Sapir (Sapir), Edward

(26.1.1884, Lauenburg, Pomerania - 4/2/1939, New Haven) - an American anthropologist, linguist and psycholinguist. Born in Germany, from which the family emigrated in 1889, Mr.. U.S., graduated from Columbia (BA, 1904; MA, 1905) and Pennsylvania (1908-1909), Universities (PhD, 1909). Worked with 1907. by 1908. Scientific assistant in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1909. to 1910. taught anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, from 1910. by 1925. headed the Department of Anthropology of the Canadian geological inspection at the National Museum in Ottawa. Since 1925. by 1931. Sapir - Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Chicago in 1927. - A full professor of anthropology and general linguistics in 1931. - University Professor Ceyla here worked at the Institute of human relations, r. New Haven. Since 1931. - Co-editor of 'Journal of Social Psychology'. President of the Linguistic Society of America (1931) and the Anthropological Society of America (1938). Great influence on him had a V. Boas, the founder of American cultural anthropology, developed a method for detailed study of the customs and language of traditional societies and developing doctrine of the relativity of moral and evaluative criteria used in different cultures. Working at UC Berkeley on a study of Indian dialects, and based on the postulate of the possibility of learning the language only in the general context of culture, . concluded, . that differences in language are linked - through construction of a special picture of the world - with qualitative differences in individual thinking speakers of that language,
. Specifically, . Sapir showed, . indicate that color, . associated with the practical activities of representatives of different nationalities, . affect the organization of the simplest forms of perceptual activity: cultural specific set of words, . denoting color, . makes itself color perception, . ability to distinguish and classify ( 'Conceptual categories in primitive languages', . 'Science', . 1927, . V,
. 74). Thus Sapir was given a general formulation of the 'theory of linguistic relativity', which fleshed out and gave it a complete expression and greater categorical (picture of the perceived world depends on the national language), his disciple B. Whorf (1897-1941). Later this theory, especially in the interpretation of B. Whorf, . criticized, . which showed, . that the differences between languages are not at a deep level, . and on the surface, . and, . besides, . relationship between language and perception are quite complex and frequently mediated (E,
. Lenneberg). In 1920, Mr.. Sapir studied the phenomenon of phonetic symbolism with the help of artificial words. Literature.