Language and Perception
Although we all possess the same physical organs for sensing the world eyes for seeing, ears for hearing, noses for smelling, skin for feeling, and mouths for tasting-our perception of the world depends to a great extent on the language we speak, according to a famous hypothesis proposed by linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. [They hypothesized that language is like a pair of eyeglasses through which we “see” the world in a particular way]. [A classic example of the relationship between language and perception is the word snow].[Eskimo languages have as many as 32 different words for snow]. [For instance, the Eskimos have different words for falling snow, snow on the ground, snow packed as hard as ice, slushy snow, wind-driven snow, and what we might call “cornmeal” snow].[The ancient Aztec languages of Mexico, in contrast, used only one word to mean snow, cold, and ice]. Thus, if the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is correct and we can perceive only things that we have words for, the Aztecs perceived snow, cold, and ice as one and the same phenomenon.
Although we all possess the same physical organs for sensing the world eyes for seeing, ears for hearing, noses for smelling, skin for feeling, and mouths for tasting-our perception of the world depends to a great extent on the language we speak, according to a famous hypothesis proposed by linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. [They hypothesized that language is like a pair of eyeglasses through which we “see” the world in a particular way]. [A classic example of the relationship between language and perception is the word snow].[Eskimo languages have as many as 32 different words for snow]. [For instance, the Eskimos have different words for falling snow, snow on the ground, snow packed as hard as ice, slushy snow, wind-driven snow, and what we might call “cornmeal” snow].[The ancient Aztec languages of Mexico, in contrast, used only one word to mean snow, cold, and ice]. Thus, if the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is correct and we can perceive only things that we have words for, the Aztecs perceived snow, cold, and ice as one and the same phenomenon.
Questions
1. What is the main idea of this paragraph? Underline the part of the topic sentence that expresses the main idea.
2. What examples does the writer use to support this idea? Put brackets [ ] around them.
3. What words and phrases introduce the examples? Circle them.
Thnbaks a lot for the answers!
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