The Language Hoax: Why The World Looks The Same In Any Language

The Language Hoax The Language Hoax Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language John H. McWhorter Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Oxford University Press 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McWhorter, John H., author. The language hoax: why the world looks the same in any language / John H. McWhorter. pages cm ISBN 978-0-19-936158-8 (hardcover: alk. paper) 1. Language and culture. 2. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I. Title. P35.M37 2014 306.44—dc23 2013033221 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For Dahlia CONTENTS Introduction 1 Studies Have Shown CHAPTER 2 Having It Both Ways? CHAPTER 3 An Interregnum: On Culture CHAPTER 4 Dissing the Chinese CHAPTER 5 What’s the Worldview from English? CHAPTER 6 Respect for Humanity CHAPTER Notes Index INTRODUCTION THIS BOOK IS A manifesto. I will oppose an idea about language that took hold among certain academics starting in the 1930s, and of late has acquired an unseemly amount of influence over public discussion as well. This is the idea that people’s languages channel the way they think and perceive the world. You may be familiar with it. Among memories of your readings over the past ten years, for example, may dwell Amazonian tribespeople described as unable to do math because their language doesn’t have numbers. Or you may have read about people who have the same word for green and blue, who we are to imagine not perceiving the difference in color between a leaf and the sky as vividly as we do. The whole idea is a kind of ongoing promo from the worlds of linguistics, anthropology, and psychology, the ad jargon typified by the subtitle of Guy Deutscher’s Through the Language Glass, “Why the world looks different in other languages.” The notion is, for better or for worse, mesmerizing. Just think—what we speak is what we are. We are the language we speak. This is true, of course, to an extent. A take-home insight from the idea that language channels thought is that a language’s words and grammar are not just a random constellation, but are the software for a particular culture. No one could deny that there is some truth in that. In Thai, there are different words for you according to seven different grades of formality, and to not use them is not to be Thai, unless you are a child or new to the language. To pretend this has nothing