How Language Seems to Shape One's View of the World

>People can understand concepts without having the words to express them, and if need be, can always find new ways to express them in words, coining new terms if necessary.

You can find some very interesting examples of this from Chinese internet terminology. In an environment where "thoughtcrime" exists in some form, Chinese internet users have developed a lexicon of strange-sounding euphemisms for things that are forbidden to be discussed.

http://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/The_Grass-Mud_Horse_Lexic...

http://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Grass-Mud_Horse_Lexicon

The biggest problem, from my point of view, with language is the construction of objective statements to convey subjective values.

I was using the computer languages as a facetious example to illustrate a point, the idea being that a context one is immersed in colors perceptions, and I was simply stating that applied to a human language, I don't see why that wouldn't be the case.

There is actually quite a lot of evidence against a universal grammar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar#Criticisms), and I don't understand how one could even begin to say that everyone necessarily develops the same grammatical concepts at any useful degree of practicality. The idea of a subjunctive tense only exists implicitly in English, yet is prevalent in many Romance languages (and others). In Ancient Greek, the concept of singular and plural were joined distinctly by the concept of pair, which exists currently in no language that I can think of (and certainly isn't popular if it exists). In English, nouns are not explicitly marked to indicate role in the sentence (left up to ordering and ultimately subjective, implicit interpretation), which is easily taken care of in other languages like German, Russian and Hungarian with a case system. Hell, English doesn't even have a stand-alone future tense (i.e., a verb conjugation) ...how exactly can we make any argument for a universal grammar, when there exists so many grammatical concepts in other languages that aren't actually possible in any explicit sense even in English? If I've misunderstood your usage of the phrase "Universal Grammar", I apologize for my ignorance.

If a writing system doesn't count (it's a fair point, and I understand what you're saying), then how does one counter the evidence in the article that one speaker of one language does a task better than speakers of a different language?

If my language is, for example, French or (older) Welsh, and my counting system is vigesimal (base 20), why is it wrong to claim that a person who speaks French would have an easier time with the basic idea of base 20 math, or just counting in terms of 20's, than a native English speaker, assuming no extra training on the part of either? Why is it wrong to assume that a language with a case system would yield native speakers who were better at explicitly identifying the subject and object of a sentence than speakers of languages that don't have a case system?

I just have a hard time grasping how people conditioned to think a certain way via their (or, a) language couldn't have a better understanding of some concepts than others.

>I cannot comment on the political motivations to deny linguistic relativism. I am just a linguist.

Sorry if you felt that I was pigeonholing you, thanks for your input.

I agree. The article is titled "How Language Seems To Shape One's View Of The World" whereas the scientific consensus for the past half century has been the opposite, and very little evidence has come to light over the past half century to change this. The beginning of the article is given to the ideas of a heterodox associate professor at UCSD. Further down in the article John McWhorter affirms the orthodox view (his speciality is slightly tangential to the question).

There is a mountain of evidence supporting the orthodox view, and the Boroditsky's, the Daniel Everett's etc. have not come up with much conflicting evidence or compelling alternative hypotheses. Is there any prominent scientist in this or a related field who subscribes to these Sapir-Whorf type theories? The hey day of this idea was before World War II, and the alternative theories may get play on NPR and the like, but not within the scientific community. Until, as I said, compelling evidence to the contrary is seen.