Entertainment / Literature / Whorfs Hypothesis: A proposal that language affects how its speakers perceive and react to the world--and that the limitations of language thus become the limitations of human thought. Although first set forward by amateur linguist Benjamin Whorf (i.e., a fire engineer writing in an M.I.T. alumni magazine) and inspired by a false understanding of Inuit (Eskimo) language, this hypothesis has been remarkably influential in cognitive psychology and linguistics. In fiction like George Orwell's 1984, government control of language allows the party to expunge thoughtcrime (illegal ideas) in its dystopian monopoly of intellect. This idea is based largely on Whorf's Hypothesis.
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Hypothesis Noun Synonyms: theory, theorem, postulate, premise or premiss, proposition, assumption, supposition, speculation
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