The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, also known as the linguistic relativity hypothesis, refers to the proposal that the particular language one speaks influences the way one thinks about reality. Linguistic relativity stands in close relation to semiotic-level concerns with the general relation of language and thought, and to discourse-level concerns with how patterns of language use in cultural context can affect thought.

A Color Memory When researchers first turned their attention to the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, memory for color was considered to be an ideal domain for study (see Brown, 1976). Whorf had suggested that language users “dissect nature along the lines laid down by [their] native languages” (1956, p. 213): Color is a prototypical continuous dimension divided up in different ways across languages. Researchers set out with the initial hypothesis that differences in the quantity of color labels would bring about differences in episodic memory for those colors (e.g., Brown & Lenneberg, 1954; Lenneberg & Roberts, 1956; Stefflre, Vales, & Morley, 1966). However, two lines of research proved quite powerful in creating the opinion that the color domain provides a strong instance of “cultural universalism and linguistic insignificance” (Brown, 1976, p. 152). In the first line of research, Berlin and Kay (1969) studied the distribution of color terms cross-linguistically and discovered an orderly pattern with which languages employ from two to eleven basic color terms (see also Kay & McDaniel, 1978). Languages with only two terms will have black and white (or dark and light). If the language has a third term, it will be red. The next additions will be sampled from yellow, green, and blue. Brown enters next, followed by some ordering of purple, pink, orange, and gray. Thus, rather than being arbitrary in the way that Whorf might have predicted, languages choose to name different colors according to a strict hierarchy. This strictness suggests that language describes a single external reality, rather than that language divides reality in different ways.