The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and Practice
Saturday, July 18th, 2009I recently read an article about a scientist doing experiments on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis that basically should that certain linguistic features correlated with skills or perceptions.
The perceptive associations, such as gender with nouns like keys or death, are probably caused by the consistent differences speakers have in their internal lexicon from their native language. This isn’t unique to language, but to life experience or exposure to different association. For instance, a cardiologist and a sports coach would associate different things with “heart”. The cardiologist would probably focus more on physiology, while the sports coach would associate it with bravery, spirit and tenacity.
The other intriguing difference is the measured difference in perceptual skills depending on the speakers native language. Now the article I linked to earlier emphasized that this proves linguistic determinism (the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis). However, I think that it probably has to do more with how people practice these skills. If you have to perceive something every time you construct a sentence, you would get really good at it!
Corey Haines’ video about practice really hit this home to me. Languages that have differences in how they are constructed just provide excellent opportunities to develop these skills. The same phenomenon happens with non-linguistic skills, be it playing an instrument, drawing in a specific style or programming in a specific language. Practiced skills become second nature, part of the subconscious mental processes we don’t even consciously realize are happening.
