Humboldt, worldview and language

177 Pages·2009·0.963 MB·English

by  Humboldt, Wilhelm von, Humboldt, Wilhelm, Underhill, James William

H
u
m
Humboldt, Worldview and Language b Humboldt, Worldview
o
l
d
James W. Underhill t
,

W and Language
o
‘Based on an excellent knowledge of the author, Underhill presents an enlightened version of the r
world view hypothesis in Humboldt and in linguistics, making an important contribution to a crucial l
d
issue in linguistic theory and in the history of ideas.’ v
Jürgen Trabant, Jacobs University Bremen i
e
w
‘James Underhill shows a great mastery concerning the general theory of language. It is extremely
rare to find nowadays any thinker, either in linguistics or philosophy, whose thought continues the a
way Humboldt linked the word and the world.’ n
Henri Meschonnic, Paris VIII University d

L
With the loss of many of the world’s languages, it has become urgent to question what is lost to
a
humanity with their demise. It is frequently argued that a language engenders a ‘worldview’, but what
n
do we mean by this term? From linguists such as Sapir, Whorf and Chomsky to philosophers such as
g
Heidegger and to sociologists such as Bourdieu, the idea that a language shapes the worldview of its u
linguistic community has been attributed to Wilhelm von Humboldt, the Prussian philologist and a
politician (1767–1835). But despite lavish praise, the dense, profound and thought-provoking ideas g
e
on thought and language of Humboldt remain largely unknown in the English-speaking world. This
prolific thinker investigated Sanskrit, Kawi, the American Indian languages as well as most of the
major European languages, and his findings led him to propose the most far-reaching exploration of J
a
the relation between our mode of perceiving and conceiving the world and the way we draw words m
and concepts into our minds in order to assimilate language and explore its possibilities.
e
s
This short, concise and rigorously researched book clarifies the main ideas and proposals of Humboldt’s
W
linguistic philosophy and demonstrates the way his ideas can be adopted and adapted by thinkers
.
and linguists today. A detailed glossary of terms is provided in order to clarify key concepts and
U
translate the German terms used by Humboldt.
n
d
James W. Underhill lectures on Translation Studies at Stendhal University, Grenoble, France. He
e
has worked as a professional translator of both French and Czech and has published articles r
h
on poetics, metaphor and translation.
i
l
l
ISBN 978 0 7486 3842 0
Cover image: Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). E
Courtesy of Harald Fischer Verlag d
Cover design: Cathy Sprent i
n
Edinburgh University Press b
22 George Square u
r James W. Underhill
Edinburgh EH8 9LF g
www.euppublishing.com h
Humboldt, Worldview and Language
EEBB00002288 -- UUNNDDEERRHHIILLLL PPRREE..iinndddd ii 2288//44//0099 1133::4477::0022
EEBB00002288 -- UUNNDDEERRHHIILLLL PPRREE..iinndddd iiii 2288//44//0099 1133::4477::0022
Humboldt, Worldview and
Language
James W. Underhill
Edinburgh University Press
EEBB00002288 -- UUNNDDEERRHHIILLLL PPRREE..iinndddd iiiiii 2288//44//0099 1133::4477::0022
© James W. Underhill, 2009
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in Ehrhardt
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 3842 0 (hardback)
The right of James W. Underhill
to be identifi ed as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
EEBB00002288 -- UUNNDDEERRHHIILLLL PPRREE..iinndddd iivv 2288//44//0099 1133::4477::0022
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Preface ix
Part I: Language and World
1 The Word is a World (La parole est un monde) 3
2 What Do We Have in Mind When We Talk about
Language? 10
3 What Do We See in the Term Worldview? 14
4 Boas 20
5 Sapir 25
6 Whorf 33
Part II: Humboldt, Man and Language
7 Worldview (Weltanschauung or Weltansicht) 53
8 Sprache 58
9 The Work of the Mind 63
10 Form 74
11 Creativity, Culture and Character 81
12 Catching the Character 97
13 A Seeing and Feeling Worldview 106
14 Four Dangers in the Comparative Approach 113
15 Reformulating the Worldview Hypothesis 120
World 123
Language 128
EEBB00002288 -- UUNNDDEERRHHIILLLL PPRREE..iinndddd vv 2299//44//0099 0088::0066::1100
vi contents
Thought 131
Worldview 134
16 A Final Word 144
Glossary 147
Bibliography 154
Index 160
EEBB00002288 -- UUNNDDEERRHHIILLLL PPRREE..iinndddd vvii 2288//44//0099 1133::4477::0022
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Cambridge University Press for kindly
allowing me to reproduce quotations from Peter Heath’s
Translation of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s On Language: The
Diversity of Human Language Structure and its Infl uence on the
Mental Development of Mankind, edited by Michael Losonsky
(2nd edition published in 1999). Without these passages, this
work would obviously have been impossible. I would also like to
thank the same Press for allowing me to publish passages from
John A. Lucy’s Language Diversity and Thought: A Reformulation
of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (1992). Lucy’s work
allowed me to enrich the chapters on both Sapir and Whorf. I
also wish to thank the MIT Press for allowing me to reproduce
sections from Benjamin Lee Whorf’s Language, Thought and
Reality, edited by John B. Caroll (1984). For helping me with
the arduous task of checking the manuscript, I wish to warmly
thank both Marko Pajevic´ (without whose aid, the analysis of
German would have suffered), Vicki Briault Magnus, whose
remarks and suggestions on style considerably improved the
English, and François Genton. All these people gave me exactly
the right kind of encouragement during that diffi cult period of
seclusion and intense intellectual questioning which fi lls one full
of doubts as to the nature and raison d’être of an academic project
of this kind. For the same reason, I am grateful to one of the great
contemporary Humboldt scholars, Jürgen Trabant of Berlin. His
EEBB00002288 -- UUNNDDEERRHHIILLLL PPRREE..iinndddd vviiii 2288//44//0099 1133::4477::0022
viii acknowledgements
enthusiasm for this short book was inspiring and his criticisms
have helped present Humboldt’s ideas with greater accuracy.
Thanks also to the editorial staff of Edinburgh University Press
for their help and support.
EEBB00002288 -- UUNNDDEERRHHIILLLL PPRREE..iinndddd vviiiiii 2288//44//0099 1133::4477::0022
Preface
The global era might be seen as the era of language or the era of the
threat to language, depending on what we mean by language. If we
survey the astounding advances made in the fi eld of communication
with the advent of portable telephones, email, video conferences and
IT, then we might be tempted to celebrate our era for brushing aside
barriers to communication throughout the world. But if we consider
language, not as communication, but as that specifi c system that
evolves over time to give expression to a people’s culture, its way of
life and even its way of thinking, then our era looks somewhat less
rosy. Some experts estimate that of the 6,000 languages now spoken in
the world, no more than half will survive the twenty-fi rst century.
English seems assured a future. Is it conceivable for the average
English-speaker, that the language which gave the world William
Shakespeare, Isaac Newton and Adam Smith should simply cease
to exist? This, nevertheless, is the fate facing thousands of lan-
guages whose communities are either dying out or switching over
to languages which have greater clout in the world of international
commerce, languages which are likely to provide their speakers
with greater hope of economic survival. One language (the work
of centuries of thought and feeling refi ned into expression) simply
dies out every two weeks it has been estimated. A library of a culture
is burned down often without ever having been written.
One of the great questions of the twenty-fi rst century, not
only for linguists and anthropologists, but for all those who feel
EEBB00002288 -- UUNNDDEERRHHIILLLL PPRREE..iinndddd iixx 2288//44//0099 1133::4477::0022