画作Within linguistic theory, two extreme positions concerning the relationship between language and thought are commonly referred to as 'mould theories? And 'cloak theories'. Mould theories reprent language as 'a mould in terms of which thought categories are cast' (Bruner et al. 1956, p. 11). Cloak theories reprent the view that 'language is a cloak conforming to the customary categories of thought of its speakers' (ibid.). The doctrine that language is the 'dress of thought' was fundamental in Neo-Classical literary theory (Abrams 1953, p. 290), but was rejected by the Romantics (ibid.; Stone 1967, Ch. 5). There is also a related view (held by behaviorists, for instance) that language and thought are identical. According to this stance thinking is entirely linguistic: there is no 'non-verbal thought', no 'translation' at all from thought to language. In this n, thought is en as completely determined by language.
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The Sapir-Whorf theory, named after the American linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, is a mould theory of language. Writing in 1929, Sapir argued in a classic passage that:
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality esntially without the u of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as reprenting the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different We e and hear and otherwi experience very largely as we do becau the language habits of our community predispo certain choices of interpretation. (Sapir 1958 [1929], p. 69)
This position was extended in the 1930s by his student Whorf, who, in another widely cited passage, declared that:
prevented
什么是自主学习We disct nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there becau they stare every obrver in the face; on the contrary, the world is prented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds - and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely becau we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of cour, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees. (Whorf 1940, pp. 213-14; his emphasis)
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I will not attempt to untangle the details of the personal standpoints of Sapir and Whorf on the degree of determinism which they felt was involved, although I think that the above extracts give a fair idea of what the were. I should note that Whorf distanced himlf from the behaviourist stance that thinking is entirely linguistic (Whorf 1956, p. 66). In its m
薏米水ost extreme version 'the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis' can be described as consisting of two associated principles. According to the first, linguistic determinism, our thinking is determined by language. According to the cond, linguistic relativity, people who speak different languages perceive and think about the world quite differently.
On this basis, the Whorfian perspective is that translation between one language and another is at the very least, problematic, and sometimes impossible. Some commentators also apply this to the 'translation' of unverbalized thought into language. Others suggest that even within a single language any reformulation of words has implications for meaning, however subtle. George Steiner (1975) has argued that any act of human communication can be en as involving a kind of translation, so the potential scope of Whorfianism is very broad indeed. Indeed, eing reading as a kind of translation is a uful reminder of the reductionism of reprenting textual reformulation simply as a determinate 'change of meaning', since meaning does not reside in the text, but is generated by interpretation. According to the Whorfian stance, 'content' is bound up with linguistic 'form', and the u of the medium contributes to shaping the meaning. In comm
on usage, we often talk of different verbal formulations 'meaning the same thing'. But for tho of a Whorfian persuasion, such as the literary theorist Stanley Fish, 'it is impossible to mean the same thing in two (or more) different ways' (Fish 1980, p. 32). Reformulating something transforms the ways in which meanings may be made with it, and in this n, form and content are inparable. From this stance words are not merely the 'dress' of thought.
The importance of what is 'lost in translation' varies, of cour. The issue is usually considered most important in literary writing. It is illuminating to note how one poet felt about the translation of his poems from the original Spanish into other European languages (Whorf himlf did not in fact regard European languages as significantly different from each other). Pablo Neruda noted that the best translations of his own poems were Italian (becau of its similarities to Spanish), but that English and French 'do not correspond to Spanish - neither in vocalization, or in the placement, or the colour, or the weight of words.' He continued: 'It is not a question of interpretative equivalence: no, the n can be right, but this correctness of translation, of meaning, can be the des
比克曼的世界truction of a poem. In many of the translations into French - I don't say in all of them - my poetry escapes, nothing remains; one cannot protest becau it says the same thing that one has written. But it is obvious that if I had been a French poet, I would not have said what I did in that poem, becau the value of the words is so different. I would have written something el' (Plimpton 1981, p. 63). With more 'pragmatic' or less 'expressive' writing, meanings are typically regarded as less dependent on the particular form of words ud. In most pragmatic contexts, paraphras or translations tend to be treated as less fundamentally problematic. However, even in such contexts, particular words or phras which have an important function in the original language may be acknowledged to prent special problems in translation. Even outside the humanities, academic texts concerned with the social sciences are a ca in point.
