Reading :: Culture, Language and Personality

Culture, Language and Personality
By Edward Sapir

I picked up this paperback some years ago in a used bookstore, and finally got around to reading it during the pandemic. The original text is copyrighted 1949; this paperback was printed in 1964 and has one of those amazing abstract 1960s covers. It's just a pleasure to look at. 

When I picked it up this year, I noticed the previous owner's name written on the fly page along with "1980 (used)." As it happens, the name was very distinct and matched someone I knew at UT. I reached out to him and he confirmed that he had owned the book during his undergraduate days (!!). 

So what is the book about? These are selected essays Sapir produced on, well, culture, language and personality. More specifically, Sapir examines the function of language, the status of linguistics, the nature of culture and religion, the question of how cultural anthropology and psychiatry related, and the concept of personality. Rather than thoroughly review these essays, I'll just pick out a few specifics.

In the essay "Language" (written in 1933), he notes that every known group of human beings has a language, and he rejects the idea that language emerged because gestures were not enough to communicate (p.1). All language, he says, consists of "phonetic symbols for the expression of communicable thought or feeling" (p.1; I think he means phonemes rather than written phonetic symbols, and notice the same bias toward spoken language that Vygotsky had). "Language is heuristic" in the sense that "its forms predetermine for us certain modes of observation and interpretation," and thus "as our scientific experience grows we must learn to fight the implications of language" (p.7). Race, culture, and language do not often coincide, he says. But with increased emphasis on nationalism (recall that he wrote this in 1933), these are collapsed (p.39). He suggests the logical necessity of an international language (p.42). (Readers may recall that Esperanto had a lot of enthusiasts in the early 20th century, and I wonder if he had something like that in mind.)

He does discuss writing as well. Writing, he adds, "proved that language as a purely instrumental and logical device is not dependent on the use of articulate sound" (p.2). He also claims that effective writing systems are "more or less exact transfers of speech" (p.12), a claim that is understandable given the time but, I think, incorrect.

In "International Auxiliary Language," Sapir continues the idea of an international language, this time recognizing that "English, or some simplified version of it, may spread for certain immediate and practical needs, yet the deeper needs of the modern world may not be satisfied by it" (p.51). He argues that we need a simpler, more logical language. Although I am monolingual, I also recognize that English is wildly inconsistent. 

In "Linguistics as a Science," I pulled just one quote: he states that "linguistics is destined to have a very special value for configurative psychology ('Gestalt psychology'), for, of all forms of culture, it seems that language is that one which develops its fundamental patterns with relatively the most complete detachment from other types of cultural patterning. Linguistics may thus hope to become something of a guide to the understanding of the 'psychological geography' of culture in the large" (p.73). Although not directly connected, this line of thought of course reminds me of Vygotsky and Luria in the very early 1930s, about the time of the Uzbek expeditions.

Okay, that's it for this collection of essays. Sapir is a little far afield for me. But if you are interested in early-to-mid 20th century thoughts on culture, language, and personality, this time capsule should be of help to you.