Editing Benjamin Lee Whorf (section)

== Biography ==

=== Early life ===
The son of Harry Church Whorf and Sarah Edna Lee Whorf, Benjamin Atwood Lee Whorf was born on April 24, 1897, in [[Winthrop, Massachusetts]]. His father was an artist, intellectual, and designer&nbsp;– first working as a commercial artist and later as a dramatist. Whorf had two younger brothers, [[John Whorf|John]] and [[Richard Whorf|Richard]], who both went on to become notable artists. John became an internationally renowned painter and illustrator; Richard was an actor in films such as ''[[Yankee Doodle Dandy]]'' and later an [[Emmy]]-nominated television director of such shows as ''[[The Beverly Hillbillies]]''. Whorf was the intellectual of the three and started conducting chemical experiments with his father's photographic equipment at a young age.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Carroll|1956|pp=2–3}}</ref> He was also an avid reader, interested in botany, astrology, and Middle American prehistory. He read [[William H. Prescott]]'s ''[[William H. Prescott#The History of the Conquest of Mexico|Conquest of Mexico]]'' several times. At the age of 17, he began keeping a copious diary in which he recorded his thoughts and dreams.<ref name="carroll6">{{harvcoltxt|Carroll|1956|p=6}}</ref>

=== Career in fire prevention ===
In 1918, Whorf graduated from the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]], where his academic performance was of average quality{{Cn|date=March 2024}}, with a degree in [[chemical engineering]]. In 1920, he married Celia Inez Peckham; they had three children, Raymond Ben, Robert Peckham and Celia Lee.<ref name="carroll6" /> Around the same time he began work as a fire prevention engineer (an inspector) for the [[The Hartford|Hartford Fire Insurance Company]]. He was particularly good at the job and was highly commended by his employers. His job required him to travel to production facilities throughout New England to be inspected. One anecdote describes him arriving at a chemical plant and being denied access by the director, who would not allow anyone to see the production procedure, which was a trade secret. Having been told what the plant produced, Whorf wrote a chemical formula on a piece of paper, saying to the director: "I think this is what you're doing". The surprised director asked Whorf how he knew about the secret procedure, and he simply answered: "You couldn't do it in any other way."<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Carroll|1956|p=4}}</ref>

Whorf helped to attract new customers to the Fire Insurance Company; they favored his thorough inspections and recommendations. Another famous anecdote from his job was used by Whorf to argue that language use affects habitual behavior.<ref name="Pullum 1991">{{harvcoltxt|Pullum|1991}}</ref> Whorf described a workplace in which full gasoline drums were stored in one room and empty ones in another; he said that because of flammable vapor the "empty" drums were more dangerous than those that were full, although workers handled them less carefully to the point that they smoked in the room with "empty" drums, but not in the room with full ones. Whorf argued that by habitually speaking of the vapor-filled drums as empty and by extension as inert, the workers were oblivious to the risk posed by smoking near the "empty drums".<ref name="HABITUAL" group="w"/>

=== Early interest in religion and language ===
Whorf was a spiritual man throughout his lifetime, although what religion he followed has been the subject of debate. As a young man, he produced a manuscript titled "Why I have discarded [[evolution]]", causing some scholars to describe him as a devout [[Methodist]], who was impressed with [[fundamentalism]], and perhaps supportive of [[creationism]].<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Bergman|2011}}; {{harvcoltxt|Lakoff|1987|p=324}}</ref> However, throughout his life Whorf's main religious interest was [[Theosophy (Boehmian)|theosophy]], a nonsectarian organization based on [[Buddhist]] and [[Hinduism|Hindu]] teachings that promotes the view of the [[holism|world as an interconnected whole]] and the unity and brotherhood of humankind "without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color".<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Lee|1996|pp=21–22}}</ref> Some scholars have argued that the conflict between spiritual and scientific inclinations has been a driving force in Whorf's intellectual development, particularly in the attraction by ideas of linguistic relativity.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Rollins|1972}}; {{harvcoltxt|Rollins|1971}}</ref> Whorf said that "of all groups of people with whom I have come in contact, Theosophical people seem the most capable of becoming excited about ideas—new ideas."<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Algeo|2001}}</ref>

Around 1924, Whorf first became interested in [[linguistics]]. Originally, he analyzed Biblical texts, seeking to uncover hidden layers of meaning.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Carroll|2005}}</ref> Inspired by the [[esoteric]] work ''La langue hebraïque restituée'' by [[Fabre d'Olivet|Antoine Fabre d'Olivet]], he began a semantic and grammatical analysis of [[Biblical Hebrew]]. Whorf's early manuscripts on Hebrew and Maya have been described as exhibiting a considerable degree of [[mysticism]], as he sought to uncover esoteric meanings of glyphs and letters.<ref name="JosephBlavatsky">{{harvcoltxt|Joseph|2002}}</ref>

=== Early studies in Mesoamerican linguistics ===
Whorf studied Biblical linguistics mainly at the Watkinson Library (now [[Hartford Public Library]]). This library had an extensive collection of materials about [[Indigenous languages of the Americas|Native American linguistics]] and [[folklore]], originally collected by [[James Hammond Trumbull]].<ref name="Carroll11">{{harvcoltxt|Carroll|1956|pp=10–11}}</ref> It was at the Watkinson library that Whorf became friends with a young boy, [[John Bissell Carroll|John B. Carroll]], who later went on to study psychology under [[B. F. Skinner]], and who in 1956 edited and published a selection of Whorf's essays as ''Language, Thought and Reality'' {{harvcoltxt|Carroll|1956b}}. The collection rekindled Whorf's interest in [[Mesoamerica]]n antiquity. He began studying the [[Nahuatl]] language in 1925, and later, beginning in 1928, he studied the collections of [[Maya script|Maya hieroglyphic texts]]. Quickly becoming conversant with the materials, he began a scholarly dialog with Mesoamericanists such as [[Alfred Tozzer]], the Maya archaeologist at [[Harvard University]], and [[Herbert Spinden]] of the [[Brooklyn Museum]].<ref name="Carroll11" />

In 1928, he first presented a paper at the International Congress of Americanists in which he presented his translation of a Nahuatl document held at the [[Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology|Peabody Museum]] at Harvard. He also began to study the comparative linguistics of the [[Uto-Aztecan languages|Uto-Aztecan language family]], which [[Edward Sapir]] had recently demonstrated to be a linguistic family. In addition to Nahuatl, Whorf studied the [[Piman languages|Piman]] and [[Tepecano language]]s, while in close correspondence with linguist [[J. Alden Mason]].<ref name="Carroll11" />

=== Field studies in Mexico ===
Because of the promise shown by his work on Uto-Aztecan, Tozzer and Spinden advised Whorf to apply for a grant with the [[Social Science Research Council]] (SSRC) to support his research. Whorf considered using the money to travel to Mexico to procure Aztec manuscripts for the Watkinson library, but Tozzer suggested he spend the time in Mexico documenting modern [[Nahuatl dialects]].<ref name="Carroll11" /> In his application Whorf proposed to establish the [[oligosynthetic]] nature of the Nahuatl language. Before leaving Whorf presented the paper "Stem series in Maya" at the [[Linguistic Society of America]] conference, in which he argued that in the [[Mayan languages]] syllables carry symbolic content. The SSRC awarded Whorf the grant and in 1930 he traveled to [[Mexico City]], where Professor [[R. H. Barlow|Robert H. Barlow]] put him in contact with several speakers of Nahuatl to serve as his informants. The outcome of the trip to Mexico was Whorf's sketch of [[Milpa Alta]] Nahuatl, published only after his death, and an article on a series of [[Aztec writing|Aztec pictograms]] found at the [[Tepozteco]] monument at Tepoztlán, [[Morelos]] in which he noted similarities in form and meaning between Aztec and Maya day signs.<ref name="CarrollIntro">{{harvcoltxt|Carroll|1956}}</ref>

=== At Yale ===
[[File:Edward Sapir.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7| [[Edward Sapir]], Whorf's mentor in linguistics at Yale]]
Although Whorf had been entirely an [[Autodidacticism|autodidact]] in linguistic theory and field methodology up to this point, he had already made a name for himself in Mesoamerican linguistics. Whorf had met Sapir, the leading US linguist of the day, at professional conferences, and in 1931 Sapir came to [[Yale University|Yale]] from the [[University of Chicago]] to take a position as Professor of [[Anthropology]]. Alfred Tozzer sent Sapir a copy of Whorf's paper on "Nahuatl tones and saltillo". Sapir replied stating that it "should by all means be published";<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Lee|1996|p=10}}</ref> however, it was not until 1993 that it was prepared for publication by [[Lyle Campbell]] and [[Frances Karttunen]].<ref name="Whorf1993">{{harvcoltxt|Whorf|Campbell|Karttunen| 1993}}</ref>

Whorf took Sapir's first course at Yale on "American Indian Linguistics". He enrolled in a program of graduate studies, nominally working towards a PhD in linguistics, but he never actually attempted to obtain a degree, satisfying himself with participating in the intellectual community around Sapir. At Yale, Whorf joined the circle of Sapir's students that included such luminaries as [[Morris Swadesh]], [[Mary Haas]], [[Harry Hoijer]], [[G. L. Trager]] and [[Charles F. Voegelin]]. Whorf took on a central role among Sapir's students and was well respected.<ref name="CarrollIntro" /><ref>{{harvcoltxt|Darnell|2001}}</ref>

Sapir had a profound influence on Whorf's thinking. Sapir's earliest writings had espoused views of the relation between thought and language stemming from the [[Wilhelm von Humboldt|Humboldtian]] tradition he acquired through [[Franz Boas]], which regarded language as the historical embodiment of ''volksgeist'', or ethnic world view. But Sapir had since become influenced by a current of [[logical positivism]], such as that of [[Bertrand Russell]] and the early [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]], particularly through [[C. K. Ogden|Ogden]] and [[I. A. Richards|Richards']] ''[[The Meaning of Meaning]]'', from which he adopted the view that natural language potentially obscures, rather than facilitates, the mind to perceive and describe the world as it really is. In this view, proper perception could only be accomplished through [[formal logic]]s. During his stay at Yale, Whorf acquired this current of thought partly from Sapir and partly through his own readings of Russell and of Ogden and Richards.<ref name="JosephBlavatsky" /> As Whorf became more influenced by positivist science, he also distanced himself from some approaches to language and meaning that he saw as lacking in rigor and insight. One of these was Polish philosopher [[Alfred Korzybski]]'s [[General semantics]], which was espoused in the US by [[Stuart Chase]]. Chase admired Whorf's work and frequently sought out a reluctant Whorf, who considered Chase to be "utterly incompetent by training and background to handle such a subject."<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Lee|1996|p=16}}</ref> Ironically, Chase would later write the foreword for Carroll's collection of Whorf's writings.

==== Work on Hopi and descriptive linguistics ====
Sapir also encouraged Whorf to continue his work on the [[historical linguistics|historical]] and [[descriptive linguistics]] of Uto-Aztecan. Whorf published several articles on that topic in this period, some of them with G. L. Trager, who had become his close friend. Whorf took a special interest in the [[Hopi language]] and started working with Ernest Naquayouma, a speaker of Hopi from Toreva village living in [[Manhattan]], New York. Whorf credited Naquayouma as the source of most of his information on the Hopi language, although in 1938 he took a short field trip to the village of Mishongnovi, on the [[Second Mesa, Arizona|Second Mesa]] of the [[Hopi Reservation]] in [[Arizona]].<ref name="Dinwoodie">{{harvcoltxt|Dinwoodie|2006|p=346}}</ref>

In 1936, Whorf was appointed honorary research fellow in anthropology at Yale, and he was invited by [[Franz Boas]] to serve on the committee of the Society of American Linguistics (later [[Linguistic Society of America]]). In 1937, Yale awarded him the Sterling Fellowship.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Lee|1996|p=11}}</ref> He was a lecturer in anthropology from 1937 through 1938, replacing Sapir, who was gravely ill.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Darnell|1990|pp=380–1}}</ref> Whorf gave graduate level lectures on "Problems of American Indian Linguistics". In 1938 with Trager's assistance he elaborated a report on the progress of linguistic research at the department of anthropology at Yale. The report includes some of Whorf's influential contributions to linguistic theory, such as the concept of the [[allophone]] and of [[cryptotype|covert grammatical categories]]. {{harvcoltxt|Lee|1996}} has argued, that in this report Whorf's linguistic theories exist in a condensed form, and that it was mainly through this report that Whorf exerted influence on the discipline of descriptive linguistics.<ref group="n">The report is reprinted in {{harvcoltxt|Lee|1996}}</ref>

==== Final years ====
In late 1938, Whorf's own health declined. After an operation for cancer, he fell into an unproductive period. He was also deeply affected by Sapir's death in early 1939. It was in the writings of his last two years that he laid out the research program of [[linguistic relativity]]. His 1939 memorial article for Sapir, "The Relation of Habitual Thought And Behavior to Language",<ref name="HABITUAL" group="w">''The Relation of Habitual Thought And Behavior to Language''. Written in 1939 and originally published in "Language, Culture and Personality: Essays in Memory of Edward Sapir" edited by [[Leslie Spier]], 1941, reprinted in {{harvcoltxt|Carroll|1956|pp=134–59}}. The piece is the source of most of the quotes used by Whorf's detractors.</ref> in particular has been taken to be Whorf's definitive statement of the issue, and is his most frequently quoted piece.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Lee|2000|p=47}}</ref>

In his last year Whorf also published three articles in the ''[[MIT Technology Review]]'' titled "Science and Linguistics",<ref name="SCIENCE" group="w">"Science and linguistics" first published in 1940 in [[MIT Technology Review]] (42:229–31); reprinted in {{harvcoltxt|Carroll|1956|pp=212–214}}</ref> "Linguistics as an Exact Science" and "Language and Logic". He was also invited to contribute an article to a theosophical journal, ''Theosophist'', published in [[Chennai|Madras]], [[India]], for which he wrote "Language, Mind and Reality".<ref name="LMR" group="w">''Language Mind and reality''. Written in 1941 originally printed by the Theosophical Society in 1942 "The Theosophist" Madras, India. Vol 63:1. 281–91. Reprinted in {{harvcoltxt|Carroll|1956|pp=246–270}}. In 1952 also reprinted in "Etc., a Review of General Semantics, 9:167–188.</ref> In these final pieces, he offered a critique of Western science in which he suggested that non-European languages often referred to physical phenomena in ways that more directly reflected aspects of reality than many European languages, and that science ought to pay attention to the effects of linguistic categorization in its efforts to describe the physical world. He particularly criticized the [[Indo-European languages]] for promoting a mistaken [[Essentialism|essentialist]] world view, which had been disproved by advances in the science, in contrast suggesting that other languages dedicated more attention to processes and dynamics rather than stable essences.<ref name="JosephBlavatsky" /> Whorf argued that paying attention to how other physical phenomena are described across languages could make valuable contributions to science by pointing out the ways in which certain assumptions about reality are implicit in the structure of language itself, and how language guides the attention of speakers towards certain phenomena in the world; these phenomena risk becoming overemphasized while leaving other phenomena at risk of being overlooked.<ref name="Subbiondo" />