Linguistic and Activity Relativity in Cognition

Abstract

This work compares the features of cognitive processes uncovered in experimental studies undertaken to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis with cultural features of thinking that are shaped by activity-related factors rather than by language that have been identified by cross-cultural research into thinking. It is concluded that this latter area of research has uncovered more essential differences in cognitive processes. There is discussion of the linguistic aspect of activity-related differences in thinking, in particular the possibility of using Hymes’ idea of functional linguistic relativity in cross-cultural research. The article concludes with a discussion of possible social-psychological reasons why the linguistic-relativity phenomenon is more popular than activity-related relativity.

Notes

^1. Our goal here is not to provide an overview of these works. Overviews can be found in Cole and Scriber (1977), pp. 57 – 80 and Lloyd (1972), pp. 36 – 44. In these sources, readers can find the output of the works mentioned in this section of this article.

^2. See Bornstein (1973) concerning systematic differences in the physiological abilities involved in color recognition.

^3. See, for example, Luria (1974); Cole and Scribner (1977).

^4. By traditional cultures we mean cultures without a modern economic, classroom education, and literacy.

^5. Cf. A.R. Luria (1974, pp. 13 – 15): “[I]n works from the ‘linguistic relativism’ school, a simplified idea of a direct parallelism between language and thinking can be clearly traced … the diverse content that can underly every word has been ignored … identical vocabularies can conceal absolutely different ways of generalizing phenomena … a completely different system of connections can underly one and the same word–that is, the very meaning of words is developing.”

^6. On the principal differences between the so-called “ethnosciences” and modern science, see Horton (1967).