Editing Benjamin Lee Whorf (section)

=== 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" />