Reddit reviews Language, Thought & Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf

I still think Whorf himself gets a pretty bad rap. After reading his stuff pretty carefully, I saw no indication that he was of the opinion that we couldn't break past the categorizations of reality that language necessitates, but just that the fact that language relies on categorizations and chunking (in the form of lexical items) can definitely lead our thoughts on a specific track.

I certainly don't think Whorf even for a second would doubt that google could become a verb, like your example in your essay.

> That being said, I am not trying to say that the structures of the languages we speak in no ways reflect our world views, I am merely saying that it goes both ways rather than just being a unidirectional highway to the human cognition.

I kind of think all the modern literature is at fault, for taking Whorf's "strong relativism" and pushing it into "invincible relativism". Whorf had a lot of good ideas, and it's a shame to see them tossed to the wayside because a few overzealous apostles got carried away in the journals :)