Institute of General Semantics
THE RELATION OF HABITUAL THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR TO LANGUAGE
Author(s): BENJAMIN LEE WHORF
Source: ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Summer 1944), pp. 197-215
Published by: Institute of General Semantics
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42581315
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THE RELATION OF HABITUAL
THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR
TO LANGUAGE
BENJAMIN LEE WHORF
[Editor's Foreword: Few people have been as well qualified as Benjamin Lee Whorf to explain,
from personal knowledge and study, what is meant by the expression, 'the structure of
language.' An outstanding authority on the Mayan and Aztec civilizations and on American Indian
languages, he was intimately acquainted with languages whose basic structures were totally unlike
those of the Indo-European languages. What is even more to the point, Mr. Whorf was extraordinarily
sensitive to the non-linguistic consequences of linguistic behavior. It is obvious from his
writings that, all the time he was investigating languages, whether among the Pueblo villages of
Central Mexico or among the Hopi in Arizona, he must have been watching what was going on what
actions, what attitudes, what events accompanied or resulted from the utterances he was
so carefully recording.
Among Mr. Whorf' s many contributions to language study, the highest place must be accorded
- at least in the eyes of those interested in general semantics - to his demonstration through
comparative linguistics that our day-to-day orientations in life, to say nothing of our ' reasoning
processes' and our ' philosophies ,' rest upon the structure of the language which we happen to
have inherited. Our ' common sense,' our most basic ' intuitions' into the ' nature of things,' our
dichotomy of ' form ' and ' substance ,' our notions of 'time,' 'space,' and 'matter,' and even our
life-habits and our social institutions are shaped to a degree hitherto unsuspected, Mr. Whorf
believed, by the structuralizations which our languages impose upon the flux of experience.
' The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language' combines Mr. Whorf' s experiences
as anthropologist, linguist, grammarian, and fire insurance executive. Born in 1897 in
Winthrop, Mass., he was a graduate of M.I. T., and served as a private in the engineering corps
during World War I. In 1919 he joined the Hartford Fire Insurance Company, and was assistant
secretary of the company at the time of his death, July 26, 1941. He began his study of Aztec
and Mayan cultures, as a hobby, in 1925. Within a few years he had become one of the nation's
leading Americanists. Many of his articles, the results of field work in Mexico and the Southwest
as well as of private study, were published in Technology Review. Two of his articles, 'Languages
and Logic,' published in Papers from the Second American Congress of General Semantics,
and ' Science and Linguistics,' reprinted as an appendix to Hayakawa' s Language in
Action, are already familiar to students of general semantics. A more complete biography with
bibliography will be found in the National Cyclopedia of American Biography.
The present article is reprinted by permission from Language, Culture, and Personality: Essays
in Memory of Edward Sapir (Menas ha, Wisconsin, 1941 ).]
THERE to the will proposition probably that be general an accepted assentto the proposition that an accepted
pattern of using words is often prior to
certain lines of thinking and forms of
behavior, but he who assents often sees
in such a statement nothing more than a
platitudinous recognition of the hypnotic
power of philosophical and learned terminology
on the one hand or of catchwords,
slogans, and rallying-cries on the other.
To see only thus far is to miss the point
of one of the important interconnections
which Sapir saw between language, culture,
and psychology, and succinctly expressed
in the introductory quotation.* It
is not so much in these special uses of
language as in its constant ways of arrang*
See next page.
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ETC.: A REVIEW OF GENERAL SEMANTICS
ing data and its most ordinary every-day
analysis of phenomena that we need to
recognize the influence it has on other
activities, cultural and personal.
The Name of the Situation
as Affecting Behavior
I came in touch with an aspect of this
problem ķefore I had studied under Dr.
Sapir, and in a field usually considered
remote from linguistics. It was in the
course of my professional work for a fire
insurance company, in which I undertook
the task of analyzing many hundreds of
reports of circumstances surrounding the
start of fires, and in some cases, of explosions.
My analysis was directed toward
purely physical conditions, such as defective
wiring, presence or lack of air spaces
between metal flues and woodwork, etc.,
and the results were presented in these
terms. Indeed it was undertaken with no
thought that any other significances would
or could be revealed. But in due course it
became evident that not only a physical
situation qua physics, but the meaning of
that situation to people, was sometimes a
factor, through the behavior of the people,
in the start of the fire. And this
factor of meaning was clearest when it
was a linguistic meaning , residing in the
name or the linguistic description commonly
applied to the situation. Thus
around a storage of what are called 'gasoline
drums' behavior will tend to a certain
type, that is, great care will be exercised ;
while around a storage of what are called
'empty gasoline drums' it will tend to be
different - careless, with little repression
of smoking or of tossing cigarette stubs
about. Yet the 'empty' drums are perhaps
the more dangerous, since they contain
explosive vapor. Physically the situation is
hazardous, but the linguistic analysis according
to regular analogy must employ
the word empty,' which inevitably suggests
lack of hazard. The word 'empty' is
used in two linguistic patterns: (1) as a
virtual synonym for null and void, negative,
inert,' (2) applied in analysis of
physical situations without regard to, e.g.,
vapor, liquid vestiges, or stray rubbish, in
the container. The situation is named in
one pattern (2) and the name is then
'acted out' or 'lived up to' in another (1) ;
this being a general formula for the linguistic
conditioning of behavior into hazardous
forms.
In a wood distillation plant the metal
stills were insulated with a composition
' 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
Weal world ' is to a large extent unconsciously
built up on the language habits of
the group. .. .We see and hear and otherwise
experience very largely as we do because
the language habits of our community
predispose certain choices of interpretation
' - Edward Sapir, 'The Status of
Linguistics as a Science,' Language, Vol.
V, pp. 209-210 (1929).
prepared from limestone and called at
the plant 'spun limestone.' No attempt
was made to protect this covering from
excessive heat or the contact of flame.
After a period of use the fire below one
of the stills spread to the 'limestone,'
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RELATION OF HABITUAL THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR TO LANGUAGE
which to everyone's great surprise burned
vigorously. Exposure to acetic acid fumes
from the stills had converted part of the
limestone (calcium carbonate) to calcium
acetate. This when heated in a fire decomposes,
forming inflammable acetone.
Behavior that tolerated fire close to the
covering was induced by use of the name
'limestone/ which because it ends in
'-stone' implies noncombustibility.
A huge iron kettle of boiling varnish
was observed to be overheated, nearing
the temperature at which it would ignite.
The operator moved it off the fire and
ran it on its wheels to a distance, but
did not cover it. In a minute or so the
varnish ignited. Here the linguistic influence
is more complex; it is due to the
metaphorical objectifying (of which more
later) of 'cause' as contact or the spatial
juxtaposition of 'things' - to analyzing the
situation as 'on' versus 'off' the fire. In
reality the stage when the external fire
was the main factor had passed ; the overheating
was now an internal process of
convection in the varnish from the intensely
heated kettle, and still continued
when 'off' the fire.
An electric glow heater on the wall
was little used, and for one workman had
the meaning of a convenient coat-hanger.
At night a watchman entered and snapped
a switch, which action he verbalized as
'turning on the light.' No light appeared,
and this result he verbalized as 'light is
burned out.' He could not see the glow
of the heater because of the old coat hung
on it. Soon the heater ignited the coat,
which set fire to the building.
A tannery discharged waste water containing
animal matter into an outdoor
settling basin partly roofed with wood
and partly open. This situation is one that
ordinarily would be verbalized as 'pool
of water/ A workman had occasion to
light a blow-torch nearby, and threw his
match into the water. But the decomposing
waste matter was evolving gas under
the wood cover, so that the setup was
the reverse of 'watery.' An instant flare
of flame ignited the woodwork, and the
fire quickly spread into the adjoining
building.
A drying room for hides was arranged
with a blower at one end to make a current
of air along the room and thence
outdoors through a vent at the other end.
Fire started at a hot bearing on the
blower, which blew the flames directly
into the hides and fanned them along the
room, destroying the entire stock. This
hazardous setup followed naturally from
the term 'blower' with its linguistic equivalence
to 'that which blows,' implying that
its function necessarily is to 'blow.' Also
its function is verbalized as 'blowing air
for drying,' overlooking that it can blow
other things, e.g., flames and sparks. In
reality a blower simply makes a current
of air and can exhaust as well as blow.
It should have been installed at the vent
end to draw the air over the hides, then
through the hazard (its own casing and
bearings) and thence outdoors.
Beside a coal-fired melting pot for lead
reclaiming was dumped a pile of 'scrap
lead' - a misleading verbalization, for it
consisted of the lead sheets of old radio
condensers, which still had paraffin paper
between them. Soon the paraffin blazed
up and fired the roof, half of which was
burned off.
Such examples, which could be greatly
multiplied, will suffice to show how the
cue to a certain line of behavior is often
given by the analogies of the linguistic
formula in which the situation is spoken
of, and by which to some degree it is
analyzed, classified, and allotted its place
in that world which is 'to a large extent
unconsciously built up on the language
habits of the group.' And we always as-
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ETC.: A REVIEW OF GENERAL SEMANTICS
sume that the linguistic analysis made by
our group reflects reality better than it
does.
Grammatical Patterns as Interpretations
of Experience
The linguistic material in the above
examples is limited to single words,
phrases and patterns of limited range.
One cannot study the behavioral compulsiveness
of such material without suspecting
a much more far-reaching compulsion
from large-scale patterning of
grammatical categories, such as plurality,
gender and similar classifications (animate,
inanimate, etc.), tenses, voices, and
other verb forms, classifications of the
type of parts of speech,' and the matter
of whether a given experience is denoted
by a unit morpheme, an inflected word,
or a syntactical combination. A category
such as number (singular vs. plural) is
an attempted interpretation of a whole
large order of experience, virtually of the
world or of nature ; it attempts to say how
experience is to be segmented, what experience
is to be called 'one' and what
'several.' But the difficulty of appraising
such a far-reaching influence is great because
of its background character, because
of the difficulty of standing aside from
our own language, which is a habit and a
cultural non est disputandum, and scrutinizing
it objectively. And if we take a
very dissimilar language, this language
becomes a part of nature, and we even
do to it what we have already done to
nature. We tend to think in our own
language in order to examine the exotic
language. Or we find the task of unraveling
the purely morphological intricacies
so gigantic that it seems to absorb
all else. Yet the problem, though difficult,
is feasible ; and the best approach is
through an exotic language, for in its
study we are at long last pushed willynilly
out of our ruts. Then we find that
the exotic language is a mirror held up
to our own.
In my study of the Hopi language,
what I now see as an opportunity to work
on this problem was first thrust upon me
before I was clearly aware of the problem.
The seemingly endless task of describing
the morphology did finally end.
Yet it was evident, especially in the light
of Sapir 's lectures on Navaho, that the
description of the language was far from
complete. I knew for example the morphological
formation of plurals, but not
how to use plurals. It was evident that the
category of plural in Hopi was not the
same thing as in English, French, or
German. Certain things that were plural
in these languages were singular in Hopl.
The phase of investigation which now
began consumed nearly two more years.
The work began to assume the character
of a comparison between Hopi and western
European languages. It also became
evident that even the grammar of Hopi
bore a relation to Hopi culture, and the
grammar of European tongues to our
own western' or 'European' culture. And
it appeared that the interrelation brought
in those large subsummations of experience
by language, such as our terms
'time,' 'space,' 'substance,' and 'matter.'
Since with respect to the traits compared
there is little difference between English,
French, German, or other European languages
with the possible (but doubtful)
exception of Balto-Slavic and non-IndoEuropean,
I have lumped these languages
into one group called SAE, or 'Standard
Average European.'
That portion of the whole investigation
here to be reported may be summed up in
two questions: (1) Are our own concepts
of 'time,' 'space,' and 'matter' given in
substantially the same form by experience
to all men, or are they in part conditioned
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RELATION OF HABITUAL THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR TO LANGUAGE
by the structure of particular languages?
(2) Are there traceable affinities between
(a) cultural and behavioral norms and
(b) large-scale linguistic patterns? I
should be the last to pretend that there
is anything so definite as 'a correlation'
between culture and language, and especially
between ethnological rubrics such
as agricultural,' 'hunting,' etc., and linguistic
ones like 'inflected,' 'synthetic,' or
'isolating.'1 When I began the study the
problem was by no means so clearly formulated
and I had little notion that the answers
would turn out as they did.
Plurality and Numeration
in SAE and lio pi
In our language, that is SAE, plurality
and cardinal numbers are applied in two
ways: to real plurals and imaginary
plurals. Or more exactly if less tersely:
perceptible spatial aggregates and metaphorical
aggregates. We say 'ten men'
and also 'ten days.' Ten men either are
or could be objectively perceived as ten,
ten in one group-perception2 - ten men
on a street corner, for instance. But 'ten
days' cannot be objectively experienced.
We experience only one day, to-day; the
other nine (or even all ten) are something
conjured up from memory or
imagination. If 'ten days' be regarded as
a group it must be as an 'imaginary,' mentally
constructed group. Whence comes
this mental pattern? Just as in the case of
1 We have plenty of evidence that this is not
the case. Consider only the Hopi and the Ute,
with languages that on the overt morphological
and lexical level are as similar as, say, English
and German. The idea of 'correlation' between
language and culture, in the generally accepted
sense of correlation, is certainly a mistaken one.
2 As we say, 'ten at the same time,' showing
that in our language and thought we restate the
fact of group-perception in terms of a concept
'time,' the large linguistic component of which
will appear in the course of this paper.
the fire-causing errors, from the fact that
our language confuses the two different
situations, has but one pattern for both.
When we speak of ten steps forward, ten
strokes on a bell, or any similarly described
cyclic sequence, 'times' of any sort,
we are doing the same thing as with 'days.'
Cyclicity brings the response of imaginary
plurals. But a likeness of cyclicity to aggregates
is not unmistakably given by experience
prior to language, or it would be
found in all languages, and it is not.
Our awareness of time and cyclicity
does contain something immediate and
subjective - the basic sense of 'becoming
later and later.' But in the habitual
thought of us SAE people this is covered
under something quite different, which
though mental should not be called subjective.
I call it objectified, or imaginary,
because it is patterned on the outer world.
It is this that reflects our linguistic usage.
Our tongue makes no distinction between
numbers counted on discrete entities and
numbers that are simply counting itself.
Habitual thought then assumes that in the
latter case the numbers are just as much
counted on something as in the former.
This is objectification. Concepts of time
lose contact with the subjective experience
of 'becoming later' and are objectified as
counted quantities, especially as lengths,
made up of units as a length can be visible
marked off into inches. A 'length of time'
is envisioned as a row of similar units,
like a row of bottles.
In Hopi there is a different linguistic
situation. Plurals and cardinals are used
only for entities that form or can form
an objective group. There are no imaginary
plurals, but instead ordinals used
with singulars. Such an expression as 'ten
days' is not used. The equivalent statement
is an operational one that reaches one day
by a suitable count. 'They stayed ten days'
becomes 'they stayed until the eleventh
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ETC.: A REVIEW OF GENERAL SEMANTICS
day' or 'they left after the tenth day/
'Ten days is greater than nine days' becomes
'the tenth day is later than the
ninth/ Our 'length of time' is not regarded
as a length but as a relation between
two events in lateness. Instead of
our linguistically promoted objectification
of that datum of consciousness we call
'time/ the Hopi language has not laid
down any pattern that would cloak the
subjective 'becoming later' that is the essence
of time.
Nouns of Physical Quantity
in SAE and Hopi
We have two kinds of nouns denoting
physical things; individual nouns, and
mass nouns, e.g., water, milk, wood, granite,
sand, flour, meat. Individual nouns denote
bodies with definite outlines: a tree,
a stick, a man, a hill. Mass nouns denote
homogeneous continua without implied
boundaries. The distinction is marked
by linguistic form; e.g., mass nouns lack
plurals,3 in English drop articles, and in
French take the partitive article du, de la,
des. The distinction is more widespread
in language than in the observable appearance
of things. Rather few natural occurrences
present themselves as unbounded
extents; air of course, and often water,
rain, snow, sand, rock, dirt, grass. We
do not encounter butter, meat, cloth, iron,
glass, or most 'materials' in such kind of
manifestation, but in bodies small or large
with definite outlines. The distinction is
8 It is no exception to this rule of lacking a
plural that a mass noun may sometimes coincide
in lexeme with an individual noun that of
course has a plural; e.g., 'stone' (no pl.) with
'a stone' (pl. 'stones'). The plural form denoting
varieties, e.g., 'wines' is of course a different
sort of thing from the true plural; it is a
curious outgrowth from the SAE mass nouns,
leading to still another sort of imaginary aggregates,
which will have to be omitted from this
paper.
somewhat forced upon our description of
events by an unavoidable pattern in language.
It is so inconvenient in a great
many cases that we need some way of individualizing
the mass noun by further
linguistic devices. This is partly done by
names of body-types: stick of wood, piece
of cloth, pane of glass, cake of soap ; also,
and even more, by introducing names of
containers though their contents be the
real issue: glass of water, cup of coffee,
dish of food, bag of flour, bottle of beer.
These very common container-formulas,
in which 'of' has an obvious, visually perceptible
meaning ('contents'), influence
our feeling about the less obvious typebody
formulas: stick of wood, lump of
dough, etc. The formulas are very similar:
individual noun plus a similar relator
(English 'of'). In the obvious case this
relator denotes contents. In the inobvious
one it suggests contents. Hence the lumps,
chunks, blocks, pieces, etc., seem to contain
something, a 'stuff,' 'substance,' or
'matter' that answers to the water, coffee,
or flour in the container formulas. So with
SAE people the philosophic 'substance'
and 'matter' are also the naïve idea ; they
are instantly acceptable, 'common sense.'
It is so through linguistic habit. Our language
patterns often require us to name
a physical thing by a binomial that splits
the reference into a formless item plus a
form.
Hopi is again different. It has a formally
distinguished class of nouns. But this
class contains no formal sub-class of mass
nouns. All nouns have an individual sense
and both singular and plural forms.
Nouns translating most nearly our mass
nouns still refer to vague bodies or
vaguely bounded extents. They imply indefiniteness,
but not lack, of outline and
size. In specific statements 'water' means
one certain mass or quantity of water, not
what we call 'the substance water/ Gen-
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RELATION OF HABITUAL THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR TO LANGUAGE
erality of statement is conveyed through
the verb or predicator, not the noun.
Since nouns are individual already they
are not individualized either by typebodies
or names of containers, if there is
no special need to emphasize shape or
container. The noun itself implies a suitable
type-body or container. One says, not
'a glass of water' but ke.yi 'a water/ not
'a pool of water but pa.he,4 not 'a dish
of corn-flour' but ngemni 'a (quantity of)
corn-flour,' not 'a piece of meat' but sikwi
'a meat.' The language has neither need
for nor analogies on which to build the
concept of existence as a duality of formless
item and form. It deals with formlessness
through other symbols than nouns.
Phases of Cycles in SAE and Hopi
Such terms as summer, winter, September,
morning, noon," sunset, are with
us nouns, and have little formal linguistic
difference from other nouns. They can be
subjects or objects, and we say 'ať sunset
or 'in' winter just as we say at a corner
or in an orchard.5 They are pluralized and
numerated like nouns of physical objects,
as we have seen. Our thought about the
referents of such words hence becomes
objectified. Without objectification it
would be a subjective experience of real
time, i.e. of the consciousness of 'becoming
later and later' - simply a cyclic phase
similar to an earlier phase in that everlater-becoming
duration. Only by imag-
4 Hopi has two words for water-quantities ;
ke-yi and pa-he. The difference is something
like that between 'stone' and 'rock' in English,
pa-he implying greater size and wildness' ;
flowing water, whether or not out-doors or in
nature, is pa-he, so is 'moisture.' But unlike
'stone' and 'rock,' the difference is essential,
not pertaining to a connotative margin, and the
two can hardly ever be interchanged.
5 To be sure there are a few minor differences
from other nouns, in English for instance in
the use of the articles.
ination can such a cyclic phase be set beside
another and another in the manner
of a spatial (i.e. visually perceived) configuration.
But such is the power of linguistic
analogy that we do so objectify
cyclic phasing. We do it even by saying
'a phase' and 'phases' instead of, e.g.,
'phasing.' And the pattern of individual
and mass nouns, with the resulting binomial
formula of formless item plus
form, is so general that it is implicit for
all nouns, and hence our very generalized
formless items like 'substance,' 'matter,'
by which we can fill out the binomial
for an enormously wide range of nouns.
But even these are not quite generalized
enough to take in our phase nouns. So
for the phase nouns we have made a
formless item, 'time.' We have made it
by using 'a time,' i.e. an occasion or a
phase, in the pattern of a mass noun, just
as from 'a summer' we make 'summer' in
the pattern of a mass noun. Thus with our
binomial formula we can say and think
'a moment of time,' 'a second of time,'
'a year of time.' Let me again point out
that the pattern is simply that of 'a bottle
of milk' or 'a piece of cheese.' Thus we
are assisted to imagine that 'a summer'
actually contains or consists of such-andsuch
a quantity of 'time.'
In Hopi however all phase terms, like
summer, morning, etc., are not nouns but
a kind of adverb, to use the nearest SAE
analogy. They are a formal part of speech
by themselves, distinct from nouns, verbs,
and even other Hopi 'adverbs.' Such a
word is not a case form or a locative pattern,
like 'des Abends' or 'in the morning.'
It contains no morpheme like one
of 'in the house' or 'at the tree.'6 It means
•'Year' and certain combinations of 'year'
with name of season, rarely season names alone,
can occur with a locative morpheme 'at,' but
this is exceptional. It appears like historical
detritus of an earlier different patterning, or
the effect of English analogy, or both.
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ETC.: A REVIEW OF GENERAL SEMANTICS
when it is morning' or while morningphase
is occurring.' These 'temporals' are
not used as subjects or objects, or at all
like nouns. One does not say 'it's a hot
summer' or 'summer is hot;' summer is
not hot, summer is only when conditions
are hot, when heat occurs. One does not
say ' this summer,' but 'summer now' or
'summer recently.' There is no objectification,
as a region, an extent, a quantity,
of the subjective duration-feeling.
Nothing is suggested about time except
the perpetual 'getting later' of it. And so
there is no basis here for a formless item
answering to our 'time.'
Temporal Forms of Verbs
in SAE and Uopi
The three-tense system of SAE verbs
colors all our thinking about time. This
system is amalgamated with that larger
scheme of objectification of the subjective
experience of duration already noted in
other patterns - in the binomial formula
applicable to nouns in general, in temporal
nouns, in plurality and numeration.
This objectification enables us in imagination
to 'stand time units in a row.'
Imagination of time as like a row harmonizes
with a system of three tenses;
whereas a system of two, an earlier and a
later, would seem to correspond better to
the feeling of duration as it is experienced.
For if we inspect consciousness we
find no past, present, future, but a unity
embracing complexity. Everything is in
consciousness, and everything in consciousness
is, and is together. There is in
it a sensuous and a non-sensuous. We may
call the sensuous - what we are seeing,
hearing, touching - the 'present' while in
the non-sensuous the vast image-world of
memory is being labelled 'the past' and
another realm of belief, intuition, and uncertainty
'the future ;' yet sensation, memory,
foresight, all are in consciousness together
- one is not 'yet to be' nor another
'once but no more.' Where real time
comes in is that all this in consciousness
is getting later,' changing certain relations
in an irreversible manner. In this 'latering'
or 'durating' there seems to me to be a
paramount contrast between the newest,
latest instant at the focus of attention and
the rest - the earlier. Languages by the
score get along well with two tense-like
forms answering to this paramount relation
of later to earlier. We can of course
construct and contemplate in thought a
system of past, present, future, in the objectified
configuration of points on a line.
This is what our general objectification
tendency leads us to do and our tense
system confirms.
In English the present tense seems the
one least in harmony with the paramount
temporal relation. It is as if pressed into
various and not wholly congruous duties.
One duty is to stand as objectified middle
term between objectified past and objectified
future, in narration, discussion, argument,
logic, philosophy. Another is to denote
inclusion in the sensuous field: 'I
see him.' Another is for nomic, i.e. customarily
or generally valid, statements:
'We see with our eyes.' These varied uses
introduce confusions of thought, of which
for the most part we are unaware.
Hopi, as we might expect, is different
here too. Verbs have no ' tenses' like ours,
but have validity-forms ('assertions'), aspects,
and clause-linkage forms (modes),
that yield even greater precision of speech.
The validity-forms denote that the speaker
(not the subject) reports the situation
(answering to our past and present) or
that he expects it (answering to our future)
7 or that he makes a nomic statement
7 The expective and reportive assertions contrast
according to the 'paramount relation.' The
expective expresses anticipation existing earlier
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RELATION OF HABITUAL THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR TO LANGUAGE
(answering to our nomic present). The
aspects denote different degrees of duration
and different kinds of tendency 'during
duration/ As yet we have noted
nothing to indicate whether an event is
sooner or later than another when both
are reported. But need for this does not
arise until we have two verbs, i.e. two
clauses. In that case the 'modes' denote
relations between the clauses, including
relations of later to earlier and of simultaneity.
Then there are many detached
words that express similar relations, supplementing
the modes and aspects. The
duties of our three-tense system and its
tripartite linear objectified 'time' are distributed
among various verb categories,
all different from our tenses ; and there is
no more basis for an objectified time in
Hopi verbs than in other Hopi patterns;
although this does not in the least hinder
the verb forms and other patterns from
being closely adjusted to the pertinent
realities of actual situations.
Duration, Intensity, and Tendency
in SAE and Hopi
To fit discourse to manifold actual situations
all languages need to express durations,
intensities, and tendencies. It is
characteristic of SAE and perhaps of many
other language-types to express them
metaphorically. The metaphors are those
of spatial extension, i.e. of size, number
(plurality), position, shape, and motion.
than objective fact, and coinciding with objective
fact later than the status quo of the
speaker, this status quo, including all the subsummation
of the past therein, being expressed
by the reportive. Our notion 'future' seems to
represent at once the earlier (anticipation) and
the later (afterwards, what will be), as Hopi
shows. This paradox may hint of how elusive
the mystery of real time is, and how artificially
it is expressed by a linear relation of past-
present-future.
We express duration by long, short, great,
much, quick, slow, etc. ; intensity by
large, great, much, heavy, light, high, low,
sharp, faint, etc.; tendency by more, increase,
grow, turn, get, approach, go,
come, rise, fall, stop, smooth, even, rapid,
slow, and so on through an almost inexhaustible
list of metaphors that we
hardly recognize as such since they are
virtually the only linguistic media available.
The non-metaphorical terms in this
field, like early, late, soon, lasting, intense,
very, tending, are a mere handful, quite
inadequate to the needs.
It is clear how this condition 'fits in.'
It is part of our whole scheme of objectifying
- imaginatively spatializing qualities
and potentials that are quite non-spatial
(so far as any spatially-perceptive senses
can tell us). Noun-meaning (with us)
proceeds from physical bodies to referents
of far other sort. Since physical bodies
and their outlines in perceived space are
denoted by size and shape terms and
reckoned by cardinal numbers and plurals,
these patterns of denotation and reckoning
extend to the symbols of non-spatial
meanings, and so suggest an imaginary
space. Physical shapes move, stop, rise,
sink, approach, etc., in perceived space;
why not these other referents in their
imaginary space? This has gone so far that
we can hardly refer to the simplest nonspatial
situation without constant resort to
physical metaphors. I 'grasp' the 'thread'
of another's arguments, but if its 'level' is
'over my head' my attention may 'wander'
and 'lose touch' with the 'drift' of it, so
that when he 'comes' to his 'point' we
differ 'widely,' our 'views' being indeed so
'far apart' that the 'things' he says 'appear'
'much' too arbitrary, or even 'a lot'
of nonsense!
The absence of such metaphor from
Hopi speech is striking. Use of space
terms when there is no space involved is
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ETC.: A REVIEW OF GENERAL SEMANTICS
not there - as if on it had been laid the
taboo teetotal! The reason is clear when
we know that Hopi has abundant conjugational
and lexical means of expressing
duration, intensity, and tendency directly
as such, and that major grammatical patterns
do not, as with us, provide analogies
for an imaginary space. The many verb
'aspects' express duration and tendency of
manifestations, while some of the Voices'
express intensity, tendency, and duration
of causes or forces producing manifestations.
Then a special part of speech, the
'tensors,' a huge class of words, denotes
only intensity, tendency, duration, and
sequence. The function of the tensors is
to express intensities, 'strengths,' and how
they continue or vary, their rate-of-change ;
so that the broad concept of intensity,
when considered as necessarily always
varying and/or continuing, includes also
tendency and duration. Tensors convey
distinctions of degree, rate, constancy,
repetition, increase and decrease of intensity,
immediate sequence, interruption
or sequence after an interval, etc., also
qualities of strengths, such as we should
express metaphorically as smooth, even,
hard, rough. A striking feature is their
lack of resemblance to the terms of real
space and movement that to us mean
the same.' There is not even more than
a trace of apparent derivation from space
terms.8 So while Hopi in its nouns seems
highly concrete, here in the tensors it becomes
abstract almost beyond our own
power to follow.
8 One such trace is that the tensor 'long in
duration,' while quite different from the adjective
'long' of space, seems to contain the same
root as the adjective 'large' of space. Another
is that 'somewhere' of space used with certain
tensors means 'at some indefinite time.' Possibly
however this is not the case and it is only
the tensor that gives the time element, so that
'somewhere' still refers to space and that under
these conditions indefinite space means simply
Habitual Thought in SAE
and Hopi
The comparison now to be made between
the habitual thought worlds of SAE
and Hopi speakers is of course incomplete.
It is possible only to touch upon
certain dominant contrasts that appear to
stem from the linguistic differences already
noted. By 'habitual thought' and
'thought world' I mean more than simply
language, i.e., than the linguistic patterns
themselves. I include all the analogical
and suggestive value of the patterns (e.g.,
our 'imaginary space' and its distant implications)
, and all the give-and-take between
language and the culture as a
whole, wherein is a vast amount that is not
linguistic yet shows the shaping influence
of language. In brief, this 'thought world'
is the microcosm that each man carries
about within himself, by which he measures
and understands what he can of the
macrocosm.
The SAE microcosm has analyzed
ality largely in terms of what it
'things' (bodies and quasi-bodies)
modes of extensional but formless existence
that it calls 'substance' or 'matter.'
It tends to see existence through a binomial
formula that expresses any existent
as a spatial form plus a spatial formless
continuum related to the form as content
is related to the outlines of its container.
Non-spatial existents are imaginatively
spatialized and charged with similar implications
of form and continuum.
The Hopi microcosm seems to have
analyzed reality largely in terms of events
general applicability regardless of either time
or space. Another trace is that in the temporal
(cycle word) 'afternoon' the element meaning
'after' is derived from the verb 'to separate.'
There are other such traces, but they are few
and exceptional, and obviously not like our own
spatial metaphorizing.
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RELATION OF HABITUAL THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR TO LANGUAGE
(or better 'eventing' ), referred to in two
ways, objective and subjective. Objectively,
and only if perceptible physical
experience, events are expressed mainly
as outlines, colors, movements, and other
perceptive reports. Subjectively, for both
the physical and non-physical, events are
considered the expression of invisible intensity-factors,
on which depend their stability
and persistence, or their fugitiveness
and proclivities. It implies that existents
do not 'become later and later' all in the
same way; but some do so by growing,
like plants, some by diffusing and vanishing,
some by a procession of metamorphoses,
some by enduring in one shape
till affected by violent forces. In the nature
of each existent able to manifest as
a definite whole is the power of its own
mode of duration; its growth, decline,
stability, cyclicity, or creativeness. Everything
is thus already 'prepared' for the
way it now manifests by earlier phases,
and what it will be later, partly has been,
and partly is in act of being so 'prepared.'
An emphasis and importance rests on this
preparing or being prepared aspect of the
world that may to the Hopi correspond to
that 'quality of reality' that 'matter' or
'stuff' has for us.
Habitual Behavior Features
of Hopi Culture
Our behavior, and that of Hopi, can be
seen to be coordinated in many ways to
the linguistically-conditioned microcosm.
As in my fire case-book, people act about
situations in ways which are like the ways
they talk about them. A characteristic of
Hopi behavior is the emphasis on preparation.
This includes announcing and getting
ready for events well beforehand,
elaborate precautions to insure persistence
of desired conditions, and stress on good
will as the preparer of right results. Consider
the analogies of the day-counting
pattern alone. Time is mainly reckoned
'by day' (taLk, -tala) or 'by night' (tok) ,
which words are not nouns but tensors,
the first formed on a root 'light, day,' the
second on a root 'sleep.' The count is by
ordinals. This is not the pattern of counting
a number of different men or things,
even though they appear successively, for
even then they ■ could gather into an assemblage.
It is the pattern of counting successive
reappearances of the same man or
thing, incapable of forming an assemblage.
The analogy is not to behave about daycyclicity
as to several men ('several days') ,
which is what we tend to do, but to behave
as to the successive visits of the same
man. One does not alter several men by
working upon just one, but one can prepare
and so alter the later visits of the
same man by working to affect the visit
he is making now. This is the way the
Hopi deal with the future - by working
within a present situation which is expected
to carry impresses, both obvious
and occult, forward into the future event
of interest. One might say that Hopi society
understands our proverb 'Well begun
is half done,' but not our 'To-morrow
is another day.' This may explain
much in Hopi character.
This Hopi preparing behavior may be
roughly divided into announcing, outer
preparing, inner preparing, covert participation,
and persistence. Announcing,
or preparative publicity, is an important
function in the hands of a special official,
the Crier Chief. Outer preparing is preparation
involving much visible activity, not
all necessarily directly useful within our
understanding. It includes ordinary practising,
rehearsing, getting ready, introductory
formalities, preparing of special food,
etc. (all of these to a degree that may
seem over-elaborate to us), intensive sustained
muscular activity like running, racing,
dancing, which is thought to increase
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ETC.: A REVIEW OF GENERAL SEMANTICS
the intensity of development of events
(such as growth of crops), mimetic and
other magic, preparations based on esoteric
theory involving perhaps occult instruments
like prayer sticks, prayer feathers,
and prayer meal, and finally the great
cyclic ceremonies and dances, which have
the significance of preparing rain and
crops. From one of the verbs meaning
prepare' is derived the noun for 'harvest'
or 'crop:' na'twani 'the prepared' or the
'in preparation.'9
Inner preparing is use of prayer and
meditation, and at lesser intensity good
wishes and good will, to further desired
results. Hopi attitudes stress the power of
desire and thought. With their 'microcosm'
it is utterly natural that they should. Desire
and thought are the earliest, and
therefore the most important, most critical
and crucial, stage of preparing. Moreover,
to the Hopi, one's desires and
thoughts influence not only his own actions,
but all nature. This too is wholly
natural. Consciousness itself is aware of
work, of the feel of effort and energy, in
desire and thinking. Experience more
basic than language tells us that if energy
is expended effects are produced. We tend
to believe that our bodies can stop up
this energy, prevent it from affecting other
things until we will our bodies to overt
action. But this may be only because we
have our own linguistic basis for a theory
that formless items like 'matter' are things
in themselves, malleable only by similar
things, by more matter, and hence insulated
from the powers of life and thought.
It is no more unnatural to think that
thought contacts everything and pervades
the universe than to think, as we all do,
that light kindled outdoors does this. And
9 The Hopi verbs of preparing naturally do
not correspond neatly to our 'prepare'; so that
na'twani could also be rendered 'the practisedupon,'
'the tried-for,' and otherwise.
it is not unnatural to suppose that thought,
like any other force, leaves everywhere
traces of effect. Now when we think of
a certain actual rose-bush, we do not suppose
that our thought goes to that actual
bush, and engages with it, like a searchlight
turned upon it. What then do we
suppose our consciousness is dealing with
when we are thinking of that rose-bush?
Probably we think it is dealing with a
'mental image' which is not the rose-bush
but a mental surrogate of it. But why
should it be natural to think that our
thought deals with a surrogate and not
with the real rose-bush? Quite possibly
because we are dimly aware that we carry
about with us a whole imaginary space,
full of mental surrogates. To us, mental
surrogates are old familiar fare. Along
with the images of imaginary space, which
we perhaps secretly know to be imaginary
only, we tuck the thought-of actually existing
rose-bush, which may be quite another
story, perhaps just because we have
that very convenient 'place for it. The
Hopi thought-world has no imaginary
space. The corollary to this is that it may
not locate thought dealing with real space
anywhere but in real space, nor insulate
real space from the effects of thought. A
Hopi would naturally suppose that his
thought (or he himself) traffics with the
actual rose-bush - or more like, cornplant
- that he is thinking about. The
thought then should leave some trace of
itself with the plant in the field. If it is
a good thought, one about health and
growth, it is good for the plant ; if a bad
thought, the reverse.
The Hopi emphasize the intensity-factor
of thought. Thought to be most effective
should be vivid in consciousness, definite,
steady, sustained, charged with stronglyfelt
good intentions. They render the idea
in English as 'concentrating,' 'hold it in
your heart,' 'putting your mind to it,'
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RELATION OF HABITUAL THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR TO LANGUAGE
'earnestly hoping.' Thought power is the
force behind ceremonies, prayer-sticks,
ritual smoking, etc. The prayer-pipe is regarded
as an aid to 'concentrating' (so
said my informant) . Its name, na'twanpi,
means 'instrument of preparing.'
Covert participation is mental collaboration
from people who do not take part
in the actual affair, be it a job of work,
hunt, race, or ceremony, but direct their
thought and good will toward the affair's
success. Announcements often seek to enlist
the support of such mental helpers as
well as of overt participants, and contain
exhortations to the people to aid with
their active good will.10 A similarity to
our concepts of a sympathetic audience or
the cheering section at a football game
should not obscure the fact that is is primarily
the power of directed thought, and
not merely sympathy or encouragement,
that is expected of covert participants. In
fact these latter get in their deadliest work
before, not during, the game! A corollary
to the power of thought is the power of
wrong thought for evil; hence one purpose
of covert participation is to obtain
the mass force of many good wishers to
offset the harmful thought of ill wishers.
Such attitudes greatly favor cooperation
and community spirit. Not that the Hopi
community is not full of rivalries and colliding
interests. Against the tendency to
social disintegration in such a small, isolated
group, the theory of 'preparing' by
the power of thought, logically leading
to the great power of the combined, intensified
and harmonized thought óf the
whole community, must help vastly
toward the rather remarkable degree of
cooperation that in spite of much private
bickering the Hopi village displays in all
the important cultural activities.
Hopi 'preparing' activities again show a
result of their linguistic thought background
in an emphasis on persistence and
constant insistent repetition. A sense of the
cumulative value of innumerable small momenta
is dulled by an objectified, spatialized
view of time like ours, enhanced by
a way of thinking close to the subjective
awareness of duration, of the ceaseless
'latering' of events. To us, for whom time
is a motion on a space, unvarying repetition
seems to scatter its force along a row
of units of that space, and be wasted.
To the Hopi, for whom time is not a
motion but a getting later' of everything
that has ever been done, unvarying repetition
is not wasted but accumulated. It is
storing up an invisible change that holds
over into later events.11 As we have seen,
it is as if the return of the day were felt
as the return of the same person, a little
older but with all the impresses of yesterday,
not as 'another day,' i.e. like an
11 This notion of storing up power, which
seems implied by much Hopi behavior, has an
analogue in physics, acceleration. It might be
said that the linguistic background of Hopi
thought equips it to recognize naturally that
force manifests not as motion or velocity, but
as cumulation or acceleration. Our linguistic
background tends to hinder in us this same
recognition, for having legitimately conceived
force to be that which produces change, we
then think of change by our linguistic metaphorical
analogue, motion, instead of by a pure
motionless changingness concept, i.e., accumulation
or acceleration. Hence it comes to our
naive feeling as a shock to find from physical
experiments that it is not possible to define
force by motion, that motion and speed, as also
'being at rest,' are wholly relative, and that
force can be measured only by acceleration.
10 See, e.g., Ernest Beaglehole, Notes on Hopi
Economic Life (Yale University Publications in
Anthropology, No. 15, 1937), especially the
reference to the announcement of a rabbit hunt,
and on p. 30, description of the activities in
connection with the cleaning of Toreva Spring
- announcing, various preparing activities, and
finally, preparing the continuity of the good
results already obtained and the continued flow
of the spring.
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ETC.: A REVIEW OF GENERAL SEMANTICS
entirely different person. This principle
joined with that of thought-power and
with traits of general Pueblo culture is
expressed in the theory of the Hopi ceremonial
dance for furthering rain and
crops, as well as in its short, piston-like
tread, repeated thousands of times, hour
after hour.
Some Impresses of Linguistic Habit
in Western Civilization
It is harder to do justice in a few words
to the linguistically-conditioned features
of our own culture than in the case of
the Hopi, because of both vast scope and
and difficulty of objectivity - because of
our deeply ingrained familiarity with the
attitudes to be analyzed. I wish merely to
sketch certain characteristics adjusted to
our linguistic binomialism of form plus
formless item or 'substance/ to our metaphoricalness,
our imaginary space, and our
objectified time. These, as we have seen,
are linguistic.
From the form-plus-substance dichotomy
the philosophical views most traditionally
characteristic of the 'Western
world' have derived huge support. Here
belong materialism, psycho-physical parallelism,
physics - at least in its traditional
Newtonian form - and dualistic views of
the universe in general. Indeed here belongs
almost everything that is 'hard,
practical common sense.' Monistic, holistic,
and relativistic views of reality appeal
to philosophers and some scientists,
but they are badly handicapped for appealing
to the 'common sense' of the
Western average man. This is not because
nature herself refutes them (if she did,
philosophers could have discovered this
much) but because they must be talked
about in what amounts to a new language.
'Common sense,' as its name shows, and
practicality' as its name does not show,
are largely matters of talking so that one
is readily understood. It is sometimes
stated that Newtonian space, time, and
matter are sensed by everyone intuitively,
whereupon relativity is cited as showing
how mathematical analysis can prove intuition
wrong. This, besides being unfair
to intuition, is an attempt to answer offhand
question (1) put at the outset of
this paper, to answer which this research
was undertaken. Presentation of the findings
now nears its end, and I think the
answer is clear. The offhand answer, laying
the blame upon intuition for our slowness
in discovering mysteries of the cosmos,
such as relativity, is the wrong one.
The right answer is: Newtonian space,
time, and matter are no intuitions. They
are recepts from culture and language.
That is where Newton got them.
Our objectified view of time is however
favorable to historicity and to everything
connected with the keeping of records,
while the Hopi view is unfavorable
thereto. The latter is too subtle, complex,
and ever-developing, supplying no readymade
answer to the question of when
one' event ends and 'another' begins.
When it is implicit that everything that
ever happened still is, but is in a necessarily
different form from what memory
or record reports, there is less incentive
to study the past. As for the present, the
incentive would be not to record it but
to treat it as 'preparing.' But our objectified
time puts before imagination something
like a ribbon or scroll marked off
into equal blank spaces, suggesting that
each be filled with an entry. Writing has
no doubt helped toward our linguistic
treatment of time, even as the linguistic
treatment has guided the uses of writing.
Through this give-and-take between language
and the whole culture we get, for
instance:
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RELATION OF HABITUAL THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR TO LANGUAGE
1. Records, diaries, book-keeping, accounting,
mathematics stimulated by accounting
;
2. Interest in exact sequence, dating,
calendars, chronology, clocks, time wages,
time graphs, time as used in physics ;
3. Annals, histories, the historical attitude,
interest in the past, archaeology, attitudes
of introjection towards past periods,
e.g., classicism, romanticism.
Just as we conceive our objectified time
as extending in the future like the way
it extends in the past, so we set down our
estimates of the future in the same shape
as our records of the past, producing programs,
schedules, budgets. The formal
equality of the space-like units by which
we measure and conceive time leads us to
consider the 'formless item' or 'substance'
of time to be homogeneous and in ratio to
the number of units. Hence our prorata
allocation of value to time, lending itself
to the building up of a commercial structure
based on time-prorata values: time
wages (time work constantly supersedes
piece work), rent, credit, interest, depreciation
charges, and insurance premiums.
No doubt this vast system once built
would continue to run under any sort of
linguistic treatment of time; but that it
should have been built at all, reaching the
magnitude and particular form it has in
the Western world, is a fact decidedly
in consonance with the patterns of the
SAE languages. Whether such a civilization
as ours would be possible with widely
different linguistic handling of time is a
large question - in our civilization our
linguistic patterns and the fitting of our
behavior to the temporal order are what
they are, and they are in accord. We are
of course stimulated to use calendars,
clocks, and watches, and to try to measure
time ever more precisely ; this aids science,
and science in turn, following these wellworn
cultural grooves, gives back to culture
an ever-growing store of applications,
habits, and values, with which culture
again directs science. But what lies outside
this spiral? Science is beginning to
find that there is something in the cosmos
that is not in accord with the concepts we
have formed in mounting the spiral. It is
trying to frame a new language by which
to adjust itself to a wider universe.
It is clear how the emphasis on 'saving
time' which goes with all the above and
is very obvious objectification of time,
leads to a high valuation of 'speed,' which
shows itself a great deal in our behavior.
Still another behavioral effect is that the
character of monotony and regularity possessed
by our image of time as an evenly
scaled limitless tape measure persuades us
to behave as if that monotony were more
true of events than it really is. That is, it
helps to routinize us. We tend to select
and favor whatever bears out this view,
to 'play up to' the routine aspects of existence.
One phase of this is behavior evincing
a false sense of security or an assumption
that all will always go smoothly, and
a lack in foreseeing and protecting ourselves
against hazards. Our technique of
harnessing energy does well in routine
performance, and it is along routine lines
that we chiefly strive to improve it - we
are, for example, relatively uninterested
in stopping the energy from causing accidents,
fires, and explosions, which it is
doing constantly on a wide scale. Such indifference
to the unexpectedness of life
would be disastrous to a society as small,
isolated, and precariously poised as the
Hopi society is, or rather once was.
Thus our linguistically-determined
thought world not only collaborates with
our cultural idols and ideals, but engages
even our unconscious personal reactions in
its patterns and gives them certain typical
characters. One such character, as we have
seen, is carelessness , as in reckless driving
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ETC.: A REVIEW OF GENERAL SEMANTICS
or throwing cigarette stubs into waste
paper. Another of different sort is gesturing
when we talk. Very many of the gestures
made by English-speaking people at
least, and probably by all SAE speakers,
serve to illustrate by a movement in space,
not a real spatial reference but one of the
non-spatial references that our language
handles by metaphors of imaginary space.
That is, we are more apt to make a grasping
gesture when we speak of grasping
an elusive idea than when we speak of
grasping a doorknob. The gesture seeks to
make a metaphorical and hence somewhat
unclear reference more clear. But if a language
refers to non-spatials without implying
a spatial analogy, the reference is
not made any clearer by gesture. The Hopi
gesture very little, perhaps not at all in the
sense we understand as gesture.
It would seem as if kinesthesia, or the
sensing of muscular movement, though
arising prior to language, should be made
more highly conscious by linguistic use of
imaginary space and methaphorical images
of motion. Kinesthesia is marked in
two facets of European culture: art and
sport. European sculpture, an art in which
Europe excels, is strongly kinesthetic, conveying
great sense of the body's motions ;
European painting likewise. The dance in
our culture expresses delight in motion
rather than symbolism or ceremonial, and
our music is greatly influenced by our
dance forms. Our sports are strongly imbued
with this element of the 'poetry of
motion/ Hopi races and games seem to
emphasize rather the virtues of endurance
and sustained intensity. Hopi dancing is
highly symbolic and is performed with
great intensity and earnestness, but has
not much movement or swing.
Synesthesia, or suggestion by certain
sense receptions of characters belonging
to another sense, as of light and color by
sounds and vice versa, should be made
more conscious by a linguistic metaphor
ical system that refers to non-spatial ex
periences by terms for spatial ones, thoug
undoubtedly it arises from a deepe
source. Probably in the first instance meta
phor arises from synesthesia and not th
reverse, yet metaphor need not become
firmly rooted in linguistic pattern, as Hop
shows. Non-spatial experience has on
well-organized sense, hearing - for sme
and taste are but little organized. Non
spatial consciousness is a realm chiefly o
thought, feeling, and sound. Spatial con
sciousness is a realm of light, color, sigh
and touch, and presents shapes and di
mensions. Our metaphorical system, by
naming non-spatial experiences after spa
tial ones, imputes to sounds, smells, taste
emotions, and thoughts qualities like th
colors, luminosities, shapes, angles, textures,
and motions of spatial experience
And to some extent the reverse transference
occurs ; for after much talking about
tones as high, low, sharp, dull, heavy,
brilliant, slow, the talker finds it easy to
think of some factors in spatial experience
as like factors of tone. Thus we
speak of 'tones' of color, a gray monotone,'
a 'loud' necktie, a 'taste' in dress;
all spatial metaphor in reverse. Now
European art is distinctive in the way it
seeks deliberately to play with synesthesia.
Music tries to suggest scenes, color, movement,
geometric design ; painting and
sculpture are often consciously guided by
the analogies of music's rhythm; colors
are conjoined with feeling for the analogv
to concords and discords. The European
theatre and opera seek a synthesis of
many arts. It may be that in this way our
metaphorical language that is in some
sense a confusion of thought is producing,
through art, a result of far-reaching value
- a deeper esthetic sense leading toward
a more direct apprehension of underlying
unity behind the phenomena so variously
reported by our sense channels.
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RELATION OF HABITUAL THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR TO LANGUAGE
Historical Implications
How does such a network of language,
culture, and behavior come about historically?
Which was first, the language
patterns or the cultural norms? In main
they have grown up together, constantly
influencing each other. But in this partnership
the nature of the language is the
factor that limits free plasticity and rigidifies
channels of development in the more
autocratic way. This is because a language
is a system, not just an assemblage of
norms. Large systemic outlines can change
to something really new only very slowly,
while many other cultural innovations are
made with comparative quickness. Language
thus represents the mass mind; it
is affected by inventions and innovations,
but affected little and slowly, whereas to
inventors and innovators it legislates with
the decree immediate.
The growth of the SAE language-culture
complex dates from ancient times.
Much of its metaphorical reference to the
non-spatial by the spatial was already fixed
in the ancient tongues, and more especially
in Latin. It is indeed a marked trait
of Latin. If we compare, say Hebrew, we
find that while Hebrew has some allusion
to not-space as space, Latin has more.
Latin terms for non-spatials, like educo,
religio , principia, comprehendo, are usually
metaphorized physical references:
lead out, tying back, etc. This is not true
of all languages - it is quite untrue of
Hopl. The fact that in Latin the direction
of development happened to be from spatial
to non-spatial (partly because of secondary
stimulation to abstract thinking
when the intellectually crude Romans encountered
Greek culture) and that later
tongues were strongly stimulated to mimic
Latin, seems a likely reason for a belief
which still lingers on among linguists that
this is the natural direction of semantic
change in all languages, and for the persistent
notion in Western learned circles
(in strong contrast to Eastern ones) that
objective experience is prior to subjective.
Philosophies make out a weighty case for
the reverse, and certainly the direction of
development is sometimes the reverse.
Thus the Hopi word for 'heart' can be
shown to be a late formation within Hopi
from a root meaning think or remember.
Or consider what has happened to the
word radio' in such a sentence as 'he
bought a new radio,' as compared to its
prior meaning 'science of wireless tele-
phony.'
In the middle ages the patterns already
formed in Latin began to interweave with
the increased mechanical invention, industry,
trade, and scholastic and scientific
thought. The need for measurement in industry
and trade, the stores and bulks of
'stuffs' in various containers, the typebodies
in which various goods were handled,
standardizing of measure and weight
units, invention of clocks and measurement
of 'time,' keeping of records, accounts,
chronicles, histories, growth of
mathematics and the partnership of
mathematics and science, ail cooperated to
bring our thought and language world
into its present form.
In Hopi history, could we read it, we
should find a different type of language
and a different set of cultural and environmental
influences working together.
A peaceful agricultural society isolated by
geographic features and nomad enemies
in a land of scanty rainfall, arid agriculture
that could be made successful only
by the utmost perseverance (hence the
value of persistence and repetition) , necessity
for collaboration (hence emphasis on
the psychology of teamwork and on mental
factors in general), corn and rain as
primary criteria of value, need of extensive
preparations and precautions to as-
213
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ETC.: A REVIEW OF GENERAL SEMANTICS
sure crops in the poor soil and precarious
climate, keen realization of dependence
upon nature favoring prayer and a religious
attitude toward the forces of nature,
especially prayer and religion directed
toward the ever-needed blessing, rain these
things interacted with Hopi linguistic
patterns to mold them, to be
molded again by them, and so little by
little to shape the Hopi world-outlook.
To sum up the matter, our first question
asked in the beginning (p. 200) is
answered thus: Concepts of 'time' and
'matter' are not given in substantially the
same form by experience to all men but
depend upon the nature of the language
or languages through the use of which
they have been developed. They do not
depend so much upon any one system
(e.g., tense, or nouns) within the grammar
as upon the ways of analyzing and
reporting experience which have become
fixed in the language as integrated
'fashions of speaking' and which cut
across the typical grammatical classifications,
so that such a 'fashion' may include
lexical, morphological, syntactic, and
otherwise systematically diverse means coordinated
in a certain frame of consistency.
Our own 'time' differs markedly
from Hopi 'duration.' It is conceived as
like a space of strictly limited dimensions,
or sometimes as like a motion upon such
a space, and employed as an intellectual
tool accordingly. Hopi 'duration' seems to
be inconceivable in terms of space or
motion, being the mode in which life differs
from form, and consciousness in toto
from the spatial elements of consciousness.
Certain ideas born of our own timeconcept,
such as that of absolute simultaneity,
would be either very difficult to
express or impossible and devoid of meaning
under the Hopi conception, and would
be replaced by operational concepts. Our
'matter' is the physical sub-type of 'substance'
or 'stuff,' which is conceived as the
formless extensional item that must be
joined with form before there can be real
existence. In Hopi there seems to be
nothing corresponding to it ; there are no
formless extensional items ; existence may
or may not have form, but what it also
has, with or without form, is intensity
and duration, these being non-extensionat
and at bottom the same.
But what about our concept of 'space,'
which was also included in our first questions?
There is no such striking difference
between Hopi and SAE about space as
about time, and probably the apprehension
of space is given in substantially the same
form by experience irrespective of language.
The experiments of the Gestalt
psychologists with visual perception appear
to establish this as a fact. But the
concept of space will vary somewhat with
language, because as an intellectual tool12
it is so closely linked with the concomitant
employment of other intellectual tools, of
the order of 'time' and 'matter,' which
are linguistically conditioned. We see
things with our eyes in the same space
forms as the Hopi, but our idea of space
has also the property of acting as a surrogate
of non-spatial relationships like time,
intensity, tendency, and as a void to be
filled with imagined formless items, one
of which may even be called 'space.'
Space as sensed by the Hopi would not
be connected mentally with such surrogates,
but would be comparatively 'pure,'
unmixed with extraneous notions.
As for our second question (p. 201) :
There are connections but not correlations
or diagnostic correspondences between
cultural norms and linguistic patterns.
Although it would be impossible to infer
the existence of Crier Chiefs from the
lack of tenses in Hopi, or vice versa, there
"Here belong 'Newtonian' and 'Euclidean'
space, etc.
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RELATION OF HABITUAL THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR TO LANGUAGE
is a relation between a language and the
rest of the culture of the society which
uses it. There are cases where the 'fashions
of speaking' are closely integrated with the
whole general culture, whether or not this
be universally true, and there are connections
within this integration, between the
kind of linguistic analyses employed and
various behavioral reactions and also the
shapes taken by various cultural developments.
Thus the importance of Crier
Chiefs does have a connection, not with
tenselessness itself, but with a system of
thought in which categories different from
our tenses are natural. These connections
are to be found not so much by focusing
attention on the typical rubrics of linguistic,
ethnographic, or sociological description
as by examining the culture and
the language (always and only when the
two have been together historically for a
considerable time) as a whole in which
concatenations that run across these departmental
lines may be expected to exist,
and if they do exist, eventually to be discoverable
by study.
A NOTE ON WORD-MAGIC
[Joseph, speaking of a lion.} 'But if he had come, with lashing tai
and roared after his prey, like the voice of the chanting seraphim, y
thy child would have been little affrighted or not at all before his rag
. . . For knoweth not my father that the beasts fear and avoid man, fo
that God gave him the spirit of understanding and taught him th
"orders into which single things fall ; doth he not know how Shemm
shrieked when the man of earth knew how to name the creation as
though he were its master and f ramer ... ? And the beasts too they
are ashamed and put the tail between their legs because we know them
and have power over their names and can thus render powerless the
roaring might of the single one, by naming him. If now he had come,
with long slinking tread, with his hateful nose, mewing and spitting,
terror would not have robbed me of my senses, nor made me pale
before his riddle. "Is thy name Blood-Thirst?" I would have asked of
him, making merry at his expense. "Or Springing Murder?" But there
I would have sat upright and cried out: "Lion! Lo, Lion art thou, by
nature and species, and thy riddle lieth bare before me, so that I speak
it out and with a laugh it is plain." And he would have blinked before
the name and gone meekly away before the word, powerless to answer
unto me. For he is quite unlearned and knows nought of writing
tools.'
Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brethren
215
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