To what extent does language dictate our thought...

to what extent does language dictate our thought. Can you really not think of a concept/have understanding of it if there is no definition or word for that concept?

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It's more likely the other way around. Language is an expression of an ethnic group's average intelligence.

Only if you're too pussy to make language your bitch.

>Sapir was born into a family of Lithuanian Jews in Lauenburg in the Province of Pomerania where his father, Jacob David Sapir, worked as a cantor.

Highly. Read Politics and the English Language, then use this essay as a lens to interpreting 1984 and how insurrection was made impossible.

you can but its harder to elaborate on that concept, use it, or make it popular. Consider the word "Loan." I'm sure people loaned things before the word was created but how the hell are you supposed to express that someone defaulted on a loan if they're not even sure why they're bound to the rules of one?

Enormously. The classic example is the Eskimos having 50 words for 'snow', and us just having one. Do you think an Eskimo and a desert nomad would look at a snowdrift and experience the same thing?

Lacan has a lot to say about how language structures the psyche in general, look into his 'symbolic order'.

>definition
Certainly, otherwise you wouldn't be able to think anything.
>word
You can bypass that too, though it makes thinking more cumbersome. Words are an oral/visual manifestation.

Are you considering the question form the point of view of epistemological autism or human psychology? You need "language" in the sense of phenomenological logicians. For instance the category of subject, of objects, of determinants, etc... but it can be divorced from sensory aspects and its link to the highly standardized common spoken languages.
While thought doesn't require it, it doesn't mean it is not very much influenced in all real cases. Obviously language can completely change the way things are conceived.

they have 50 words for snow because adjectives and substantives go together
we also have a lot of words for snow if we count "yellowsnow" "whitesnow" "coldsnow" "gaysnow" etc.

>In a relationship they formed before the war, Sylvia Bataille (née Maklès), the estranged wife of his friend Georges Bataille, became Lacan's mistress and, in 1953, his second wife. During the war their relationship was complicated by the threat of deportation for Sylvia, who was Jewish, since this required her to live in the unoccupied territories. Lacan intervened personally with the authorities to obtain papers detailing her family origins, which he destroyed. In 1941 they had a child, Judith.

streamlined paths for understanding various different kinds of snow is important if you want to survive in the polar regions, user. it could be the difference between hunting game and finding fishing holes or starving to death in an icy wasteland.

for the record, Inuit peoples have some of the highest visual IQ averages in the world, despite having a somewhat lower general IQ average. really makes you think.

This guy gets obliterated and dismissed in the fucking preface of my philosophy of language anthology

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Decent minor criticisms, but you're braindead if you think that's a refutation by any means

maybe a good refutation if you're a "hard" Sapir hypothesis brainlet. if you can think it, you can eventually find some way to express it. but this refutation does nothing to scratch the soft hypothesis, which is immediately apparent to anyone who's attempted to compare translated works with the original or has had to deal with any form of "political correctness" (and no, not just the liberal kind, but any form at railroading discussion towards certain topics and away from others). some things are more easily expressed in certain languages than other languages. some languages bring to light certain facets of information more readily than other languages (though usually this is a rock-paper-scissors situation, as no language is perfect). the very example in this "refutation" of the Hopi vs. English language in communicating the idea of a wave proves this point perfectly.

>Can you really not think of a concept/have understanding of it if there is no definition or word for that concept?
>mfw implying everything can be expressed in words

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>the Mahler family belonged to a German-speaking minority among Bohemians, and was also Ashkenazic Jewish.

>world famous jew is Jewish
That's a hot contribution user

man, seems like everyone who said anything interesting or important was jewish,
making me like the jews more

Language has almost no actual influence on your thoughts and anybody who claims otherwise is an ignorant pseud. This is basic linguistics. Sapir-Whorf is true only in it's weakest form.
Stop spreading lies. Also your argument is retarded. The reason a desert nomad would not experience the same thing as an Eskimo by looking at a snowdrift is because he was no experience with snow. It has zero to do with his native language. If Inuit people do experience and maybe even perceive snow in a different way, it's directly due to to their culture and upbringing and not at all due to their language. Culture influences language, language does not influence cultural in any substancial way or really in any way at all.

>Culture influences language, language does not influence cultural in any substancial way or really in any way at all.
do you have any evidence for this statement

>mfw people think no would be a valid answer to this question

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