Sentence examples for linguistic relativism from inspiring English sources
& yet, in a recent article about Russian politics in "Time" the word was used as though it were an untranslatable idiom... Linguistics call the belief that words determine thoughts "linguistic relativism".
One of the first linguists to defend a general form of universalism against linguistic relativism, thus presupposing that they conflict, was Julia Penn (1972).
This emphasis on the linguisticality of understanding does not, however, lead Gadamer into any form of linguistic relativism.
What's the allure of linguistic relativism?
With linguistic relativism thus disposed of, the threat of linguistic idealism also is removed.
It is the spectre of Benjamin Lee Whorf and the theory of linguistic relativism to which he gave his name.
According to its strongest interpretation, the hypothesis implies linguistic conceptual relativism, or "linguistic relativity," the idea that language so completely determines the thoughts of its users that there can be no common conceptual scheme between people speaking different languages.
There is much important work yet to be done on testing the range of Whorfian hypotheses and other forms of linguistic conceptual relativism, and on understanding the significance of any Whorfian hypotheses that turn out to be well supported.
Thus, the truth of Whorfian hypotheses is equated with global linguistic relativism a well known self-undermining form of relativism.
This particular approach to relativism is often expressed in explicitly linguistic terms and is favored by philosophers interested in the semantic dimensions of relativism.
As one of the most popular linguistic theories, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is rooted in "cultural relativism" and was based on the idea that "one's entire sense of reality shifts as one passes from one community to the next…" (O'Neill 2008).
