Linguistic Relativities: Language Diversity and Modern Thought - Hardcover

Leavitt, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521767822 ISBN 13: 9780521767828

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2011

Synopsis

There are more than six thousand human languages, each one unique. For the last five hundred years, people have argued about how important language differences are. This book traces that history and shows how language differences have generally been treated either as of no importance or as all-important, depending on broader approaches taken to human life and knowledge. It was only in the twentieth century, in the work of Franz Boas and his students, that an attempt was made to engage seriously with the reality of language specificities. Since the 1950s, this work has been largely presented as yet another claim that language differences are all-important by cognitive scientists and philosophers who believe that such differences are of no importance. This book seeks to correct this misrepresentation and point to the new directions taken by the Boasians, directions now being recovered in the most recent work in psychology and linguistics.

About this title

About the Author

John Leavitt is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Montréal.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521767822
• ISBN 13: 9780521767828
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256