Because these parameters are so ingrained, the speaker of that language doesn't even recognize he's bound by them, and assumes his interpretation is logical and the only possible way of interpreting the data he receives. It's more that a person is unconsciously predisposed, because of the language that he speaks, to interpret the phenomena that surrounds him in a particular way. What an original thinker! It's doubtful I can encapsulate his ideas in a review-I don't know I'd actually agree with the 're-wire your brain' idea, at least not from the readings in this book.
It's got a shaky beat and you really can't dance to it.īut measuring the book by that kind of objective criteria misses the point entirely, I think. So by any kind of objective rating, one could easily rate the book 4 or even 3 stars. Unfortunately, in the layout of this book, there are pieces that deal with pure linguistic topics (which were completely over my head) and, due to the nature of this collection, quite a bit of repetition. To me, I found Whorf's ideas fascinating-the absolute truth or falsity of them is immaterial, because thinking about what Whorf was saying really engaged me, kind of fired my imagination and literally opened up another way of viewing the world. I've given this book five stars, but it comes with caveats-or maybe it just isn't your typical five star book. Whorf himself would probably have wanted to make more modest claims. A quick search (thanks, IMDb!) proved it so, though the use the film puts it to is firmly in the realm of science-fiction. It was interesting to run across this book only a few months after I'd seen this film-I didn't remember the name mentioned in the quote at the time, but after reading through Whorf's writings, it struck me that what he was talking about sounded a lot like what the characters in the film had been talking about. Louise Banks: Yeah, it affects how you see everything. It's the theory that the language you speak determines how you think and.ĭr. Ian Donnelly: Yeah, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Louise Banks: If you immerse yourself into a foreign language, then you can actually rewire your brain.
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