Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) was a linguist who was known for his hypotheses about the relationship between language and thinking and cognition, as well as his studies of Hebrew, Hebrew ideas, Mexican and Mayan languages and dialects, and the Hopi language.
After completing his education as a chemical engineer, he became interested in linguistics later in life, studying with Sapir at Yale University. In the last ten years of his life, he devoted his spare time to linguistic studies, doing field work on Native American languages in the United States and Mexico. He became one of the most influential linguists of his time, despite still working as a fire inspector for the Hartford Fire Insurance Company.
He published a grammar of the Hopi language, studies of Nahuatl dialects, Maya hieroglyphic writing, and the first attempt at reconstructing Uto-Aztecan. He published many articles in the most prestigious linguistic journals, many of which focused on how different linguistic systems affect the thought systems and habitual behavior of language users.
Whorf developed the theory that the way we speak and think is influenced by the language we use. This is known as the Whorf hypothesis, or the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. Whorf claimed that the structure of a language tends to affect how a speaker of that language thinks. Hence, the different language structures lead the speakers of these languages to see the world in different ways. This theory was first proposed in the 18th century by the German scholars Johann Gottfried von Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt.
It was popular in the United States in the period before World War II to believe that language shapes our thoughts and perceptions. This belief was championed by Sapir and then taken up by Whorf.
Whorf’s formulation and illustration of the hypothesis received a lot of attention. Based on his research and fieldwork on American Indian languages, the professor suggested that, for example, the way a people view time and punctuality may be influenced by the types of verbal tenses that are present in their language. Whorf concluded that the way we express ourselves – our thoughts and ideas – is shaped by the language we use. This is particularly apparent when different languages have different grammar structures. The debate around whether culture shapes language continues to be a topic of discussion.
Whorf’s health began to decline in late 1938. After undergoing cancer surgery, he fell into infertility. He was deeply affected by the death of Sapir in early 1939. In his last two years of writing, the linguist laid out a research program for linguistic relativity. Whorf’s 1939 article, “The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language”, has been widely considered to be his most definitive statement on the topic, and is often quoted.
In the last year of his life, Whorf published three articles in MIT Technology Review entitled “Science and Linguistics,” “Linguistics as an Exact Science,” and “Language and Logic.” He was also invited to contribute an article to a theosophical journal, Theosophist, published in Madras, India, on which he wrote “Language, Mind, and Reality”. In these final pieces, he offered a critique of Western science and language marking yet another excelling piece of work before his death in 1941.
