1.4: Linguistic Relativity

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Page ID: 75148

Manon Allard-Kropp
University of Missouri–St. Louis

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One of the most important ideas in the course, and that will orient all of our inquiries, is that language and worldviews mutually influence each other. We will get more in-depth into the larger academic context that made the birth of such a notion possible in Module #3. For now, let’s get familiar with the theory itself.

In this context, we will assume that worldview refers to the perspective on the world of an individual in a given culture. You can think of a worldview as the lens (as in the “glasses”) that filters the way individuals in a given culture see the world, colored by the culture those individuals belong to (the “lens” metaphor is not mine, but that of Israeli linguist Guy Deutscher).