Wilhelm von Humboldt's Conception of Linguistic Relativity

Description

"Wilhelm von Humboldt’s linguistic thought has for some time clearly been in need of systematic treatment in English. Interest in the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” over the last several decades has produced a spin-off of interest in the lineage of “Neo-Humboldtian” linguistics, but little serious historical scholarship. More recently, Noam Chomsky has placed Humboldt in a quasi-historical context that emphasizes linguistic universals rather than the relativism characteristics of the Neo-Humboldtian current. In this context. Professor Brown’s “slightly amended version” of his doctoral dissertation is a very welcome volume. Drawing together a considerable literature on Humboldt by European scholars and on his literary and philosophical background by both European and American writers, Brown discusses Humboldt’s thinking on a number of issues bearing on the problem of linguistic relativity: the origin of language; its organic character; the relation of language and thought; the interrelation of environment, national character, and language; the relation of language and perception; and the problem of linguistic universals and the comparative study of languages - all within a framework structured by an analysis of the constituent elements of the notion of linguistic relativity itself. What emerges is a picture of Humboldt as a “transitional” figure influenced (on each of the issues noted above) by various writers in whom the rationalism of the Enlightenment was giving way to orientations of the Romantic period. (...)" Review by George W. Stocking, Jr. (University of Chicago)