Interpretation of Whorf from Different Perspectives

Yanlong Wang

Abstract


The paper interprets Whorf’s notion by turning to his original writings.  Specifically, the paper makes a detailed analysis of Whorf’s notion from anthropological linguistics, which largely deals with his famous distinction between overt category and covert category and his detailed description of the American Indian language Hopi; contrastive linguistics, which implies Whorf’s research pedagogy by which the major differences between Hopi and English were found; and psycholinguistics which shows that Whorf would like to explore the deeper internalized meaning of language so as to uncover the true nature of language in the process of thinking.   Therefore, the writer aims to have access to Whorf by rereading his original works and demonstrates what he has actually done in relation with those disciplines mentioned above.

Keywords: Whorf, anthropological linguistics, contrastive linguistics, psycholinguistics


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References


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