by Emily A. Schultz
University of Wisconsin Press, 1990
Cloth: 978-0-299-12700-8 | Paper: 978-0-299-12704-6
Library of Congress Classification P85.W48S38 1990
Dewey Decimal Classification 306.44

ABOUT THIS BOOK | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK

The “linguistic relativity principle” of pioneering American linguist Benjamin Whorf has been a focus of controversy among scholars of language for half a century. Many claim that this principle amounts to Whorf’s assertion that language determines thought and culture, while others vigorously reject such a claim. Emily Schultz rereads Whorf in terms of Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, and argues that the Whorfian controversy is rooted in the polyphonic character of his best known texts. By combining Whorfian and Bakhtinian insights concerning variation within and across languages, Schultz offers a new dialogic interpretation of linguistic relativity that has profound implications for students and scholars of anthropology, linguistics, cognitive psychology, philosophy of language, and literary and art criticism.