Linguistic Relativism

In the twentieth century, a variety of relativistic views have emerged in different fields. Anthropological and linguistic studies of some scientists such as Cyper and Whorf led to linguistic relativism. According to this view, not only languages have decisive roles in the formation of our thoughts and worldviews, but they are incommensurable and they cannot be translated to one another. In this paper, I seek to analyze relativism and its determinants in order to illustrate, first, that at what level, linguistic relativism enters, and what things are the ones that languages become their reference framework and relativity, and second, how strong and creidable this sort of relativism is—to see whether or not evidence and arguments for this view can drive home its claim. In this paper, I shall distinguish between linguistic relativism and linguistic determinism, showing that the weak thesis of linguistic determinism and the partial role of language in the facilitation of thought—and not in its determination and control—can be plausible.