Snow for cooling down: reflections on linguistic relativity conditioned by the environment in the scientific study of human languages

Abstract

The present work reflects on the notions of word, meaning and linguistic relativity, as presented in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and in relation with lexicography by analysing the controversy regarding the amount of words in Eskimo for snow. After exploring the early days of the controversy based on the remarks of Franz Boas in the end of the 19th century, the example is utilized for investigating the possible effect that the grammatical structure and the lexicon of a language may have over the way speakers of this language perceive the world, since these aspects of the linguistic knowledge would be conditioned by where the speakers of this language live. The frequently sarcastic arguments that associate these aspects of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and the amount of words for snow are discussed with intensive use of material related to well-established parameters of the linguistic typology. New elements revealed by recent research are incorporated into the analysis of cultural and environmental conditioning of lexical semantics of languages. These current investigations seem to support Boas’s initial conclusions regarding the wide variety of words for snow in Eskimo, in terms of both morphological and semantics significant distinctions. The discussion concludes by emphasising the importance of human knowledge expressed by these distinctions, despite the uses of this information in non-specialized contexts, such as “motivational” speeches for sales professionals, which would be potentially misguided in terms of scientific standards of language studies.