Sociolinguistic ISSN: 1750-8649 (print)

Studies ISSN: 1750-8657 (online)

Review

The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same

in Any Language
John H. McWhorter (2014)
New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 208.
ISBN 978-0-19-936158-8

Reviewed by Angela Bartens

After works like Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of ‘Pure’ Standard
English and The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, the volume under
review continues the author’s work first and foremost aimed at educating the
general public about issues related to language and linguistics, a highly important
task as I have noted on other occasions. This time it is a manifesto, as the author
states in the first sentence of the Introduction: a manifesto which takes issue with
the recent rise of Neo-Whorfianism and especially its popularized version divul-
gated by the media. After all, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis according to which the
language we speak shapes the way we perceive the world seems quite appealing
and is, at first sight, also politically correct. In McWhorter’s words: ‘Under
Whorfianism, everybody is interesting and everybody matters’ (p. xvi). At the
same time, it is also dangerous as it suggests that humans are not mentally alike.
McWhorter’s aim is to show that the ‘idea of languages as pairs of glasses does
not hold water in the way that we may, understandably, wish it did’ (p. xvii).
According to him, language is, indeed, a lens – but not upon distinct humanities
but humanity in general – and languages are fascinating in their own right.
The Introduction (pp. ix–xx) introduces the reader to the questions at hand:
What is (Neo-) Whorfianism all about? What are the stakes? What is this book
about? To some extent, I have outlined that in the preceding.

Affiliation

University of Turku, Finland

e-mail: angbar@utu.fi

SOLS VOL 9.1 2015 151–154 doi : 10.1558/sols.v9i1.21988

© 2015, EQUINOX PUBLISHING
152 SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDIES

In Chapter 1, ‘Studies Have Shown’ (pp. 3–29), McWhorter conscientiously

revises recent Neo-Whorfian research which shows that language does have an
effect on thought. However, this effect cannot be deemed anything but the like of
insignificant milliseconds in hitting buttons during laboratory reaction tests
gauging to what extent, for instance, speakers of Russian with lexical items for
both ‘dark blue’ and ‘light blue’ are more sensitive to shades of blue than speakers
of languages which lack this distinction. Thence, concluding that a tribe whose
languages lacks numbers is bad at maths (the case of the Brazilian Pirahã
extensively reported upon by the media in 2004) is akin to considering that a
‘tribe without cars doesn’t drive’ (p. 16) or ‘Legless Tribe [is] Incapable of
Walking Because They Have No Words for Walk’ (p. 21). Rather than language
shaping the way we see the world, it is culture and language-external realities
which have an impact on language, for instance in the form of specific
terminology such as Japanese honorifics.
In order to save Whorfianism, we might fancy ‘Having It Both Ways?’ which is
precisely the title of Chapter 2 (pp. 30–58). Unfortunately, that doesn’t work
either. There just is no intrinsic necessity for language A to develop, say,
evidential markers, while language B, spoken in a very similar environment, does
not. As McWhorter puts it: ‘Worldwide, chance is, itself, the only real pattern
evident in the link between languages and what their speakers are like’ (p. 45). Or
that bubbles (or frills or ornaments) just happen to pop up somewhere in the
soup.
A central point made by the author in Chapter 3, ‘An Interregnum on Culture’
(pp. 59–72), is that sociohistorical conditions have affected language structure
throughout human history: witness, for example, the fact that languages massively
acquired at some point in history as L2 such as English, Mandarin Chinese,
Persian, Swahili, and Indonesian tend to be less complex than what is the norm
for human language.
The author returns to the currently much-debated concept of linguistic
complexity in the next chapter, ‘Dissing the Chinese’ (pp. 73–103). As it happens,
Whorfian studies have compared a limited set of grammatical features of
‘National Geographic’ languages with English. For the reasons elaborated in the
previous chapter, the outcome is that those languages seemingly encode reality in
a more elaborate or exotic way than English. But what happens when the point of
comparison is Mandarin Chinese? Alfred Bloom’s 1981 study on counterfactuals
is a case in point. The Chinese simply looked less attuned to hypotheticality and,
well, less bright. And that type of outcome is certainly not what Whorfians would
want. Clinging onto the academic linguistics truism that all languages are equally
complex to the effect that not only marking something – as conditionals in
English – is complex but also not marking it – as in Chinese – since speakers have
 REVIEW: BARTENS 153

to interpret the precise meaning from the context is just the last explanatory straw
you can possibly hang on to. McWhorter argues once again (see, for instance,
McWhorter 2012) – and convincingly so, see the discussion in the previous
chapter – that some languages simply are less complex than others. He also
criticizes the methodology of some Neo-Whorfian work by demonstrating that
Chen’s much-publicized correlation of savings patterns with the existence of
explicit future marking (according to the argument made by Chen [2013],
speakers of languages with no explicit future markers pay more attention to the
future and therefore save more – in short, the differential complexity argument
popularized) is incorrect as far as the data used is concerned and, of course,
implausible since language does not condition the way its speakers conceive of the
world – which is precisely what this manifesto is about.
Following the lead offered in Chapter 4, McWhorter suggests in Chapter 5
(‘What’s the Worldview from English?’, pp. 104–135) that English, whether
‘exotic’ Black English or plain and simple American Standard English, might for
once constitute the point of departure into musings on the theme of this
manifesto. An in-depth analysis of one single sentence overheard by the author
from a teenager in Jersey City in 2012, ‘Dey try to cook it too fast, I’m-a be eatin’
some pink meat!’, constitutes ample data for arguing his main point. After all, ‘if
language isn’t shaping thought significantly on the streets of Jersey City, it isn’t
doing it in the Amazonian rain forest either’ (p. 134).
The final chapter of this book is a plea for ‘Respect for Humanity’ (pp. 136-
168). McWhorter points out that, in its obsession to demonstrate that people
deemed primitive are anything but, popular Whorfianism actually constitutes a
condescending and immature posture in which potentially unpleasant aspects of
diversity ‘are carefully pruned out of the picture’ (p. 145). Therefore linguists,
anthropologists, and psychologists are responsible for informing the general
public of the caveats of the thesis that language might shape thought in any
significant way and pointing out the message of this manifesto: ‘our differences
are variations on being the same’ (p. 168).
In addition to its contents, the book is appealing to a wider audience as a result
of its exterior aspect: a sassy title, a cover jacket with colorful, partly overlapping
circles probably depicting the bubbles McWhorter keeps talking about through-
out the book, an almost pocketbook format suggesting it is entertainment, not
stuffy scientific prose (and entertaining it is, last but not least as a result of the
elegantly flowing, witty yet humorous language), an impeccable layout, and all
references and other comments neatly tucked away into notes at the end of the
book (pp. 169–174). Only the existence of an index (pp. 175–182) recalls that,
despite its main targeted audience, the volume under review is also a scientific
work.
154 SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDIES

There is little to criticize about it. The Spanish translation of I doubt you will go
is not Dudo que él vaya as is claimed on page 116 but Dudo que vayas. Although
recalling specific examples presented earlier in the book is a useful mnemno-
technical aid, at times the presentation of the argument of the book is slightly
repetitive. As I wrote several years ago in a review of The Power of Babel (Bartens,
2002), readers not steeped in US American culture may not immediately identify
all the persons and characters alluded to and thence not enjoy the reading as
much as someone familiar with all of them does. Summarizing, however, this
manifesto is thought-provoking and well-argued reading not only for the general
public but also for linguists.

References
Bartens, A. (2002) Review from J. H. McWhorter (2001) The power of Babel: A natural history of
language. Times Books. http://linguistlist.org/issues/13/13-1739.html.
Bloom, A. H. (1981) The linguistic shaping of thought: A study in the impact of language on
thinking in China and the West. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Chen, M. K. (2013) The effect of language on economic behavior: Evidence from savings rates,
health behaviors, and retirement assets. American Economic Review 103(2): 690–731.
McWhorter, J. H. (2012) Linguistic simplicity and complexity: Why do languages undress? Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter.