Vocabulary And Culture A Cross-Language Study Of Linguistic Relativity

According to "the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis", there are two associated principles concerning the relationship between people's thinking and language. According to the first, linguistic determinism, our thinking is determined by language. According to the second, linguistic relativity, people who speak different languages perceive and think about the world quite differently.Many linguists believe the first theory is too "strong" and extreme. They accept a "weak", or more moderate Whorfianism: the way in which we see the world may be influenced, instead of being determined by the kind of language we use. They also see it as a two-way process, so that "the kind of language we use" is also influenced by "the way we see the world".The comparison of the cultural origins of the animal, color and loan words in Chinese, English and Japanese proves the moderate Whorfianism. That is, culture influences language and vice versa.The first part is a case study of animal vocabulary in the three languages. The more detailed the classification of one animal is, the more people's life is connected with it; once people formed a connotation of this animal, they would apply this concept into their vocabulary, and thus animal words are given a new associated implication. The comparison of color words mainly proves that the language people speak can greatly influence their attitude toward each color, and these colors have their deep cultural roots. The comparison of loan words explains how cultural interaction can result in a change in vocabulary and borrowing words can result in a change in concept and further in the change of a culture.