Reading Comprehension

PT155 · S3 · P4 · Q26 Language & Thought

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Passage A In 1940, Benjamin Lee Whorf seduced a whole generation into believing that our mother tongue restricts what we are able to think.

Topic

How language influences thought—specifically, the relationship between language and conceptual understanding (e.g., perception, gender, numbers).

Framework

Present Debate (both passages present evidence and arguments about how language impacts cognition, engaging with Whorfian and non-Whorfian perspectives)

Main Point

While early claims suggested that language restricts what we can think (Whorfian hypothesis), more recent evidence shows that language shapes, but does not entirely determine, how we perceive and categorize the world—especially in terms of objects’ gender (Passage A) and understanding of numbers (Passage B). - The Most Valuable Sentence for Passage A: End of P2: - The Most Valuable Sentence for Passage B: End of P2:

P1 (Passage A): The Origins and Issues with Whorf's Hypothesis

Whorf claimed that our language limits our thoughts and that speakers of different languages inhabit different realities, but later it turned out there was no strong evidence for this.

P2 (Passage A): Rethinking the Influence of Language

Today, research suggests that language doesn’t prevent certain thoughts, but rather forces us to pay attention to specific things, like gender distinctions in German.

P3 (Passage A): Language Shapes Associations and Perceptions

Grammatical gender can influence our sense of what objects are like: studies showed that German and Spanish speakers attribute different qualities to objects based on whether those objects are masculine or feminine in their language.

26.

Given the style and tone of each passage, which one of the following is most likely to be true?

Correct
The author of passage A
Why this is right
The 2nd passage seems to assume prior knowledge of the Whorfian hypothesis, because its last sentence talks about strong/weak/non - Whorfian as though the reader will know what any of that means. Also, using terms like "numerate subjects" sounds like something a layman wouldn't understand but an academic would. Meanwhile, the 1st passage tells us about Whorf as though we've never heard of him before.
Skill tested: Inference · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
63% picked this
The author of passage A
Unsupported: anthropologist
It's not clear why we would say that the author of passage A is an anthropologist. She could be, but she could just as easily be a linguist herself. She seems to have a lot of knowledge of language from other cultures, since she's referencing examples of gendered nouns in German and Spanish.
11% picked this
The author of passage A
Reversed Terms
The author of passage B is extremely detached and noncommittal, so we would be more likely to call him a neutral observer. His final sentence outlines three different interpretations we could draw from the data, but he doesn't pick one. Meanwhile, the author of A seems to have a clear opinion, since she begins her 2nd paragraph with, "Whorf's main mistake was to assume that ...."
3% picked this
The author of passage A
Weak Match for Both
Although the author of A mentions the historical origin of the Whorfian hypothesis, her main agenda is telling us why it's wrong / what Whorf's main mistake was, and what the truth really is when it comes to how mother tongues shape thinking. It's fair to say the author of B is concerned with truth in the sense that passage B sounds scientific, and scientists are concerned with the truth. But since the author of B lays out several possible interpretations of data (and doesn't pick one), it sounds more like the author of B is concerned with possible takeaways than he is with "the one correct takeaway".
8% picked this
The author of passage A
Too Strong: dismissive / takes seriously
The author of passage A does not buy into the full Whorfian idea that our mother tongue restricts what we are able to think. But she does accept that our mother tongue obliges us to think about certain things. It directs our attention to certain qualities (such as genders of nouns) which can then result in changing the feelings and associations we have with those nouns. So we could say that the author of A is dismissive of one idea under discussion, but dismissive of the ideas seems too strong. Passage B's 2nd paragraph begins by saying, "The evidence just presented in one sense supports a non-Whorfian view of our concept of number", so that's closer to dismissing Whorf than taking it seriously. The rest of that paragraph, though, brings back some glimmers of taking Whorf seriously. The final sentence gives three possibilities, "Whorf was totally right. Whorf was partially right. Whorf was wrong", and since the author doesn't show any preference for any of those three options, it's hard to support that he takes Whorf more seriously. He certainly respects his audience's awareness of Whorf enough to think he should acknowledge the extent to which this evidence does / doesn't support Whorfian claims. I think there's a softer version of this answer that's pretty fair, because if Passage A is like "Whorf definitely got something wrong" and Passage B is like "Whorf might be right on this, kinda right on this, or wrong on this", then by comparison it still feels fair to say that Passage B takes Whorf's ideas more seriously. But, again, it's too strong to say that the author of A is dismissive of the ideas under discussion.
15% picked this

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