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The Language Hoax
PDF Download The Language Hoax
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Review
"A short, sour, brilliant little book... McWhorter makes all the right arguments, and he makes them clearly." --Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker "[McWhorter] tackles linguistic determinism--the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis--head on, arguing that world views are human, not strapped to one culture." --Nature "McWhorter is exhaustive, fair-minded, and convincing." --Pacific Standard "The Language Hoax has a sharp-edged title, but a generous and methodical approach to the evidence on both sides of the 'language-shapes-thought' debate. Nonetheless, John McWhorter has gathered the most comprehensive case for the prosecution out there, which will make both specialists and general readers think again. Besides being provoked, they will also be entertained by this wonderfully written book, which ends with the aim of redeeming our common humanity." --Robert Lane Greene, Language columnist, The Economist, and author of You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws and the Politics of Identity "Some popular ideas are worse than wrong--they have a smidgen of truth on minor matters, but encourage misunderstandings of major matters. John McWhorter, one of our sharpest explainers of linguistics, shows that this is true of the chestnut that language shapes thought. Despite its superficial sophistication, the hypothesis conceals profound truths: that thought is far richer than language; that languages are products of capricious memetics rather than reflections of cultural obsessions; and that the cognitive similarities among people are deeper than their differences." --Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Language Instinct and The Stuff of Thought "The Language Hoax is a well-written and stimulating book that asks uncomfortable questions and turns common arguments on their head. The author uses examples from an impressive number of languages across the globe to provide counter-examples to claims that may easily be made (and occasionally have been made) about the influence of language on thought... McWhorter's thought-provoking manifesto provides much stuff to think about and keep the discussion on language, culture and thought going. It is suitable for both undergraduate and graduate classes (I just did it in one of mine, in combination with Deutscher's book), to provide answers to the -- yes, open -- question of whether the world looks different in other languages, or just the same in any language." --LinguistList "To close, we applaud the depth of the author's manifesto in terms of the expansive literature coverage, historical developments, and implications for social science. We recommend it to anyone with an interest in language and thought who also likes a good read."-- American Journal of Psychology
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About the Author
John McWhorter is Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University and author of many books, including The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English, and What Language Is, What It Isn't, and What It Could Be. He also writes on language, as well as race and cultural issues, as Contributing Editor at The New Republic and Columnist at Time. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Time, and The New Yorker, and he has appeared often on National Public Radio, CSPAN and MSNBC.
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Product details
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press; Reprint edition (June 1, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0190468890
ISBN-13: 978-0190468897
Product Dimensions:
6.9 x 0.6 x 5 inches
Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
3.4 out of 5 stars
38 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#428,190 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Thanks, John, for a thoroughly enjoyable and useful read. I'm a linguist who graduated from the same program you did -- but instead of going into academia, I work as a consultant in the business world. I cannot tell you how often I run across people who really think that language does shape thought -- because they heard Boroditsky on NPR, or they read an article somewhere, or they "know" that Eskimos have 37 words for snow because they definitely learned that in college, or whatever. Add to that the number of my acquaintances who are anxious to tell me that because the word for "fork" in some language is feminine, or is it masculine, and therefore…what? This point of view can have consequences for people's careers, if their managers really think that they can't possibly be good at their jobs because, for instance, their language "doesn't have tenses!" Your book will help me develop more useful responses than groaning inwardly and forcing a pleasant smile while I try to think whether it's worth the trouble to try.
Does the structure of the language we speak affect the way we think and how we perceive the world? If you are intrigued by that idea and don’t mind re-examining any cherished Sapir-Whorf beliefs you may have this short but spirited and well argued book will be of interest. When we think of the fascinatingly structured Navajo language there is some appeal to the idea that its speakers have a special, maybe advanced way of understanding reality, but with his usual well informed wit McWhorter makes the case that if you accept that and take the idea that language patterns and limits our perceptions to all its logical conclusions you’ll end up with some very unpalatable and fortunately wrong judgements about various other peoples of the world--from the Chinese who speak a language which marks hypotheticals less explicitly than English (though surely Chinese speakers around the globe understand the difference between “She would have called him†and “She will have called him†anyway) to the people in New Guinea who speak languages with only one word for eat, drink, and smoke, (but who couldn’t possibly be thus doomed by this lack to be unable to distinguish between those three activities.)Most people tend to take their own language’s idiosyncrasies (and idioms) in stride, accepting them as what’s normal, but language variations are the actual norm. McWhorter makes a convincing case that most of the often marvelous differences between languages are random, like spontaneous DNA mutations, and almost meaningless when we are looking at cognitive skills. Yes, Amazonian people with languages that have no way to indicate amounts higher than 2 or 3 will likely not be good at math, but McWhorter believes that is driven by circumstance and culture since hunter-gathers around the world and throughout time have not had much use for a number like 8,527.McWhorter is always entertaining, and I especially love all the fascinating language facts he deploys, like that the Tuyuca people, who also live in the Amazon, have a language so rich and complex there are multiple suffixes for every verb to indicate where the speaker learned whatever he or she is saying--there’s one suffix affixed to the verb to let listeners know that speakers heard someone else say what they are now saying, another suffix for when the speakers instead saw what they are telling you, yet another for when the speakers think what they are saying is true but aren’t sure, etc. The Language Hoax is replete with wonderful, mind-expanding language anecdotes.While it’s definitely both fun and worth reading, this isn’t my favorite of McWhorter’s books. Because it focuses somewhat narrowly on the debate about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and its neo-Whorfian revival, The Language Hoax didn’t glue me to its pages with the same level of intensity that some of McWhorter’s other titles have, including Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, which gives different insights into the history English than I have read elsewhere, The Power of Babel, which covers the worldwide history of language and its development, and What Language Is, which presents an almost fecund biological picture of how languages multiply, evolve, and disperse.
I'm a huge fan of McWhorter. His basic technique is to take popular scholarship and basically turn it on its head. In this book, he takes on Whorfianism, especially Deutscher's fun read Through the Language Glass. In a series of easily understandable but erudite and very personable chapters (I swear, every time I read something of his, it makes me want to hang out with him and grab a beer together) he discusses the overreach and proper limitations of the idea of linguistic relativity to a general audience. You don't have to have read Deutscher to read this, but it might help if you want to make up your own mind--he does represent Deutscher's points accurately.Well written, fun, and brilliant.
While he makes some good points, the overall content is lacking with respect to supporting his thesis.
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