No Mic Podcast Scribed By Facelesslingjutsu - Profile: Edward Sapir
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Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached … We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. - The Status Of Linguistics As A Science (1929), p. 69
Edward Sapir was a highly influential American anthropologist and linguist, best known for his work on the relationship between language and culture, notably the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. He made significant contributions to the documentation and classification of numerous indigenous North American languages, challenging prevailing misconceptions about their complexity.
Edward Sapir's early life laid the groundwork for his groundbreaking contributions to linguistics and anthropology, shaped by his immigrant background and exceptional intellect. Born in Lauenburg, German Pomerania (now Lębork, Poland) in 1884, he came from a Lithuanian Jewish family. His father, Jacob David Sapir, was a cantor, and while the family was not strictly Orthodox, music remained an important connection to their heritage.
When Edward was just four, his family emigrated, first to Liverpool, England, in 1888, and then to the United States in 1890, initially settling in Richmond, Virginia. There, a tragedy struck when his younger brother, Max, succumbed to typhoid fever. The family eventually found a more permanent home on the Lower East Side of New York City, where they faced significant economic hardship and lived in poverty. His father struggled to maintain a stable job in a synagogue, leading his mother, Eva Seagal Sapir, to open a shop to support the family. His parents later formally divorced in 1910.
Despite the financial difficulties, Edward's mother instilled in him a profound appreciation for education, seeing it as a path to social mobility. Exposed to both Yiddish and English from a young age, Sapir developed an early fascination with language structures. This bilingual environment undoubtedly played a crucial role in shaping his future academic pursuits.
His intellectual precocity was evident early on. At the age of 14, he won a prestigious Pulitzer scholarship. Rather than attending the then-considered "posh" Horace Mann high school, he opted for a public high school, DeWitt Clinton High School, strategically deferring the scholarship to use it for his college education. This decision helped supplement his mother's meager earnings.
In 1901, Sapir entered Columbia University, utilizing his Pulitzer scholarship. Columbia at the time was notable for its relatively open admission of Jewish students, a contrast to other elite universities with implicit quotas. He initially pursued Germanic philology, earning both his Bachelor's (1904) and Master's (1905) degrees in the field, immersing himself in Latin, Greek, French, Gothic, Old High German, Old Saxon, Icelandic, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish.
However, a pivotal turning point in his academic journey came through his encounter with Franz Boas, the influential "father of American anthropology" at Columbia. Boas recognized Sapir's extraordinary talent for linguistic analysis and encouraged him to shift his focus to Native American languages, a relatively unexplored field at the time. Under Boas's mentorship, Sapir completed his Ph.D. in anthropology in 1909, with a dissertation focusing on the Takelma language of Oregon. This marked the true beginning of his dedicated career in documenting, analyzing, and ultimately revitalizing the study of indigenous languages. His early fieldwork during this period, often undertaken with limited resources, laid the foundation for his lifelong commitment to linguistic diversity and the scientific study of language.
Edward Sapir's highly influential career, which fundamentally shaped the fields of linguistics and anthropology, can be effectively understood by examining its distinct yet intricately linked phases. After completing his doctoral studies at Columbia University in 1909, a pivotal period of his early professional life began as he assumed the role of the first chief ethnologist for the Division of Anthropology of the Geological Survey of Canada. This tenure, spanning from 1910 to 1925, was remarkably productive. During these fifteen years, Sapir dedicated himself to the arduous yet monumental task of meticulously documenting and classifying a vast array of Indigenous languages across the breadth of Canada. This hands-on fieldwork was not just about recording; it was about understanding the intricate structures and nuances of these languages, many of which were previously unstudied by Western scholars. It was also during this time that he published his highly influential theoretical work, "Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech," in 1921. This book laid crucial groundwork for modern linguistic theory, offering profound insights into the nature of language itself and its profound connection to human thought and culture.
Following this foundational period in Canada, Sapir transitioned to the University of Chicago in 1925, a move that marked the next significant phase of his career. At Chicago, he became a central figure in an intellectually vibrant and interdisciplinary academic environment. Here, he continued to refine and expand upon his burgeoning ideas concerning the intricate relationship between language, broader cultural patterns, and the formation of individual personality. This period allowed him to delve deeper into the psychological dimensions of language and its role in shaping human experience.
It was during these productive decades, particularly spanning the 1920s and 1930s, that Edward Sapir made his groundbreaking contributions to the concepts of linguistic relativity and determinism. These ideas are often collectively referred to as the "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis," though it's important to note that neither Sapir nor his prominent student, Benjamin Lee Whorf, ever formally articulated a single, unified hypothesis under this specific name. Instead, the hypothesis emerged as a synthesis of their cumulative writings and extensive research. Sapir's seminal 1921 book, "Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech," provided some of the earliest and most profound insights into how a language doesn't merely serve as a tool for communication but actively reflects and, in turn, shapes a speaker's unique worldview. These ideas were further developed and more explicitly articulated in subsequent works, such as his impactful essay "The Status of Linguistics as a Science," which was published in 1929. This essay, among others, solidified Sapir's enduring position as a pivotal figure in proposing the revolutionary notion that the inherent structure and categories of a language profoundly influence, and even constrain, the way its speakers perceive, interpret, and ultimately think about the world around them. This conceptual framework continues to be a subject of vigorous debate and research in linguistics, anthropology, and cognitive science today.
Sapir argued that human beings don't simply adjust to a pre-given reality independent of language. On the contrary, he asserted that "the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group." This means that the categories, distinctions, and relationships we "see" in nature are not universally self-evident, but rather are "cut up" and organized by the specific linguistic patterns we inherit and use. For Sapir, the "agreement" among speakers of a particular language about how to classify and understand phenomena, though often unstated, is absolutely obligatory for effective communication and shapes our entire cognitive framework. Through such compelling arguments, Sapir solidified his position as a seminal figure in the ongoing debate about the extent to which language determines or influences human cognition, laying intellectual groundwork that would be further explored and debated by subsequent generations of linguists, anthropologists, and cognitive scientists.
Edward Sapir's incredibly productive career, which profoundly influenced linguistics and anthropology, was tragically cut short when he died in 1939 at the age of 55. His health had declined following a heart attack in 1937, though he continued to work despite his illness. His untimely passing left a significant void in academia, ending the life of a scholar who had reshaped our understanding of language, culture, and their intricate connections.
His final and equally influential period began in 1931 when he accepted the prestigious Sterling Professorship at Yale University, establishing the anthropology department there and mentoring a new generation of scholars who further developed his theories, before his distinguished career was tragically cut short by his untimely death in 1939.
Other works:
Preliminary report on the language and mythology of the Upper Chinook (1907)
Some fundamental characteristics of the Ute language (1910)
Some aspects of Nootka language and culture (1911)
The problem of noun incorporation in American languages (1911)
The Na-dene languages: a preliminary report (1915)
Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Culture: A Study in Method (1916)
Do we need a superorganic? (1917)
Culture, Genuine and Spurious (1924)
Sound patterns in language (1925)
Memorandum on the problem of an international auxiliary language (1925)
The function of an international auxiliary language (1931)
La réalité psychologique des phonèmes (The psychological reality of phonemes) (1933)
Grading: a study in semantics (1944, posthumous)
Speech as a Personality Trait (found in "Selected Writings")
The Unconscious Patterning of Behavior in Society (found in "Selected Writings")
Reference:
Sapir, Edward. (2005). In Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. www.credoreference.com/entry/wileycs/sapir_edward
Moore, Jerry D. 2009. "Edward Sapir: Culture, Language, and the Individual" in Visions of Culture: an Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists, Walnut Creek, California: Altamira. pp. 88–104
Allyn, Bobby"DeWitt Clinton's Remarkable Alumni", The New York Times, July 21, 2009. Accessed September 2, 2014.
Sapir, Edward. 1910. Yana Texts. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, vol. 1, no. 9. Berkeley: University Press. (Online version at the Internet Archive).
Sapir, Edward (1930). "The Southern Paiute language". Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 65 (1): 1–730. doi:10.2307/20026309. JSTOR 20026309.
Murray, Stephen O (1991). "The Canadian Winter' of Edward Sapir". Historiographia Linguistica. 8 (1): 63–68. doi:10.1075/hl.8.1.04mur.
Golla, Victor (2011). "51". California Indian Languages. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520266674.
Gelya Frank. 1997. Jews, Multiculturalism, and Boasian Anthropology. American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 99, No. 4, pp. 731–745
Haas, M. R. (1953), Sapir and the Training of Anthropological Linguists. American Anthropologist, 55: 447–450.
Reported by Regna Darnell, Sapir's biographer (p.c. to Bruce Nevin).
"Edward Sapir". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 2023-02-09. Retrieved 2023-05-25.
"Edward Sapir". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2023-05-25.
"APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2023-05-25.
Morris Swadesh. 1939. "Edward Sapir" Language Vol. 15, No. 2 (Apr. – Jun., 1939), pp. 132–135
Darnell, R. (1998), Camelot at Yale: The Construction and Dismantling of the Sapirian Synthesis, 1931–39. American Anthropologist, 100: 361–372.
Richard J. Preston. 1966. Edward Sapir's Anthropology: Style, Structure, and Method. American Anthropologist , New Series, Vol. 68, No. 5, pp. 1105–1128
Richard Handler. 1984. Sapir's Poetic Experience. American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 86, No. 2, pp. 416–417
Sapir, Edward (1933). "La réalité psychologique des phonèmes (The psychological reality of phonemes)". Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique (in French).
Malkiel, Yakov. 1981. Drift, Slope, and Slant: Background of, and Variations upon, a Sapirian Theme. Language, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Sep., 1981), pp. 535–570
Gopsill, F. Peter. International Languages: a matter for Interlingua. British Interlingua Society, 1990.
Falk, Julia S. "Words without grammar: linguists and the international language movement in the United States", Language and Communication, 15(3): pp. 241–259. Pergamon, 1995.