Re:The limits of my language are the limits of my world (2011)
by Bronislaw on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @07:01PM
(#8790898)
I think Wittgenstein's idea maybe more broadly applicable, meaning it isn't limited to natural languages like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The author states:
"One way to construe this Wittgensteinism very broadly would be to think of it as the limits of my idiom are the limits of my world, with “idiom” construed broadly to include any way of talking about the world, and not merely a particular language."
So e.g. any kind of formal mathematics or anything that we can somehow represent syntactically and which we can understand (semantics) could be seen as an idiom.
"The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the theory that an individual's thoughts and actions are determined by the language or languages that individual speaks. The strong version of the hypothesis states that all human thoughts and actions are bound by the restraints of language, and is generally less accepted than the weaker version, which says that language only somewhat shapes our thinking and behavior." [2]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
[2] http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/sapir.cfm