Language Diversity and Thought: A Reformulation of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis
Abstract
Language Diversity and Thought examines the Sapir–Whorf linguistic relativity hypothesis: the proposal that the grammar of the particular language we speak affects the way we think about reality. Adopting an historical approach, the book reviews the various lines of empirical inquiry which arose in America in response to the ideas of anthropologists Edward Sapir and Benjamin L. Whorf. John Lucy asks why there has been so little fruitful empirical research on this problem and what lessons can be learned from past work. He then proposes a new, more adequate approach to future empirical research. A companion volume, Grammatical Categories and Cognition, illustrates the proposed approach with an original case study. The study compares the grammar of American English with that of Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language spoken in southeastern Mexico, and then identifies distinctive patterns of thinking related to the differences between the two languages.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Language plays an important role in how people understand and think about the world, including gender.
“language plays an important role in how people understand and think about the world (Beukeboom & Burgers, 2019; Fiedler, 2008; Lucy, 1992; Samuel et al., 2019), including gender (Sczesny et al., 2016)”
From A Sexist Language? Gender Differences in Attitudes and Use of Gender-Inclusive Pronouns (2025) · cites this paper as Lucy, 1992
The language that is used can reflect both how the world is perceived and how the world is constructed.
“the language that is used can reflect both how the world is perceived and how the world is constructed (Fiedler, 2008; Lucy, 1992; Whorf, 1956).”
From A Sexist Language? Gender Differences in Attitudes and Use of Gender-Inclusive Pronouns (2025) · cites this paper as Lucy, 1992
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Kramsch, C. (2014) · AILA Review · doi:10.1075/aila.27.02kra · Cited by 1,539 · see citing works
The Essential Child: Origins of Essentialism in Everyday Thought
Gelman, S. A. (2003) · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195154061.001.0001 · Cited by 1,247 · see citing works
The centrality of language in human cognition
Lupyan, G. (2016) · Language Learning · doi:10.1111/lang.12155 · Cited by 137 · see citing works
Renström, E. A. (2025) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1507858 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
A Sexist Language? Gender Differences in Attitudes and Use of Gender-Inclusive Pronouns
Remsö, A., Bäck, H., & Renström, E. A. (2025) · Journal of Language and Social Psychology · doi:10.1177/0261927x251335305 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
“Considering that language plays an important role in how people understand and think about the world (Beukeboom & Burgers, 2019; Fiedler, 2008; Lucy, 1992; Samuel et al., 2019), including gender (Sczesny et al., 2016), the use of gender-inclusive pronouns may challenge traditional gender norms and…”
- Authors
- Lucy, J. A.
- Affiliations
- University of Chicago (US)
- Corresponding author
- Lucy, John A.
- ORCID
- Lucy, John A.
- Venue
- Cambridge University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Published
- 1992-07-02
- OpenAlex
- W4234035084
- Cited by
- 793
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 19 · 2025: 34 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 46 · 2020: 29 · 2019: 56 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 17 · 2016: 14 · 2015: 39 · 2014: 152 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 18
- FWCI
- 3.32
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Cambridge University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Categorization, perception, and language
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Language and Culture
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Language, Metaphor, and Cognition
- Keywords
- linguistic relativity, language and thought, Edward Sapir, Yucatec Maya, American English, grammatical categories, cognitive linguistics
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
