Personalidad en las psicosis delirantes

A further important aspect with regard to the present thesis is the notion of linguistic relativism and the cognitive linguistic view concerning this issue. This question is first and foremost of interest to the issue of invariance of meaning in scientific and technical translation (see 2.4.3) since it is concerned with how much conceptual identity or congruency there can be in STT when structurally different languages intrude in a significant way in human concept formation (see 2.4.3 and 5.5). It is also relevant to the more specific concepts of explicitation and implicitation to be investigated in this thesis since these concepts refer to meanings which are absent in the source text and present in the target text and vice versa. If those meanings were tightly bound to the respective language system, they would be incommensurable and the whole enterprise of investigating explicitation and implicitation would be doomed to fail right from the start. According to linguistic relativism, the concepts that are symbolized in a given language are not founded in any universal aspects of human cognition but are rather products of the language system itself (Taylor 2002:55). The most current and also the most forceful expression of this view is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, named after the two American linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. The hypothesis consists of two parts:

linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity (Evans/Green 2006:96).19

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organised by our minds – and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds.

According to linguistic determinism, non-linguistic thought is determined by language. Following from this, the idea of linguistic relativity claims that because language exercises a determining influence on thought, speakers of different languages will also think differently. The basic claim of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is summarized in the following quote from Whorf (1956:213):

19 _{Scarpa (2002:34) claims that linguistic determinism represents the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf}

hypothesis, whereas linguistic relativity represents the weak version. This interpretation is inadmissible. Determinism and relativity are two components of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (where relativity follows from determinism), and it is the hypothesis as a whole (together with its components determinism and relativity) that is postulated in a strong and in a weak version.

The idea of dissecting nature along certain lines is reminiscent of Plato’s metaphor of conceptual systems carving nature at its joints (see 3.1.1). Recall that in objectivist metaphysics, the possible joints to carve at (or the lines along which to dissect nature) are already given by the objectively prestructured world, and human cognition and language only have to reflect this preexisting structure. Whorf rejects such a prestructured world, which “stares every observer in the face”, claiming instead that we are presented with an inherently unstructured “kaleidoscopic flux of impressions”.20

The strong version of linguistic relativism is generally held to be untenable today, specifically for two reasons. First, there is empirical evidence, especially from research on basic colour terms, which undermines the claim that thought is entirely determined by language.

According to Whorf, then, the joints or dissecting lines of nature are not out there in the world but rather imposed upon nature by the structure of human linguistic systems (which is closer to a subjectivist metaphysics and epistemology). The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis basically comes in two versions, a weak and a strong one. The strong version holds that language entirely determines non-linguistic thought and, as a consequence, speakers of a language only have access to those cognitive categories that are reflected by the linguistic categories of their language. It follows that speakers of different languages (especially languages with markedly different grammatical systems and lexicons) will have a fundamentally different understanding of the world and thus possess little to no shared ground to draw on in communication. The weak version, on the other hand, claims that the structure of different languages may influence – instead of determine – certain cognitive processes of the speakers of these languages because the structure of a language determines the way that information is “packaged” (Evans/Green 2006:96).

21

20 _{This view was also held by Saussure, who claimed that thought is an inherently unstructured and shapeless}

mass which can only form concepts through the intervention of linguistic systems (see Taylor 2002:53-54). It is also present in lexical field theory, according to which it is the lexical fields themselves which provide cognitive structure to an otherwise unstructured and amorphous human experience of the world (Linke et al.

5_2004:174).

The second reason is the simple fact that we can learn a foreign language to a

21 _{For example, there are experiments in which test subjects whose native language has only lexicalized two}

basic colour terms exhibited a high cognitive performance with regard to non-lexicalized focal colours (Evans/Green 2006:97, reporting on research by Heider 1972 and Rosch 1975, 1978). This high cognitive performance with regard to non-lexicalized focal colours is generally interpreted as evidence against strong

reasonably high degree (Hatim/Mason 1990:29-30) and the acquisition of competence in such a language is not restricted to its lexical and grammatical features but also extends to the foreign perspectives encoded in the language. In other words, we seem to be able to perceive, to trace and to reflect on the structural asymmetries of languages and to compare these differences on a metalinguistic level. If strong determinism was correct, we would be prisoners of our own linguistic categories and would have to remain completely agnostic as to cognitive capabilities reflected in other languages.

On the other hand, there seems to exist a rather wide consensus on the plausibility of the weak version of linguistic relativism (e.g. Jumpelt 1961:31; Linke et al. 5_{2004:380; Arntz}

et al. 6_{2009:39) and there is also empirical evidence supporting this view.}22

In line with this view, cognitive linguistics subscribes to a weak version of the Sapir- Whorf hypothesis and linguistic relativism, according to which language is seen as a shaper – instead of a determiner – of thought which facilitates the human conceptualizing processes (Evans/Green 2006:98). According to cognitive linguistics, humans, in virtue of their shared embodiment, possess a universal “conceptualizing capacity” which takes “preconceptual structures of experiences [e.g. imagistic and basic-level structure] as input and use[s] them to motivate concepts that accord with those preconceptual structures” (Lakoff 1987:303). This universal conceptualizing capacity can then give rise to different conceptual systems which may be equally good at representing certain phenomena. Lakoff (ibid.:310) illustrates this conceptualizing capacity and the different conceptual systems it can motivate with the concept FRONT, which has its roots in shape of the human body. When you are looking at a bush, the front of the bush will be the side facing you, whereas in the African Hausa language, the front would be the side facing away from you, i.e. the side facing the same direction you are facing. Both conceptual choices would be licensed by human experience and are therefore equally valid. Given our universal conceptualizing capacity, we can comprehend both conceptual systems and compare them with regard to Accordingly, Evans/Green (2006:99) assume that instead of a full linguistic determination of non- linguistic thought, “different ‘choices’ of language for representing concepts can indeed affect non-linguistic thought such as reasoning and problem-solving.”

relativity since if language would indeed entirely determine thought, the test subjects’ cognitive performance would presumably have been tied to the two lexicalized colour concepts.

22 _{See especially the influential experiment by Gentner/Gentner (1982) and the discussion and interpretation}

their commonalities and differences.23