CONCEPT
Whorf Hypothesis
Benjamin Lee Whorf's proposal that the language a person speaks shapes the thoughts that person can think — whose weaker empirically supported version underwrites Murray's claim that expression is thought.
Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941) proposed, building on his teacher Edward Sapir's work, that human cognition is shaped by the structural features of the languages humans speak. The strong version of the hypothesis — that language determines thought, so that speakers of different languages inhabit different cognitive worlds — has been substantially discredited by decades of empirical research. The weaker version, that language shapes the thinkable by making certain categories and distinctions easier to access, has held up under scrutiny. Russian speakers, who have separate words for light blue and dark blue, distinguish between those shades faster than English speakers do. The tools of thought shape the thoughts that can be had.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Whorf's hypothesis provides the linguistic and cognitive-scientific foundation for Murray's more practical claim that the words a writer chooses are not neutral vehicles for pre-existing thoughts. Different words make different thoughts available. A writer who chooses 'despite' rather than 'because' has not merely selected a conjunction;