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Soc (2015) 52:292294DOI 10.1007/s12115-015-9901-7
BOOK REVIEW
John McWhorter: The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language
New York: Oxford University Press (USA), 2014, (ISBN: 978-0199361588) 182 pp. $19.95
Margery Lucas1
Published online: 14 April 2015# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015
The Fur language, spoken by an ethnic group who live in Darfur, has an unusual way of indicating quantity. Instead of simply adding an affix like -s to the end of singular nouns to indicate more than one of something, as in English, Fur has a different plural name to accompany each singular one. Eye is nuunga but two eyes are kuungi. These expressions are reminiscent of irregular plurals in English (children for the plural of child), except that every plural in Fur is irregular. In contrast, in Pirah, spoken by an ethnic group who live in the Amazonian rain forest, the language provides barely any acknowledgement of quantity. Pirah lacks plurals, and has only a rudimentary and vague system for counting. Based on the extravagance of their plural expressions, it might seem that the Fur would be much more sensitive to quantity than English speakers, since their language requires them to give every object its own distinct plural name. In contrast, the Pirahs poverty of terms for quantities suggests an indifference to the number of things.
If the conclusions in the previous paragraph seem reasonable, you have fallen for the language hoax: the idea that language is a lens or filter for perception and thought. The purpose of John McWhorters book is to expose the hoax and convince readers that this intriguing concept is not just wrong but full of hidden perils. McWhorter, professor of linguistics at Columbia University, succeeds brilliantly at this task. It is the best of recent books on this subject. Guy Deutscher (2010) has written an eloquent and entertaining
history of work on the relationship between language and thought, but his interpretation of the literature is flawed. Steve Pinker (2007) has written an excellent critique of the work in this area, but it is a short piece in a larger work. McWhorters is a more comprehensive appraisal.
The idea that language affects what individuals can perceive and think about originated with Benjamin Whorf, an insurance...