Can Ideas Withstand Shifts in Language?
The Future of Language: Considering the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for translation, emoji, and pop culture.
Elisa Gabbert | March 11, 2016
There’s an idea in linguistics that until a culture creates a name for a color, they don’t really see it as a distinct category. It builds from the anthropological discovery that languages tend to develop color terms in the same order: first, for black and white (or roughly, light and dark), then for red, then for either green or yellow and then both, then blue (and so on). They don’t invent a word for blue, the thinking goes, much less for mauve or taupe, until they need it. Color terms proliferate in a world of dyes and spectrometry.
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| The most popular food emoji by state. Florida's is a piece of candy. Source: http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/swiftkey-reveals-most-festive-states-by-use-of-thanksgiving-emoji/630634 |
<more at https://www.guernicamag.com/daily/elisa-gabbert-the-sapir-whorf-hypothesis-for-translation-emoji-and-pop-culture/; related articles and links: http://www.popsci.com/qa-with-john-mcwhorter-on-future-language (How technology is shaping the future of language. A Q&A with linguist John McWhorter. Spoiler alert: He likes emoji! November 17, 2015) and http://grammar.about.com/od/rs/g/SapirWhorf.htm (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. March 19, 2016)>
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