Linguistic relativity  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Definitional issues and debates[edit]  The concept of linguistic
relativity holds that cognitive processes, such as thought and
experience, may be influenced by the categories and patterns of
the language a person speaks. Empirical research into the
question has been associated mainly with the names of Benjamin
Lee Whorf, who wrote on the topic in the 1930s, and his mentor
Edward Sapir, who did not himself write extensively on the
topic. Whorf's writings became the focus of empirical studies in
psychology in the mid 20th century, and this strand of research
often referred to the question as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, or
sometimes the Whorfian hypothesis. This usage has been
criticized as a misnomer, since Sapir and Whorf did not in fact
formulate a hypothesis for empirical research, and because it is
unclear to what extent Sapir actually subscribed to the idea of
language influencing