Whorf, Benjamin Lee (redirected from Whorf)

Whorf, Benjamin Lee (hwôrf), 1897–1941, American linguist and anthropologist, b. Winthrop, Mass. Although he was trained in chemical engineering and worked for an insurance company, Whorf made substantial contributions to Mayan and Aztec linguistics. He collaborated with Edward Sapir at Yale Univ. in anthropological linguistics, and helped to develop the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. Also known as the linguistic relativity principle, the theory argues against the view that the categories and distinctions of any given language are natural and given by external reality. Instead, it posits language as a finite array of formal (lexical and grammatical) categories that group an infinite variety of experiences into usable classes, vary across cultures, and, as a guide to the interpretation of experiences, influence thought.

Bibliography

See Whorf's selected writings, Language, Thought, and Reality (1959).

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Whorf, Benjamin Lee

(born April 24, 1897, Winthrop, Mass., U.S.—died July 26, 1941, Wethersfield, Conn.) U.S. linguist. He worked professionally as a fire-prevention authority. The concept he developed (under Edward Sapir's influence) of the equation of culture and language became known as the Whorf (or Sapir-Whorf) hypothesis. He maintained that a language's structure tends to condition the ways its speakers think—for example, that the way a people views time and punctuality may be influenced by the types of verb tenses in its language. Whorf was also noted for his studies of Uto-Aztecan languages, especially Hopi, and Mayan hieroglyphic writing.

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Whorf, Benjamin Lee (1897–1941) linguist, chemical engineer; born in Winthrop, Mass. After receiving his B.S. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1918), he began a lucrative lifelong career at the Hartford Fire Insurance Company (1919–41), where he specialized in fire hazards and prevention. In 1925 he renewed a childhood interest in Central America and in 1930 he traveled to Mexico. In 1931 he enrolled in Edward Sapir's American Indian linguistics course at Yale University. Through his work in comparative linguistics in studies of Hebrew, Mayan, Aztec, and Hopi languages and cultures, he developed the "Whorf-Sapir hypothesis"—that the grammatical structure of a language affects the culture of its speakers by conditioning the ways in which they think.