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"On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen."
>> Kingsnorth said this is because the words we use to describe our world shape our perception of it. That's the concept of Linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity The strong version says that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories. The weak version says that linguistic categories…
>> Kingsnorth said this is because the words we use to describe our world shape our perception of it. That's the concept of Linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity The strong version says that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories. The weak version says that linguistic categories…
The weak version seems true to me. I think it is absolutely the case that your language colors your thought.
If you like The Wake , you might also enjoy Riddley Walker ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riddley_Walker ), which uses an imaginary psuedo-iron-age dialect transcribed phonetically: "On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen."
It's not, it's just phonetic transcription of modern urban English with some SMS-style typing errors thrown in.
Really disappointed with the crappy low-effort linguistics in that book.
>> Kingsnorth said this is because the words we use to describe our world shape our perception of it. That's the concept of Linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity The strong version says that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories. The weak version says that linguistic categories…
The strong version is hilariously easy to destroy: if you're cognitively limited to your language, then you cannot create new words, let alone new concepts. Since it is patently false that no new words or new concepts are created, by Modus Tollens, it is also false that you are cognitively limited to your language. The weak version seems true to me. I think it is absolutely the case that your language colors your tho…
Now, we can, here and now, 'invent' a 'new' word from what we believe to be whole cloth. But it's hard to prove that that there's not some unconscious process similar to the above going on! That really all we're doing is finding the intersections of existing semantic distributions.
Incidentally, my favorite SIGBOVIK paper: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/papers/sigbovik2011tom7whatword...
If you like The Wake , you might also enjoy Riddley Walker ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riddley_Walker ), which uses an imaginary psuedo-iron-age dialect transcribed phonetically: "On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen."
> psuedo-iron-age It's not, it's just phonetic transcription of modern urban English with some SMS-style typing errors thrown in. Really disappointed with the crappy low-effort linguistics in that book.
>> Kingsnorth said this is because the words we use to describe our world shape our perception of it. That's the concept of Linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity The strong version says that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories. The weak version says that linguistic categories…
The strong version is hilariously easy to destroy: if you're cognitively limited to your language, then you cannot create new words, let alone new concepts. Since it is patently false that no new words or new concepts are created, by Modus Tollens, it is also false that you are cognitively limited to your language. The weak version seems true to me. I think it is absolutely the case that your language colors your tho…
Those thoughts are heavily influenced by culture, and language is a strong tool for communicating culture, but it's not the only one. Apes communicate culture by watching rather than speaking, and my cat learns that she's not supposed to go on the table even though she doesn't understand when I tell her.
So while language and thought patterns may be correlated, the arrow of causation isn't necessarily one way. Experiments that show people thinking in certain grooves divided by language, but concluding that the latter causes the former may be putting the cart before the horse.
I actually just picked up 'The Wake' a couple of weeks ago. There is definitely a learning curve to Kingsnorth's "shadow tongue," but once you get the hang of it, it is very immersive and rewarding to read. It really gives you a sense of foreign place and time, as a story set in 1066 should. What surprised me is how effective it is at establishing a perspective from which you can really feel the relationship that the…
>> Kingsnorth said this is because the words we use to describe our world shape our perception of it. That's the concept of Linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity The strong version says that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories. The weak version says that linguistic categories…
My subjective experience of flow states[1] makes me believe this is true. In these states thinking feels much less discrete (which is something language seems to impose) and more continuous. Any programmer knows what this feels like when you get into a serious coding session. You get to the point where all the principles of programming fade from your attention and focus more on how information is being shaped by your…