Benjamin Whorf
Benjamin Lee Whorf (April 24, 1897 – July 26, 1941) was an American linguist, anthropologist, and chemical engineer. He is best known as one of the creators of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.
Life
Benjamin Lee Whorf was born on April 24, 1897 in Winthrop, Massachusetts. Whorf was the eldest of the three sons of Harry Church Whorf, a commercial artist, and Sarah Lee Whorf. After high school, Whorf went on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering in 1918.
In 1919 he became an Engineer for the Hartford Fire Insurance Company were he continued to work until 1941, the year of his death. He settled in Whethersfield, Connecticut where he would remain for the rest of his life and in 1920 he married Cecilia Inez Peckham. They had three children Raymond, Robert and Celia.
During the 1920s, Whorf exchanged letters with well respected scholars in linguistics, anthropology and archaeology. In the mid-1920s he grew an interest in Central America and began to travel. In 1931, cognizant of the tensions between religion and science, Whorf began studying linguistics at Yale University under the American linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir.
In 1936, Benjamin Whorf was appointed the Honorary Research Fellow in Anthropology at Yale University and in 1937 he received the Sterling Fellowship. He became a Lecturer in Anthropology at Yale University in 1937 and continued until 1938 when he began experiencing serious health problems. Nevertheless, he published his essays in influential scholarly journals, such as the American Anthropologist and MIT's Technology Review.
At the age of 44, in July of 1941, Whorf died of cancer in his home in Whethersfield, Connecticut.
Work
Whorf's primary area of interest in linguistics was the study of Native American languages, particularly those of Mesoamerica. He became renowned for his field work of the Native American languages, especially of the Hopi language and for a theory that would be coined by others as the principle of linguistic relativity of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which was an approach to comparative linguistics that he developed with Edward Sapir. He circulated his ideas not only by publishing numerous technical articles, but also by producing writings that were accessible to lay readers and by giving captivating, well-received lectures.
Some of Whorf's early work on linguistic theory was inspired by the reports he wrote on insurance losses, where misunderstanding resulted from differing perceptions of a situation. In one famous incident, an employee who was not a native speaker of English had placed drums of liquid near a heater, believing that since a 'flammable' liquid would burn a 'highly inflammable' one would not. His papers and lectures featured examples from both his insurance work and his fieldwork with Hopi and other American languages.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis primarily dealt with the way that language affects mental processes. Sometimes called the Whorfian hypothesis, this theory claims that the language a person speaks, independent of the culture in which he or she resides, affects the way that he or she perceives the world. Meaning, that the grammatical structure of the language itself affects cognition.
As previously mentioned, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and the principle of linguistic relativity were terms created by other ethnolinguists. Many versions of this theory have been proposed and debated, some under the name of the principle of linguistic relativity and sometimes just as Whorf's hypothesis or the Whorfian hypothesis. Whorf himself objected strongly to the latter two names, maintaining that he had made many other hypotheses. He felt that if a particular theory was being attributed to him he should have the right to name it.
Less well known, but important, are his contributions to the study of the Nahuatl and Maya languages. He claimed that Nahuatl was an oligosynthetic language, which refers to a language that consists of a highly minimalistic set of roots from which all words and statements are constructed. Whorf's claim that the Nahuatl was an oligosynthetic language would be asserted again some twenty years later by Morris Swadesh, another controversial American linguist. Whorf focused focused on the linguistic nature of the Mayan writing, claiming that it was syllabic to some degree, a claim that has been further supported by Linda Scheele et al. over the past decade.
Legacy
The Majority of Benjamin Whorf's work was published posthumously, his widely known collection of work entitled Language, Thought and Reality did not surface until 1956 when it was published by MIT Press. Today, there are manuscripts that Whorf left behind that are still unpublished.
Benjamin Whorf's contribution to the field of ethnolinguistics, despite the fact that he never began an official career in linguistics, has had a rather influential impact on present day theory. In truth, it is widely accepted by Ethnolinguists that culture affects language but it is controverisal as to whether or not language affects culture. However, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is still worthy of consideration.
Whorf's scholarly career is alluring because of his ability to pursue numerous fields simultaneously. Whorf received a formal education but he was a well read and highly self-taught individual. Benjamin Whorf successfully worked full-time as a chemical engineer at the Hartford Fire Insurance Company and his scholarly contribution rivals that of a full-time research professor. He was offered numerous scholarly research positions but he declined them amd asserted that his career in chemical engineering offered him a more comfortable living and a greater freedom for his academic and intellectual pursuits.
Publications
- Carroll, John B. 1964. Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. The MIT Press. ISBN 0262730065
- Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1933. The Phonetic Value of Certain Characters in Maya Writing. Periodicals Service Co. ISBN 0527012297
- Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1943. Loan-words in Ancient Mexico. New Orleans; Tulane University of Louisiana.
- Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1970. (originally published 1942). Maya Hieroglyphs: An Extract from the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1941. Seattle; Shorey Book Store. ISBN 0846601222
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- The Great Whorf Hypothesis Hoax.
- The Mind of Benjamin Whorf. Paper given at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association.
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