1. Kelompok 2 “Linguistic Relativities” Created and presented by : Haical Purnama Alif Nauzia Pranawati Language, Society, and Culture

2. JohnLeavitt The principle of linguistic relativity, as put forward by linguists and anthropologists in the 1920s and 1930s, holds that the characteristics of one’s language can affect other aspects of life and must be taken into account. In the modern West, the overwhelming tendency has been either to deny or affirm the importance of language differences depending on one’s philosophical preference for universalistic explanatory models that seek causes or pluralistic essentialist models that seek understanding. This is particularly evident in the switch in the 1950s from a principle of linguistic relativity to a “hypothesis of linguistic relativism” or “determinism”, often dubbed the “Sapir–Whorf hypothesis” that language determines thought, a classically essentialist position. LINGUISTIC RELATIVITIES

3. Each of the six to ten thousand languages known is distinct at every level: in sound, lexicon, word order, grammatical categories, discourse patterns, and the culture of language. One of the most striking universals of language, then, is its diversity – not an unlimited diversity, but a tremendous diversity nonetheless. This has been the majority position in the West at least since Aristotle (On Interpretation 16a), and it characterizes the natural sciences and those who would like the human sciences to emulate them. Both law-seeking universalism and essence seeking pluralism continue to be the evident choices in many disciplines (Leavitt 1991). The Boasians, while often adopting pluralist-essentialist language to argue against the institutionally more powerful universalist position, did not, in fact, promote an integral essentialism: while defending the importance of language specificity, they maintained that there was no necessary link between a people’s language, their culture, and their cognitive processes. Universal, particulars, and relativity

4. The dominant philosophical view in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was that thought is everywhere either a more or less faithful reproduction of the reason that God had put in the human mind (Descartes and subsequent rationalisms) or a more or less faithful reflection of relations the mind picked up from the world. Herder Johann Gottfried Herder was a philosopher and important intellectual presence in eighteenth-century Germany. Herder's Political Thought examines the work of this significant figure in the context of both historical and contemporary developments in political philosophy. Herder was a good essentialist in maintaining that the real nature of human understanding is not to follow out a line of reasoning but to grasp wholes, to seize the essence in its manifold expression. He shared this view with the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Before Boas: a universe of laws or a multiverse of essences

5. Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt (22 June 1767 – 8 April 1835) was a Prussian philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin, which was named after him in 1949 (and also after his brother, Alexander von Humboldt, a naturalist). His younger brother, Alexander von Humboldt, was famous as a geographer, naturalist, and explorer. Humboldt was born in Potsdam, Margraviate of Brandenburg, and died in Tegel, Province of Brandenburg. In June 1791, he married Karoline von Dacheröden. They had eight children, of whom five survived to adulthood. philosopherdiplomatHumboldt University of BerlinAlexander von HumboldtnaturalistAlexander von HumboldtPotsdamMargraviate of BrandenburgTegelProvince of Brandenburg philosopherdiplomatHumboldt University of BerlinAlexander von HumboldtnaturalistAlexander von HumboldtPotsdamMargraviate of BrandenburgTegelProvince of Brandenburg humboldt

6. While Humboldt’s picture of language included an important universalist component, in its broad lines it draws out the implications of Romantic essentialism. For Humboldt: a. Plurality and difference are inherently good. “Individuals” indicates not only individual people, but individual nations, his- torical periods, languages (Trabant 1989). B. One should therefore consider the largest possible number of maximally different languages. C. Each language possesses a unique inner form and should be understood as a system or a whole. D. Humboldt, like the Schlegels, finds a key in morphology. Within linguistics, Humboldt will be remembered primarily as the great expositor of language typology.

7. E. Each language operates on the basis of distinctive principles, and the grammarian must grasp these to provide an adequate description (Trabant1986: 173– 175). F. Language is not only the means of expression of thought, but enters into its very constitution, G. The fact of linguistic difference thus means that each language implies “a diversity of world views”. H. Literature and poetry are the most developed expression of a linguistic essence (Trabant 2000: 33– 34). I. Under normal circumstances, national character, language, race, world view all fit together. J. Humboldt maintains the superiority of inflectional Indo-European languages over others (Trabant 2000: 38).

8. Social theory developed in the 19th century, which had fundamental influence on sociological and anthropological thinking up until the First World War (see structural functionalism). In the 19th century, however, one often also imagined that development proceded by necessity toward morally "superior" and more "civilized" conditions (a view that was widely abandoned after the First World War). In the post-Second World War years, the American anthropologist Julian Steward developed a neo-evolutionist theory, which influenced his many students, and was an inspiration for American ecological anthropology (cultural ecology), subtantivism in economic anthropology, and peasant studies throughout the the next decades. Steward built on his teacher Robert H. Lowie's theory of multilinear evolution (which posited that cultures could evolve along several parallel, though different, lines), and developed a true materialist evolutionary theory, in which a society's evolutionary stage could be measured quantitatively, as the amount of energy, per capita, it could extract from the environment. Robert H. LowieRobert H. Lowie Evolutionism

9. Boas was the founder of the North American schools of cultural anthropology and linguistics. Boasian linguistics was most often coupled with work on other aspects of culture. This new practice corresponded to a new theoretical stance. The Boasians rejected the evolutionist package on every level: they held that each language deserves to be treated on its own terms, that the specifics of each language are important, and that each linguistic system orients the habitual thought of its users. Boas, science, and linguistics Boas himself was intensely aware of the tension, particularly in nineteenth century German thought, between the positivist and universalist explanatory procedures and objectivist goals of the natural sciences and the particularist and essentialist interpretive procedures of what were called the spiritual sciences ( Geisteswissenschaft ). Boas and Boasian linguistics

10. In 1887, after his Baffin Island expedition, Boas wrote "The Principles of Ethnological Classification", in which he developed this argument in application to anthropology: Ethnological phenomena are the result of the physical and psychical character of men, and of its development under the influence of the surroundings... 'Surroundings' are the physical conditions of the country, and the sociological phenomena, i.e., the relation of man to man. Furthermore, the study of the present surroundings is insufficient: the history of the people, the influence of the regions through which it has passed on its migrations, and the people with whom it came into contact, must be considered. Cradled between Boas’s two negative affirmations, of the lack of necessary correlation between language, race, and culture and between language and thought, is the actual presentation of language. Here we have a picture of coherent structure at the levels of phonetics, lexicon, and grammar. In phonetics, Boas argues that the potential production of sounds by the human vocal apparatus is unlimited.

11. Sapir, Lee, Whorf Edward Sapir (1884–1939), who was initially trained in literature, had a strong sense of the poetry of linguistic sound and patterning as well as an abiding concern for individual experience, for how languages were lived by human subjects. Like Boas, Sapir denies any necessary connection among language, race, and culture.

12. Sapir, Whorf, and Einstein In sum, those critics who attempt to make or retain their reputations by attacking the so-called "(Sapir-) Whorf Hypothesis" must henceforth be seen as attacking, as well, the physics principle and theory (not "hypothesis") which Whorf merely restated for linguistics: Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

13. Beside Boas: structuralism and Neoromanticism Other twentieth-century schools posed questions about linguistic difference. A parallel “return to Humboldt” was taking place in Germany in what would be called neo-Humboldtian or Neoromantic linguistics, which sought to make.

14. After Boas: the near-death and rebirth of linguistic relativity Sapir died in 1939, Whorf in 1941, Boas in 1942. At a conference on language in culture, Hoijer (1954) first named a Sapir–Whorf hypothesis that language influences thought.To call something a hypothesis is to propose to test it, presumably using experimental methods. To paraphrase Boas’s reply to the evolutionists on numbers: The way people live in some societies means that they do not need very many basic color terms.

15. Returns of relativity Through all this there remained a stubborn little band of defenders of linguistic relativity (Hill and Mannheim1992;Lucy1997b). Paul Friedrich articulated this in terms reminiscent of Sapir: “I feel that Americanas against British English, and English of any major dialect as against Russian, and both languages as against the Tarascan language of Mexico constitute different worlds. Ethnosemantics. Relativity of use.In the 1960s, Dell Hymes (1926–) sought to define distinctive cognitive styles implied in different language types (1961) and proposed

16. CONCLUTION