In 1984, George Orwell’s renowned novel on totalitarianism, the government of Oceania controls citizen thought using an altered version of English. The state accomplishes this through “Newspeak,” which has been altered to avoid thought in opposition to the government, which includes removing words such as justice and democracy [1]. However, just how plausible is it to expect such a language to be successful in its aim of hindering certain thought?
One significant and somewhat controversial principle within the field of cognitive linguistics is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or linguistic relativity, named for linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. It posits that the language that someone speaks influences their perception of the world [2]. This theoretically could appear in a manner such as Newspeak, where removing vocabulary changes thought, or as a different perception of time, colour, etc. Linguistic relativity is often divided into a “weak” form, that language only influences thought, and a “strong” form, also called linguistic determinism, in which concepts not found within the language are practically impossible to conceive of [3]. For example, Whorf described the broad term of snow in English as being “almost unthinkable” to Inuit populations, who “would say that falling snow, slushy snow, and so on, are sensuously and operationally different [4].” Lexical gaps, where one term has a more specific meaning than another (such as specific words for light and dark blue in Russian), could also impact thought. For example, a Russian speaker may therefore be more able to differentiate between light and dark blues.
Much of Whorf’s evidence for the theory of linguistic relativity, especially for linguistic determinism, came from his studies of Native American populations, specifically in the Southwest, and most significantly from the Hopi tribe. He understood the Hopi to have a different, cyclical conception of time [4, 5]. Thus, Whorf believed that the Hopi were unable to consider time as linear, as they couldn’t express such a thought in their language. In 1983, however, German-American linguist Ekkehart Malotki published Hopi Time, which called this theory into question by suggesting that the language had a distinction between non-future and future [6]. A language’s conception of time can be expressed through a variety of means, including metaphors and gesticulation [7]. For the Hopi in particular, this could include metaphors about the cycle of life if Whorf is to be believed, or about the lack of certainty about the future as opposed to the past if Malotki is correct. Malotki presents many metaphors supporting his point in Hopi Time [6], though Whorf was not alive to respond to such claims. The Hopi system of time continues to be disputed in the linguistic community.
Many recent studies have been conducted to test the predictive accuracy of the hypothesis, offering mixed results. For example, number-based tests were conducted with the Pirahã people of Brazil, whose language has no terms for exact quantities. When conducting matching tests with a certain number of objects, researchers found that even despite not having precise numerical terms, they were able to match exact amounts when they were able to compare directly. However, when they were made to remember the number of objects, the results were significantly less accurate. The Pirahã were able to complete tasks like the first with near 100% accuracy, even without exact descriptive language. However, they struggled to remember exact quantities in tests of the second variety, evidence that suggests a weaker Whorfian hypothesis over a stronger variety [8,9].
Interesting as the basis behind Newspeak may be, Orwell’s language has little empirical grounding. The linguistic determinism the language is based on would not truly hold up in real life, though it is possible it could slightly change the connotations of terms regarding anti-governmental thought.