Psycholinguistic Implications for Linguistic Relativity : A Case

The content, and indeed the title, of this book brings back to us an old and well· known theory the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: that language influences thought and determines the world view of the speaker (Whorf, 1956). Rumjahn Hoosain proposes that "unique lingUistic properties of the Chinese language, particularly its orthography, have implications for cognitive processing". Although it does not seem to be his intention to revive the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its original form, Hoosain clearly displays his desire to salvage the theory through extension or revision. This is demonstrated by his remark in Chapter 1 that "the influence of orthography on cognition, particularly the influence of the manner in which the script represents sound and meaning, was not originally recognized in the work of Sapir and Whorf'. Thus, Hoosain seems to be trying to keep the spirit of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis alive while applying it more specifically to the effect of the orthography and particularly to the case of Chinese. This effect is, as he describes it, "more in terms of the facility with which language users process information, and the manner of information processing". Therefore, "such language effects matter more in data-driven or bottom-up processes rather than in conceptually driven or top-down processes". Though not a large volume (198 pages), the book covers an impressively large number of psycholinguistic studies related to the Chinese language 1 and orthography, especially