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JolantaLatkowska
fromalargenumberofstudiesconductedinthe1990sandduringthefirst
twodecadesofthiscentury.Foraninformativereviewofrelevantresearchsee
Pederson(2007)andCookandBassetti(2011).
ResearchintolinguisticrelativityembracedSlobin’sthinkingforspeaking
hypothesis(Slobin,1996;2003;2004;2005),whichstipulatesthatverbalization
inducesalanguage-dependentmodeofthinkingthattransformsnon-linguistic
conceptualcontentintoa4verbalizable’propositionalformatpriortoarticula-
tion.Thisisdoneinaccordancewiththeavailablelinguisticcategories,which
additionallyserveasamechanismdirectingthespeaker’sattentiontothose
aspectsofexperiencethattheyencode.Consequently,inferencesaboutconcep-
tualprocessingmaybedrawnfrombothverbalandnon-verbalperformance.
Asresearchintotheparadigmproducedstrongconfirmingevidence,thethink-
ingforspeakinghypothesistendstobeinvokedasaweakformoflinguistic
relativity(Han&Cadierno,2010).Thisreservesthetermstronghypothesisfor
thosestrandsofrelativisticresearchthatexplorecorrelationsbetweenlinguistic
categoriesandcognitivebehavioronthebasisofbehavioralmeasuresthateither
by-passorentirelyexcludelanguage(Levinson,2003;Lucy,2004).
Thefirstdecadeofthe21stcenturysawtheemergenceofabilingualturn
inrelativisticthoughtandaspateofstudiesinvestigatingcross-languageinter-
actionandtheensuingrestructuringofcognitivemechanisms(Athanasopoulos,
2011b;Bylund,2011;Pavlenko&Malt,2011;vonStutterheim,2003).Italso
borewitnesstorenewedcriticismoftheSapir-WhorfHypothesis,aswellas
accusationsthatitwascouchedintermsthatdidnotreflectWhorf’soriginal
concerns.AcaseinpointisPavlenko’s(2014)mostrecentcontentionthat
Whorfianeffectsmanifestthemselvesthroughlanguageuseandaremosteasily
observedinbilinguals.
SuchadisparityofopinionoverwhatconstitutesWhorfianeffectsisnot
newtorelativisticdebates.Forexample,researchintotheconceptualbasisof
emotionwordsshowsthatwhenusedasstimuliinresearch,emotionwords
influencethecategorization,memory,andperceptionofemotion.Intheab-
senceofsuchpromptspeopleareunabletoidentifyemotionandperceiveitin
acategoricalway(Gendronetal.,2012).AccordingtoMaltandAmeel(2011),
suchalackofdiscriminatingpowerinanon-verbalconditionisindicativeof
anabsenceofrelativisticeffects.Gendronetal.(2012),bycontrast,disregard
thenon-verbaldimensionandclassifyasrelativistictheeffectsevokedby
thepresenceofemotionwords.Thinkingforspeakingappearstobeequally
contentious.WhileSlobin(1996;2003;2004;2005)andHanandCadierno
(2010)seelanguage-driventhinkingasa(weak)formoflinguisticrelativity,
Athanasopoulos(2011a)regardsitasbeingsolelylinguistic.
ThispaperaddressestheconfusionthatbecloudsthenotionofWhorfian/
relativisticeffectsoncognitionbyreferringtothewritingsofBenjaminLee
Whorf,whoiscreditedwithdevelopingthehypothesis,andanalyzingthemin
