Considerations on the Emergence and Development of the Concept "Linguistic Picture of the World"

Abstract

The present paper explores the evolution of the concept of the “linguistic picture of the world” and focuses on the debate concerning its role in expressing national values. The idea that each language offers a unique perspective on the world, reflected in specific semantic structures, was first promoted by the linguist W. von Humboldt and further developed in the framework of the “linguistic relativity hypothesis” formulated by E. Sapir and B. L. Whorf. This hypothesis emphasises the importance of language in shaping an individual’s perspective on reality, based on the claim that people, through the prism of their mother tongue, perceive the world differently. The basic principle of the “linguistic picture of the world” theory resides in the invariability of cognitive categories and the variability of language categories. This implies that each language provides a unique perspective on the world and there are as many ways of perceiving and expressing reality as there are languages existing around the world. Therefore, knowing and learning more than one language can lead to an enrichment and broadening of our cultural universe.