Xref: utzoo comp.unix.wizards:12498 news.sysadmin:1533 sci.lang:3356
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,news.sysadmin,sci.lang
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: sexist language
Message-ID: <1988Nov17.171543.6797@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1460@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu> <698@packard.UUCP> <1988Nov9.200939.6069@utzoo.uucp> <10837@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> <1988Nov13.202622.23562@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> <3803@imag.imag.fr> <7731@dasys1.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 88 17:15:43 GMT

In article <7731@dasys1.UUCP> jpr@dasys1.UUCP (Jean-Pierre Radley) writes:
>...Brian Kernighan... quoted the linguist Benjamin Whorf. I can't remember
>it exactly, but it was to the effect that "the kind of the language we
>speak affects how we think"...

It should be noted that although this idea -- the "Whorfian Hypothesis" --
tends to be taken as gospel in computer science, the linguistics folks
value Whorf's work on American-Indian languages but consider the Hypothesis
to be unproven and somewhat dubious.
-- 
Sendmail is a bug,             |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
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