. But underneath he's about bringing us together--he's a universalist, really, even a theosophist, who says look, the more worldviews (each different and amazing) we can apply to that golden something called meaning, by which he really means being (his relativity is based explicitly on Einstein's), the better we'll be able to see it for what it is. He thought a great transformation was coming, and he really really wanted to talk to people about it, and it makes him a lovably pathetic figure--this book traces his in his roles as amateur Mayan decryptographer, fire inspector (fire inspector! no wonder he wanted to dream of magic words), den mother for Sapir's crew of brilliant anth grads, respected authority, crackpot--and you see that he really just wanted to talk and have you listen and agree, and be as enthusiastic as he was, and he shaped his message to different audiences as a result. That's not so rare, and it's an understandable reason for a bit of inconsistency. I bet if he had put this book together himself he'd have left out all the Mayan stuff (it's irrelevant, and a man can have two books) and composed this as a paean to the richness and multiplicity of the human capacity to interpret the world, and these ideas would be at once less attacked and defended, more taken for granted. Who knows? Maybe even the theosophy.… (plus d'informations)