Thinking and speaking in two languages

摘要

This edited volume on thinking and speaking in two languages provides a state-of-the-art survey of research on the differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in colour perception, categorisation, event construal, gesturing and object naming. The research evidence collected for this volume is used to test the ideas originally put forward by Sapir and Whorf regarding the influence of language on habitual thought. According to Sapir (1949 [1929], 162) 'we see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation'. Sapir's student Whorf (1956, .221) elaborated on Sapir's original idea, focusing in particular on the role of grammar in shaping thought: 'users of markedly different grammars are pointed by their grammars towards different types of observations and (...) arrive at somewhat different views of the world'. Interestingly, as Pavlenko points out in the introduction, Sapir and Whorf never formulated the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The two hypotheses of linguistic relativity and linguistic determinism which are commonly associated with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis were probably created by Roger Brown and his pupil Eric Lenneberg (Brown and Lenneberg 1954; Brown 1958), who felt that the ideas of the anthropologists Sapir and Whorf needed to be reformulated as hypotheses that could be tested in psychological experiments.