907: Problems with Studying Language through Culture Jun 3, 2017

Language is a fine tool as a way to study some aspects of culture, but when people rely on language too much to do so it leads to problems. An example of this is with a study done in 1901 by Dr. W.H.R Rivers who was an anthropologist, neurologist, and ethnologist, but when he wrote the paper Primitive Color Vision in which he studies a group living on islands in the Torres Strait, he analyzed language. In this article on a people whom have only three words for colors—what would translate to 'black', 'white', and 'red'—he wrote, “the ground of the development of their color language corresponds with the order in which they would be placed on the ground of their general intellectual and cultural development” essentially claiming that these people were less intellectually evolved than others; some people have also made similar claims on the basis of word-order. This is certainly a racist point of view, but works now as a lesson that researchers today should not assess language as a reflection of any people, individuals or as a group.