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Im Spiegel Der Sprache: Warum Die Welt In Anderen Sprachen Anders Aussieht (2010)

by Guy Deutscher(Favorite Author)

3.83 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

340660689X (ISBN13: 9783406606892)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Beck

review 1: This was a beautiful book. The most beautiful book dedicated to an academic debate I have ever read; lovely prose, witty, easy to follow but not repetitive or "dumbed down". Very interesting subject, with a lot of fun facts that will stay with you for the rest of your life. It is the best book to read if you wish to catch up to the debate on the possible influence of language on thought without reading anything dry. I don't think his conclusions are as life shattering as he presents them, more like small nuances of the human mind that have no practical application, but most of the book isn't about that as much as the back and forth between culture and language, and the evidence there is for both.
review 2: You don't get as many impressive cocktail-party stories... more as you would hope ("and that's why French-speakers ...!"). But Deutscher writes entertaining, and he is especially thorough. His task is to take the field of linguistic relativity - which has gotten itself into trouble by boasting with too big claims early on - and bring it back to a level of credibility. His careful study of the field's history, its early failures and its more recent small successes (word genders influencing associations, the russian blues, egocentric vs geographic coordinates) show in parallel the difficult history of devising empirical experiments dealing with the human mind that avoid any form of priming or vagueness. less

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