Mad Scientists, Aliens, and the Nazi Party: What Is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, and Why Should You Care? Part II
Amanda McHugh
Part II: Bad Science and Even Worse Politics
In explaining the origins of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis last week, we’ve already encountered its use as a justification for minority suppression, the fact that it is a misnomer for a centuries-old idea, and its incredibly poor reinterpretation involving Einstein’s theories. Outside the domain of academia, the situation becomes even worse.
Firstly, we need to largely ignore the actual name “Sapir-Whorf,” partly because it is not an accurate reflection of either academic’s work. But largely it is because when these ideas are debated outside of academia, names and specifics are overlooked, or the “Sapir-Whorf” name is ascribed to ideas it does not describe (this is the case within academia as well, as we have seen). There are nods to it, of course: the 2016 film Arrival’s soundtrack has a piece called “Sapir-Whorf,” despite the fact that the premise of the film is linguistic determinism, rather than Whorfian linguistic relativity.
In fact, if you want a laugh, go to your friend who studies linguistics, and ask them what they think about Arrival, where linguists learn the language of time-warping aliens, and thereby gain the ability to warp time themselves. You’ll get one of a range of responses, which may include “I guess it’s a cool exploration of if linguistic determinism were real”, “It’s nice to see an actual linguist in media”, or “Why do people think Sapir-Whorf is fact and works like that?” It is a very good demonstration of why the strongest version of the hypothesis isn’t true, since learning a new language doesn’t necessarily give you the ability to see the structure of the universe in a different way (think about this in relation to the assertion that Hopi people have no notion of time due to their language). The issue is that at the end of the day, people don’t really care. In all fairness, if someone tried to lecture me on why the 2015 film The Martian couldn’t happen in real life because of the science, I simply would not care. Linguistics does not get a free pass for this, even if people’s carelessness hurts my fragile linguist ego. In these cases, wilful ignorance is harmless, but the issue becomes more apparent in other media, and once we extend the reach into politics.
The joy of fiction is that authors and other creators are given license to play with ideas and throw reality out the door. However, when we push away from the realm of the obvious fantasy, and more towards plausible speculation, we risk implying to others that what is merely theoretical is achievable scientific fact. For example, in Ayn Rand’s Anthem, published in 1938, the concept of individuality has been eliminated from society, via the removal of the word “I” from the language, so that people cannot even think individualistically. The arguably most famous dystopia where language is used to control thought is George Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which features the government-mandated dialect of Newspeak. ‘Simplified’ grammar and a restricted vocabulary curbs the citizens of Oceania’s ability to think about concepts like personal identity, free will, and self-expression. Although to most, the use of language to control thought sounds quite far-fetched, these books tread remarkably close to recurring themes in real-life politics, blurring the line between what is harmless imagining and what is dangerous action.
Remember the race science from before, with Whitney and the Native Americans? Unfortunately, this isn’t an isolated case, and in most instances, it goes beyond anthropologists with an agenda. Even before it reached the USA, Humboldt’s Volksgeist evolved into Völkerpsychologie, which used linguistic relativity as a justification to control and erase minority populations that went against the ideology of the oppressing group. The idea that non-Germanophone populations saw the world in a different way was a motivator for the Nazis to wipe out said populations. Chairman Mao used the same logic to engineer standardised language in China. Stalin (in part) used it to force the Russian language onto Soviet bloc countries for ideological unity. Clearly, these are far worse consequences than speculative fiction.
Obviously, it must be noted that language is a key component of group identity, and therefore controlling its use has always been a political tactic. But we can’t ignore the impact of the presentation of scientific ideas on this. The misconception that a published theory is scientific fact is highly problematic. It legitimises a number of truly worrying stances on the treatment of other people’s cultures under the guise of science, which is very difficult to retrieve once its been thrown to the wider world, especially something with such a grasp on the imagination as linguistic determinism.
We can’t solve this problem by hiding theories and data from the world. Academics are already sequestered enough from the rest of the population, and pretending new ideas don’t exist will make it worse. Of course, ensuring that the academic process is as rigorous as it can be is a start. The main issue, however, is presenting these ideas to outsiders who take scientific and anthropological studies at face value. Sapir-Whorf provides a particularly stark warning about ideas running away from us, especially in a time of post-truths and pandemics. Information and interpretations of science are more easily accessible than ever, and we, as the public, need to be critical of the information we take in. Equally, as academics, we need to minimise this risk by being unwaveringly clear about what we really mean. A really good example of such explicit framing is demonstrated by Our World In Data, who present Coronavirus mortality figures alongside accessible explanations about how to interpret the data for yourself. It can be as simple as arming your reader with the capability to analyse and draw conclusions for themselves.
If I asked you what a film about aliens had in common with the Nazis, your first answer wouldn’t be a patently false interpretation of a linguistic theory. But that’s the case. Although grounded in a history of influential linguistic anthropology, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is a cautionary tale about oversimplifying the science of how language shapes us. The average person (or author, or dictator) often does not care about the intricacies of the empirical hypotheses, and this can have disastrous consequences. We should take the lessons we have learnt from the misadventures of Sapir-Whorf, and ensure the musings of academics do not mutate into second-hand facts.
Part III will be published next week.