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"Linguistic relativism, Whorf, and fire safety"

25 Comments -

1 – 25 of 25
Anonymous Dave Pinsen said...

Interesting that Whorf and the poet Wallace Stevens had day jobs in insurance. Seems the industry used to attract some bright lights.

1/18/14, 4:13 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The "flammable" neologism is pretty recent. I remember in the 90s seeing "inflammable" everywhere. Then in the 2000s I started seeing "flammable" everywhere.

1/18/14, 4:22 PM

OpenID ironrailsironweights said...

There was an even worse fire safety problem with the English-language word "inflammable," which means "easily set on fire," but seems like it might well mean "incapable of being set on fire." You really don't want confusion over that when dealing with overturned tanker-trailers, so the word "inflammable" has largely been abandoned in America in favor of the more easily grasped neologism "flammable"

The safety switches in the cockpits of Air Force bombers carrying atomic bombs used to read "Off" and "On," until someone realized that the labeling could result in a potentially disastrous misunderstanding. Would "Off" mean that the safety switch was off and the bomb could detonate or did it mean that the safety switch was on and the bomb was disarmed? "On" created analogous confusion. Eventually the switches were changed to read "War" and "Peace."

Peter

1/18/14, 4:27 PM

Anonymous Glossy said...

Franz Kafka had a day job in insurance.

1/18/14, 4:29 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Re: on/off, war/peace.

I've noticed a similar issue on Youtube. Someone posts a video, the content of which they disapprove and invites viewers to share their disgust.

The video then gets assorted up and downvotes.

But it's never clear if the upvoters are agreeing with the criticism or actually approving the video itself. Downvotes - same problem in reverse.

1/18/14, 5:09 PM

Blogger ziel said...

From Strunk and White: "Unless one is concerned with the safety of children and illiterates, use inflammable" - from memory - don't flame me if I didn't get it exact.

1/18/14, 5:09 PM

Blogger ziel said...

From Strunk and White: "Unless one is concerned with the safety of children and illiterates, use inflammable" - from memory - don't flame me if I didn't get it exact.

1/18/14, 5:14 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"don't flame me..."

Does that make this post flammable or inflammable? I'm so confused...

1/18/14, 5:22 PM

Anonymous Dr. Nick said...

Yup, it's definitely mentioned in "Elements of Style" so for a neologism this one's quite long in the tooth now.

1/18/14, 5:25 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting that Whorf and the poet Wallace Stevens had day jobs in insurance. Seems the industry used to attract some bright lights.

Peter of ironrailsironweights is in insurance. Like Whorf and Stevens, he has in interest in a fluffy subject.

1/18/14, 6:38 PM

Anonymous Foreign Expert said...

I read somewhere that Whorf's linguistics relativism arose from his concern that science undermined christianity. If science and christianity are just different expressions of the same underlying reality, then christianity is saved.

1/18/14, 6:46 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wikipedia desperately needs copy editors with some minimal grasp of written English stylistics.

1/18/14, 7:03 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Originally read the headline as "Worf" and thought this would include something about the study of Klingon linguistics.

The flammable/inflammable debate reminds me of (what else) a classic Simpsons episode where Dr. Nick (after blowing up a bunch of oxygen tanks) exclaims, "inflammable means flammable? What a country!"

-SonOfStrom

1/18/14, 8:28 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2014/01/academics-in-wonderland.html?utm

1/18/14, 10:31 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

So much depends on a red fire truck.

1/18/14, 11:40 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I wonder if the reverse of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is true, i.e. the way the brains of a human population are wired influence the kind of language they will have.

1/19/14, 1:32 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

General MacArthur is reputed to have told his officers:

Never give an order than can be understood. Only give orders that cannot be misunderstood.

After first reading the first sentence, I thought to myself, old Doug was just another bureaucrat concerned with CYA. But the second sentence changed my mind.

An interesting study might be made of, in which languages it is easiest to the do the first, and in which it is easiest to do the second.

1/19/14, 5:39 AM

Anonymous Svigor said...

Did Whorf ever solve the "empty drums" problem?

Yup. He told the SOB responsible to "fix it or I will kill you where you stand!" and that was that.

1/19/14, 7:44 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I wonder if the reverse of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is true, i.e. the way the brains of a human population are wired influence the kind of language they will have."

I have wondered this myself. In theory, it is possible that if evolutionary fitness historically was at least somewhat dependent on linguistic facility, that certain brain configurations would be more adept at certain languages and would therefore proliferate over time.

1/19/14, 7:49 AM

Blogger annk said...

There is also an interesting paper about how the way that numerals are named makes the learning of basic math easier/more logical in Asian language cultures. Makes sense to me, as someone who is highly educated but struggles with math.

1/19/14, 7:54 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I read somewhere that Whorf's linguistics relativism arose from his concern that science undermined christianity. If science and christianity are just different expressions of the same underlying reality, then christianity is saved.

He seems to have come from a conventional religious background and was quite devout as a young adult. Later, I think he would be better classed as a religious "seeker", being interested in Mme Blavatsky's Theosophy for example.

"Science and Christianity express the same underlying reality" is the tradition Christian position, and for most Christians a pretty obvious conclusion.

1/19/14, 10:20 AM

Blogger Richard Sharpe said...

There is also an interesting paper about how the way that numerals are named makes the learning of basic math easier/more logical in Asian language cultures.

Could you point out that paper?

They seem just as arbitrarily named as numerals in English, and once you get past nineteen and one hundred, numbers become more regular in English.

1/19/14, 12:41 PM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

"Although "flammable" is first documented in an 1813 translation from Latin, its use was rare until the 1920s, when the U.S. National Fire Protection Association adopted "flammable" because of concern that the in- in "inflammable" might be misconstrued as a negative prefix. Underwriters and others interested in fire safety followed suit. Linguist Benjamin Whorf, who shares credit for the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis that language shapes thought, might have been influential in promoting this change. The Merriam-Webster Editorial Dept. writes: "Though we have been unable to confirm that Benjamin Whorf was responsible for the word's adoption, the theory seems plausible enough: he was, in fact, employed by the Hartford Fire Insurance Company from 1918 to 1940.""

So, Whorf might have influenced the change that began in the 1920s, or the change that began in the 1920s might have influenced Whorf, or neither.

Anyway, the point is that this is an example of where the content of a language -- the word "inflammable" -- caused problems, so a lot of effort was put into changing.

But changing the word caused problems during the transition period when some trucks said "flammable" and others said "inflammable," implying that the latter couldn't be set on fire.

So, this one example suggests a general pattern that problems in a language can eventually be worked around, but the work-arounds aren't cost-free.

1/20/14, 2:14 AM

Anonymous Reg Cæsar said...

[Asian numerals] seem just as arbitrarily named as numerals in English, and once you get past nineteen and one hundred, numbers become more regular in English. --R Sharpe

In comparison, Western Europe is downright hobbled. "92" is a blackbirdy "two-and-ninety" in Germany and the Low Countries, and the Lincolnic "fourscore-twelve" in France. It hasn't sandbagged the math genius of these realms.

By combining these quirks, the Danes boast Europe's, perhaps the world's, worst counting system: "92" is "two-and-half-the-fifth-score". Somehow Tycho Brahe and Niels Bohr got past this.

1/20/14, 7:38 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
So much depends on a red fire truck.

1/18/14, 11:40 PM


Williams didn't work in insurance but was a family doctor (a profession sometimes also associated with autistic introspection or perhaps just downer abuse). Other than Sherwood Anderson I can't think of many career frilly-literary types to come out of ad copywriting, which seems like the natural AAA team.

1/20/14, 5:25 PM

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