On Whorfian Hypothesis

The paper, warding off too many eulogies or attacks, was to offer a neutral view on Whorfian hypothesis in relation to the theoretical guides put forward by such great forerunners as J. G. Herder and Edward Sapir, and chronologically unfolded the philosophical development of the hypothesis, and provided the current Chinese grammarians new insights upon it. The core of Whorfian hypothesis was language determinism and language relativity: which maintained language decided the way how people think and which held different languages affect people thinking in different ways respectively. The hypothesis was tested in the following chapter III and IV, the experimental study and the tentative approach. The experimental study in perspective of vocabulary and grammar tested the hypothesis cross-linguistically, and in the tentative approach a contrast of how English and Chinese affected the way of thinking was a narrowing-down in terms of cross-linguistical study, and this linguistics inquiry inclusive of vocabulary, grammar and pragmatics did stress how these two different languages shape people's thinking differently. Although the hypothesis could hold water in most cases, owing to too many changing social factors involved, it was far from being established as an ideal formula effective on all the occasions.